Slippery Places by Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 28, 1871

Slippery Places.

By Cuyler

SLIPPERY places for whom? For the impenitent and the ungodly? No. It is not for them that this friendly word of counsel is written. “Their foot shall slide in due time,” and unless they lay hold on the arm that is mighty to save, they will land in the depths of perdition. I am now thinking rather of the spiritual dangers which beset God’s people—those who have already made their vows to be the followers of Jesus. It is a sorrowful fact that much of the labor of every pastor is to exhort, to warn, to guide and to caution the members of his own church, and to keep them off the slippery places. And the saddest sound that smites on his ear, is the occasional fall of some poor backslider whose feet have slipped, and he has gone down, bruised and maimed and well nigh dead! . . . Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. Happy is that Christian who always remembers that on every path of life, there are slippery places, and who keeps so near to God that he may “hold him up” the moment he begins to slide. Even in the blessed season of their “first love,” young converts are in peril. They have not yet learned the sharp practice of the adversary.

1. Presumption is a weakness of youth—even of Christians in their spiritual youth. They overrate their own strength. They are very apt to feel like Peter when he uttered the vain-glorious vaunt, “Though all men forsake thee, Lord, yet will not I.” Brave boasting that! But listen for a moment, and you will hear a most terrible fall. Then Peter began to curse and to swear, saying, “I know not the man!” Poor Peter! bruised, bleeding, crest-fallen, as he goes away, weeping, into the garden; he has learned a sore lesson that he will not soon forget. He has learned what a miserable, weak creature Simon Peter is without Christ. Out into the solitude of the garden he goeth—not to hide his sin with the rope of the suicide—but to be reconverted. He repents anew, and does his first works, and gives his heart afresh to Jesus. From that garden he comes back a wiser, humbler, and a better man. Now there are tens of thousands of Christians who have had just such an experience as presumptuous Peter had.

2. Worldly prosperity is a very slippery place for a professing Christian. When a man begins to get rich in money, he is very apt to grow poor in grace. . . . When a church member gets wealth, his pride is very likely to swell with his income; he begins to feel independent of God; the higher he rises in prosperity, the more he leans like a tower whose altitude is too great for the breadth of its base. Every prosperous Christian ought to pray every night and morning, “O Lord! I am in a dizzy place. When my foot begins to slip, let thy mercy hold me up.”

3. A state of over-confidence is always a state of danger. We always feel uneasy for those who claim to have made wonderful attainments. Secret pride steals in, and saps their humbleness of mind and dependent faith. They grow presumptuous. “Who is afraid? Not I.” Other people may fall; not they. So Peter felt, and yet he was the very first disciple to desert in the hour of trial. We have always felt the most anxiety about those converts who enter the church with a very glib and fluent profession in which the little word “I” is painfully prominent. They are often the earliest backsliders. In Bunyan’s allegory, poor “Mr. Fearing” managed to reach the celestial city at last, though with a very sorry opinion of his own graces. Self-conceited “Mr. Presumption” was left lying on the road with a pair of iron fetters on his heels. God sees a secret pride in the hearts of his own people often, which needs to be chastised. We have no doubt this is the reason why sore afflictions are sent sometimes upon those who stand as eminent Christians before the world. God saw that they were going to stumble through over-confidence, and so, in mercy to them, brought them low. After their humbling afflictions, they became ten-fold stronger and holier Christians than they ever were before. A stoop has often saved from a fall.

4. In these days, many in our churches are in terrible danger from sinful conformity to the world. An elegant, luxurious style of living, parties of pleasure, wine dinners, opera houses, dancing and dressing and drinking entertainments, are certain death to those who are decoyed into them. We have never seen the Christian yet who could be trusted to stand firm on such slippery places. Sooner or later the devil trips him up. God has never promised to take care of his people in the theater, the ball room, or over the wine bottle. At fashionable watering-places, and in foreign travel, church members try to go as far over the line as they can and save their Christian character. “Only this once; we are away from home now; nobody knows us here.” Alas! when the tempter gets a professed Christian into such a net of sophistry and self-deception, he is already on the edge of the precipice. The man who does not feel every hour, “Christ sees me, and how can I do this sin?” has already begun to be a backslider. What is the safeguard? There is only one. It is this: keep close to God and keep away from danger. If the ice is thin, stay off of it, and you will not be drowned. If there is an under-current drawing you into sin, cry unto God for help, and swim out. When you feel a sinful inclination drawing you toward any place, or practice, or any pursuit, or any pleasure, then put your foot down firmly and say to yourself, “No; I will not go one inch further!” The safest rule for a child of God, is to practice a total abstinence from every thing that leads the footsteps into slippery places. Never go where you cannot ask Christ Jesus to go with you. Never do what you cannot ask Christ Jesus to help you to do! Never try to see how close you can drive to a precipice without going over. And if stern duty requires you to go where the path is dangerous, then remember the Psalmist’s prayer, “When my foot slippeth, O Lord, let thy mercy hold me up.”—Cuyler.