LIVING BY PLEDGES

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 20, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 42.

LIVING BY PLEDGES.

The following was written for Christian Endeavorers. It is from the New York Voice, penned by John G. Woolley. It is worth consideration by all Christians:—

“As you grow out a Christian character you will outgrow your pledge, and ‘keep’ it as you do the string of spools you used to play with—which, indeed, was so useful in getting your attention to objects and to numbers and in teaching you to ‘notice’ and to count. It will always be a pleasant thing to come across—when you are looking for something else.

“But if you ‘keep’ it as a rosary to worship by, or worship up to, you may be sure your spiritual health is puny. No business man would employ an accountant who carried an abacus.

“The attention shown to the pledge in the Society of Christian Endeavor seems to me out of all proportion to its importance—except upon the theory, more pointedly suggested by our form of government, that we, the members, are hopelessly and permanently infants. At most it is a guide-post, to be forgotten when one knows the road, and never to be carried on the journey.

“I would not be thought to ‘make light’ of it—any more than I would disparage a child’s rattle, which has through the ages been the gavel of throne-coming reason. But if one of my sons should write me from his university, How shall I ‘keep’ my rattle? I should go and have him ‘examined.’

“The pledge is very proper and very useful, but pre-eminently juvenile. It is as if a mother should teach her little boy to dress himself by getting him to promise:—

“I will put on my stockings.

“I will put on my garters.

“I will put on my waist.

“I will put on my knickerbockers.

“I will button them all up.

“I will dress every morning.

“But it would surely be cause for anxiety if he should inquire in after years, How shall I keep my clothes on?

“The pledge is an espousal—not a career. Think of a bridegroom mooning around his own house, asking the neighbors, How shall I love, honor, and cherish, and keep myself unto her as long as we both shall live? The pledge is a muster—not a campaign. Think of a soldier prancing about with a gun, and asking himself or his comrades, How shall I keep my oath of allegiance?

“Does this make you ‘tired’? It does me. Come on, let’s be men. Don’t spend your days counting your pulse or your respiration, or taking your temperature, or analyzing your emotions, or classifying your sensations.

“Think of a man lying in bed, with the sun near the zenith, and trying his eye to see if he winks all right, and working his toes one by one to see if he has been true to his phalanges, when God is thundering through the world, ‘Arise, and stand upon thy feet, and I will show thee what thou shalt do.’ Come on, let us be Christians. ‘Put on Christ’ and wear Him, and ‘He shall give His angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’”