Men and Things | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 25, 1871

Men and Things.

CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

HERE are some good thoughts by H. W. Beecher, about Christian experience and what we should aim at:—

“There are a great many persons who find it difficult, even in meetings, church associations, to rise into an atmosphere of serenity and joy. Their enjoyment of religion is very slight, and very superficial at the best.”

“There are others who enjoy religion; but it is a fire kindled through social influences. It is when the experience, and the emotions, and the various personal influences which surround them, in a meeting like this for example, are brought to bear upon them. Then, as it were, from the outside the fuel is brought; it is kindled within them; it burns upon their hearts; and they rejoice. But as soon as they go away, the flame dies; and like a lamp without oil, it very soon is quenched.”

“Then come, next, those that are of a temperament and of an experience that enable them to pour in oil. They can kindle without a meeting. They can carry with them the provision of God’s house, so that it shall last them all the way between one occasion and another; and they stand on a still higher ground.”

“Then come those who can abide, almost as if it were their portion, in an atmosphere of great tranquillity, great hope, great sweetness in love. They rest in the Lord. They trust, and live by trust. And although it costs them, at the moment, an effort to say, ‘Thy will be done’; yet, in trouble, in care, in sorrow, after a moment they are able to say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.’ And they rest. They are their own priests. They are their own interpreters of truth. They are able, as it were, to keep the spiritual household of the soul without foreign help.”

“A great many persons distress themselves because they cannot have the experiences which they see such a brother and such a sister have. My advice to these persons is, Do not aim at any vague, indefinite ideals. Take your own condition, and carry that up as far as it can be carried. Take care of yourselves where you are.”

“For instance, a humble sign-painter, having diligence and a homely talent, gets sight of the chef d’oeuvre of some great artist, and goes back to his shop and looks mournfully at his tools and says, ‘I have got to paint signs, and I have got to paint houses, and I have got to do humbler things in painting. I wish I could paint like Raphael, but I am afraid I never shall.’ I do not think you ever will; but, then, while no amount of diligence will ever make you a historical painter, you may be a great deal better sign-painter than you are.”

“Now, it is not for you to overleap the place which God has appointed for you. If you have but a moderate degree of talent, you are not ambitiously to jump clear over that, and pine because you cannot do things higher than your level. Let every man be content in the station where God has put him, and see that he does the things which are before him, every day better, and still better. That will unfold what there is in him.”

“You are not to stand looking at the mountain top, when there is a full mile between you and it, and ask, ‘How can I make one brave jump and land there?’ You cannot; but you can take one by one, ten thousand separate steps, which will carry you very near the top, if not to the very summit itself.”

WHICH WAY?

Every day we ought to stop and ask ourselves which way we are drifting, which way we are going. All around us religion is on the decline. Once zealous Protestant churches are now rapidly drifting back to formality, to popery, to the world. Says the Protestant Churchman:—

“This is a time when Christians ought to bear in mind that the days of the noblest church architecture were those also of the thickest spiritual darkness. It is true that from the eleventh to the fourteenth century magnificent cathedrals were built; but these were the days also when war against the saints was fiercely waged. On the other hand, in times of the greatest refreshing from the presence of the Lord, the days of Berridge and Whitefield, barns and fields were their chief and sometimes their only temples.”

“Protestants everywhere may observe that, however far they may go in ostentatious buildings and other carnal display in their professed worship, the Church of Rome can far excel them. Those who cry out the loudest about perils from popery, very frequently are its own efficient allies. For as sweet cordials create an appetite which at last demands the fiercest stimulants; so the devices of art by which the orthodox adorn the bald simplicity of their public worship are cultivating a taste which finally will be satisfied with nothing short of the gorgeous ceremonial of the Romish cathedral.”

Alas! for the cause of God and for poor souls! this is too true. The power of God is dying out from the churches while they are increasing in numbers, in wealth, in fine churches, in popularity, in fine dress, in large salaries, &c. Who will come to the rescue? Has not God raised up Seventh-day Adventists for this purpose? We believe he has. How much then of the power of God ought to be found with us! What zeal, what devotion, what separation from the world!

Are we growing better in these respects, getting nearer to the Lord, becoming more spiritual, more humble, less like the world? Or, are we gradually drifting the other way as all other churches have done before us? Notice the history of the Methodist, the Baptist, and other churches before us. When they first started, they were zealous, devoted, self-sacrificing, and plain in all their ways. But gradually they have lost these good qualities, have more and more conformed to the world in their dress, in their habits, and in all their ways. Soon they were as dead and powerless as those from whom they came out.

This has invariably been the history of every church. Shall this be our history? Shall we go as all others have gone? I hope God may keep us from it, and yet there is much room for fear in this respect. Can we not already see a tendency that way? Are we not becoming more dressy and less plain and simple in our attire and in our houses? Is it not the time for us to examine ourselves carefully, and see which way we are tending?