Religious Graduates by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1875

Religious Graduates.

By John Harvey Kellogg

ONE of the greatest evils of the age is the prevailing idea that the work, the great work of our life, is accomplished when we have made a profession of religion and united with a church. There is a proneness to point to the hour of conversion, to some past experience, as the evidence of our standing, of our present acceptance with God. The following remarks from the Christian Union are timely, but we fear few will heed them :—

"In every revival, especially, there are persons who, having, as they believe, entered on the Christian life, think that they are out of all difficulty, and that for them the essential thing is already done. Now, that is as if a child that had just entered a primary school should suppose that it had got an education. It is as if a boy, just bound apprentice to a mechanic should think he had obtained a livelihood for all his days. Beginning a Christian life is only beginning. There needs daily, hourly work to follow it, clear to the end of life.

"There is some religious teaching that is liable to mislead men about this. We read of Mr. Moody using this illustration : When in the old days a slave ran away he was in deadly peril so long as he was on American soil, but the very instant he stepped across the Canada line, he was absolutely safe. So, said Mr. Moody, you may step in a moment from the kingdom of sin to the kingdom of Christ and be secure. Now, this illustration seems to us likely to mislead. Practically no man escapes from the bondage of sin in a moment, or in a day, or in a year. He may set out to escape, he may turn squarely around and begin to forsake his evil habits, and from the very first he may have a joyful sense that God is his helper. But he is somewhat like the slave when he first set his face toward the North Star, with a thousand miles of travel before him, with difficulties and dangers enough to tax his every resource. In the New Testament the Christian life is continually likened to the soldier's life. Its word is, 'Be sober, be vigilant!' 'Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.' 'Watch!' There is courage and joy in every tone of the gospel, but it is the courage of the resolute and faithful soldier; it is the joy of a pressing on and always on, into noble attainment. If ever a man had a conversion that was sudden and complete, it was Paul. But there is not the least hint in Paul's words that he looked back to find in that experience his assurance or his hope. He said that he forgot those things that are behind, and reached forth unto those things which are before. He had such a sense of the glorious ideal revealed in Christ, the splendid possibilities of divine manhood, that his whole soul went out in the aspiration to rise higher and higher into that life of closest union with God. And our salvation from ignoble and slothful content lies in getting some such sense of what God calls us to."

The feeling struck against in the above remarks, are, with many, the great barrier to reaching them with the present truth. They cannot be persuaded that they need anything. With them the work is done. To move forward, to grow in grace, is, in their estimation, a denial of the genuineness of their past experience. And thus they dwarf down to formalists, self-deceived.

And we regret to say that the great modern revivals tend to just this state of things. Those held recently in California developed and strengthened this feeling. Two questions were asked, "Are you a Christian? Do you belong to a church?" If these were answered in the affirmative, they were invited to join in working for others without any assurance that they had any present experience of the love of God in the heart or whether their lives were such as to recommend their religion to those for whom they labored. "Patient continuance in well-doing," is the standard. "Go on unto perfection," is the requirement.

J. H. W.