THE POWER OF EXAMPLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 2, 1869

THE POWER OF EXAMPLE.

Our example tells upon our fellow-men with a power which can never be fully estimated. We act before them either in good deeds or in evil ones. Our actions are rightly held as the real index to our character. They show what we are. They give evidence whether we are living for God or for self. They show whether we really esteem this world or the next. They declare to our fellow-men which we have most at heart, the pleasures of sin or the cross of Christ.

Most professors of religion exert a deadly influence upon all around them. Their lack of interest in the cause of Christ gives the lie to their profession of love for him. Their careless, worldly lives bear testimony to the fact that they love the world and not the Father. They do not recommend the religion of Christ. They do constantly dishonor and reproach that worthy name by the which they are called. To be a Christian is to walk as Christ walked. Yet his professed followers dare to walk in sin and folly while bearing his name and claiming to be his disciples. They thus accomplish, in the cause of Satan, by making the world believe that there is no reality in religion, an amount of injury that they could hardly have caused in the open service of Satan. The day of Judgment will astonish the careless, ease-loving, lukewarm Christians when they see the amount of evil that they have wrought in their lives. Our Lord characterizes them justly as workers of iniquity, and bids them depart from him.

There are a few out of the great mass of professed Christians whose lives adorn the doctrine of Christ. They exhibit in their conduct the excellence of our holy religion. Every such person is a powerful preacher of righteousness. They may have no command of language; they may be unable to express in words the deep emotion of their hearts, but God puts in their actions a tongue that can speak with commanding eloquence.

How self-forgetfulness and disinterested benevolence will commend themselves even to a selfish world. How honesty, integrity, and truth, will shine in the midst of the dense moral darkness that covers our world. How the returning of good for evil will attest, even to a sinful man, the reality of Christ's religion. How the spirit of forgiveness toward our enemies, and of patience and long-suffering toward those who despitefully use us, will cause men to admire the excellence of true piety. Finally, how excellent is the religion of the Bible. How powerful is our example for good or evil. Who of us are ready to meet our own examples, and to receive their consequences in the Judgment?