THE LIFE IS THE TEST by William Archer Butler

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 3, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 49.

THE LIFE IS THE TEST.

By William Archer Butler

To examine its evidence is not to try Christianity; to admire its martyrs is not to try Christianity; to compare and estimate its teachers is not to try Christianity; to attend its rites and services with more than Mohammedan punctuality, is not to try or know Christianity. But for one day to have lived in the pure atmosphere of faith and love to God, of tenderness to man; to have beheld earth annihilated and heaven opened to the prophetic gaze of hope; to have seen even more revealed behind the complicated troubles of this strange, mysterious life, the unchanging smile of an eternal Friend, and everything that is difficult to reason solved by that reposing trust which is higher and better than reason—to have known and felt this, I will not say for a life, but for a single blessed hour, that, indeed, is to have made experiment of Christianity.—William Archer Butler.