THE PATH OF LIFE | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 30, 1903

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 29, No. 52.

THE PATH OF LIFE.

Our illustration presents two splendid thoughts for the coming year, one positive and the other negative, one a blessed thing to do, the other an important admonition not to do. Let us study them a little.

EVERY soul will follow some path in the year to come, not physically, particularly, but morally. The trial path of every soul ends at the judgment bar of God. The path we have chosen, the way we have walked, will determine thenceforward the eternal future. How important it is that we choose the right path!

SHALL we choose the path of sensuous pleasure—the path which will please the physical man? Or shall we choose the path of right? Sometimes we long that the path of pleasure might be the path of right. The next step is easy; we persuade ourselves that our senses are a law of right, and that pleasure is the highest motive. But it is well to remember that “there is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” For it is eternally true that “he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption;” and “if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.”

SELF-CENTERING is the direction of death. This is taught in the very law of your physical being. The man is healthy only so long as the circulation of the blood is from the great centers to the extremities. Gorge the centers with life-fluid, with no outward flow, and congestion, inflammation, enlargement, lesion of blood-vessels, or collapse, occurs. It is so in the body politic; let the life-blood of the nation—its circulating medium—become congested in the great financial centers, and the extremities suffer, and disease and disturbance and panic and hard times follow. Center the affections on self, and we die. Follow self-interests, and it may seem to pay for awhile, but the heart-soil is filling in the meantime with growths of selfishness, and the end of all merely worldly prosperity is death and disappointment.

WHAT shall we do? What path shall we follow? The psalmist, believing God’s promises, assures himself, “Thou wilt show me the path of life.” Ps. 16:11. His next utterance tells us that it is in the presence of God, or, as elsewhere indicated, the path of God’s commandments. Ps. 119:35. Our text expresses the same thought, “Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” The Revised Versions have it more literally, “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as beloved children.” Do as God does in all things; not merely follow a certain path, but as the little child loves his father, seeks to do as father does, unconscious of acting any part, but moved only by love, so follow—imitate—God.

WHAT is His way? How may we know it? He has given us two-fold direction, in both the abstract and concrete, in precept and example. Precept: “If thou wouldest enter into life, keep the commandments.” “This is the love of God, that we keep His commandments.” “In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death.” Example: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” “No one knoweth the Son save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him.” “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” The rule of life is God’s great law expanded into ten thousand precepts in His Word. The perfect working out of that rule in humanity is manifest in Jesus Christ. He was Immanuel—“God with us;”—He was God “manifest in the flesh.” Follow Him: In His humiliation and self-denial and crucifixion of sin, in giving up all for His sake. “If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” In simple faith in the all-sufficient promises of God, follow Him, whether in ministering

to the poor and needy, on the mountain top of transfiguration, in the dark Garden of Gethsemane, in the unjust judgment hall, in bearing the cross with faltering pain-filled steps up Calvary, in unmurmuringly and unresistingly, with prayer-filled heart for your murderers, being nailed upon the cruel tree, or burned at the stake, follow Him. “Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children.” At all times, in all ways, in all places, glorious opportunity is given you to witness for God.

“If sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” There will be ifs all the way, offered with all the deceptions of devilish suggestion, to turn thee from the rugged, holy road. Thou shalt meet continually strong, persuasive temptations to turn thee from the path of life. Thus also did the Master of life. Voices on every side as sweet as angel song and of Circean power will lure the soul to lust of flesh and lust of eye and pride of life, to selfish ease and pleasure, to paths flower-bedecked to hide the poisoned vines, to paths flower-strewn to cover the bottomless bogs of sin and death and hopeless despair. “If sinners entice thee”—it matters not tho they are life of thy life and name of thy name—“consent thou not.” Thine only hope is Christ Jesus. Keep thine eyes upon Him. Open thy heart and soul and mind to all His glorious love and beauty and wisdom and glory, and follow on and up in greater, truer joy and nobler victories than earth can win. In forgetting self, tho all forsake thee, thou shalt win Christ, and in Him win all. In blessing others, tho all the maledictions of evil be cast upon thee, the curse causeless shall not come and thou shalt be blessed with all the benisons of Heaven forevermore. Therefore, “Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children;” “if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”