A Peculiar People by C. A. Osgood

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 4, 1871

A Peculiar People.

By C. A. Osgood

GREAT and precious promises are made to the people of God in his word. The inheritance of the saints will be given to those, and those only, who become worthy to possess it. Such peculiar blessings can be enjoyed only by those who become “a peculiar people, zealous of good works.” The multitude around us are living in sin. They are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” Many of them have the form of godliness, but are destitute of its power. They are “lovers of their own selves.”

If we would enter into life, we must really be of that little flock to whom the Father will give the kingdom. These bow in submission to the will of God. They do not refuse to bear reproach for the name of Jesus. While the many are living to gratify and glorify self, God’s peculiar people feel and acknowledge that they are not their own, but the Lord’s. They deny themselves and bear the cross. They live not to themselves, but to him who died for them. Their anxious inquiry is, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” They have a spirit within them unlike the men of the world. Love to God and man now reigns where selfishness did once.

God requires that our speech should be peculiar. The organs of speech should be used in praising God, and in uttering words that shall instruct and bless mankind; not in uttering curses, words that are not true, or words of self-praise; but in holding forth Christ and truth.

The manners and dress of the true disciple of Christ are peculiar. We are called upon, not to imitate a gay and proud world, but to learn of Him who was “meek and lowly in heart,” and “to walk in his steps.” The Christian is commanded not to be adorned “with gold or pearls, or costly array,” but to wear “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”

A world of sinners blind to the signs of the times, may live to gratify their vitiated appetites, and thus sow the seeds which will produce corruption; but the children of God must keep their bodies under, by being temperate in all things, that they may glorify God, both in their bodies and their spirits which are his. In this age of the world, when men live to eat and drink, Christ’s waiting ones must not be “overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness.” True, men think it strange that we do not run to “the same excess of riot” that we once did; but the time past may suffice us to have done these things. As the “end of all things is at hand, let us be sober and watch unto prayer,” that with God’s little flock we may receive the kingdom. C. A. OSGOOD.