With Christ, Not Men

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Jan 21, 1913

With Christ, Not Men

SOMETIMES there are persons who imagine themselves quite good singers because they can sing so easily and readily when accompanied by a good choir and musical instrument; but if called upon to lead a small meeting in singing, they make utter failure.

There are Christians whose cases are very similar. When attending some good, warm, spiritual meeting, they get warmed by the warmth of others, and think that they have received a great measure of strength, and have contributed greatly to the success of the meeting; but if these same persons are called upon to stand alone for Christ amid a Babel of strange tongues and dispositions, they yield to the influences of Satan.

The real test of union with Christ is to stand alone, whatever influences may be around us. “Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.” Union with Christ will enable the Christian to stand uncorrupted wherever duty calls. Men may prove cowards; he will gather renewed courage. His source of life and growth is from above. “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.” Jer. 17: 7, 8.