SACRIFICE by J. CLARKE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 15, 1876

SACRIFICE

By J. CLARKE

Sacrifice implies a loss, a voluntary surrender of something, or some act of self-denial, or of suffering or of obedience, either to render service to God or to benefit our fellow-men; or to bring ourselves into conformity to the law of God, by denial of the dictates of the carnal mind in behalf of goodness and virtue.

The spirit of sacrifice implies a constant willingness to render sacrifice to God of whatever we may possess which may be of benefit to his cause in the great work of salvation, and to deny ourselves the indulgence of any thing which may in any wise hinder the progress of the work of God in our own hearts or in the minds of others.

The best illustration we can point out to show what the spirit of sacrifice is, in all its manifestations, may be viewed by all in the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ; for others he suffered poverty, fatigue, dishonor and reproach, ignominy and death. Our Lord gave us this example, not to make a display for idle talk, or to satisfy an arbitrary pride, or to form or establish a useless precedent for his followers, that they might be weighed down by certain rules, or subjected to suffering unnecessarily, or to being tempted for the diversion of higher intelligences.

Had man not fallen from his first estate, no call would have been made for sacrifice or self-denial; but man has fallen very low, yet not so low but Christ offers to reinstate him again higher than before, on conditions reasonable and just in view of natural and moral law. To do this, our Lord has undertaken a vast work, extending through thousands of years—a work in itself vast in its reach, and laborious and painful in its workings and its minute details, rendered so by the perverse nature of the heart of man.

Man, to fit himself for this salvation, must understand its workings or he could not appreciate it, and in order to do this he must sacrifice.

J. CLARKE.