The Way of Life | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 2, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 14.

The Way of Life.

There is another side. God is a living God; nay, He is the living God. “With Him is the fountain of life.” From Him comes all life. He is goodness itself; for God is love. In His love He has given His life in Jesus Christ for a dying world. It is poured out from the great central fountain, so that all may drink and live. Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life. With outstretched, open hands He offers the loaf of life, and invites to eat. Listen to His invitation: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” This is the voice of God through the “evangelical prophet.” Listen again to His voice through the prophet evangelist: “And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” The storehouse, the fountain, is free for all.

God’s church is a living church. Her face is set to His throne. Her eye is single to His illuminating beams. She but looks into the rent, empty sepulcher to know that her Lord is not there, that He is risen, and is going before, and bids her to follow. She will not defend outworn creeds, or childish beliefs, or the past’s failures or mistakes of any kind in the clearer light of to-day. She thanks God for the clear light shining from the same Word in which half blinded eyes groped dimly yesterday, and which a clearer future vision will make to-day seem dim.

His work is onward. The path by which He leads His people may lie through the valley of the shadow of death; but it is the path of life, and there are no stopping-places for life’s pilgrims there. The Master of life has filled no sepulchral caverns, ornamented with bones, for worship or rest. No “sacred crypt” conceals “holy relics” from which the faithful may draw virtue by the way. No creed of iron bands or rock walls hedges her way. Life bursts the bands, and breaks the wall, and passes on to life more abundant.

Nevertheless the Living Church is loyal to her King and His Word. Subtle, solemn philosophy may whisper through his gray beard, and suggest that her course is folly; the reception, the constant inflow of life proves it the wisdom of the Ancient of Days. Youthful Science may shout and smatter of childish error’s way; the following of the eternal Guide-book demonstrates it the way of everlasting truth. Reader, the two ways are before you. Will you have the cold forms, the bloodless stones, the lifeless creeds, the decaying bones of a dead past? or will you have the warm, heart-throbbing, life-giving, ever-expanding truth of God?