p. 26 | The Grace that Pinches by T. L. Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 9, 1872

The Grace that Pinches.

By T. L. Cuyler

The prevailing sin of the day is self-indulgence. It is eating like a canker into the life of many of our churches. It leaves Christ’s ministers to address empty pews on unpleasant Sabbaths. It robs Christ’s treasury to keep up a showy “turn-out.” If it hangs a bough of profession over on the church-side of the dividing wall, yet its roots are deep down in the soil of the world. It is often ready to deny Christ, but seldom ready to deny self.

The most unpopular doctrine to preach in these times, and the hardest one to practice, is the old-fashioned apostolic doctrine of self-denial. This is the grace that pinches. The daily battle of Christian principle is with that artful, subtle, greedy sinner, self. And the highest victory of our religion is to follow Jesus over the rugged path of self-denial. This is mainly to be done in the little every-day acts of life. The great occasions that demand sublime sacrifice are few and rare.

The Christian who suppresses a jest or a witticism, because it would burlesque his religion, practices self-denial. When he speaks out a bold but unpopular word for the right, in “fashionable society,” he is really taking up a cross for his Master. All genuine acts of philanthropy are born of the noble principle to deny self, and to honor Christ in the persons of those for whom Christ suffered.

The mission-school teacher who sallies off in the driving storm to carry his gospel-loaf to a group of hungry children, is an example of this. “Why should I sit by the warm fire on my sofa to-day? Christ will look for me among my class.” The seamstress who drops her hard-earned dollar into the Memorial Fund collection is really enthroning her Saviour above herself. Those educated Northern girls who went South to teach ragged freedmen their alphabet and the Bible are truer ladies in God’s sight than all the self-pampering belles, who air their fineries on Fifth or Wabash Avenue.

We can not emphasize too strongly this grace which pinches selfishness. I care not how orthodox is a man’s creed, or how eloquent may be his prayers in public, if he has never learned to say, “No,” to the demands of fashion, and pride, and luxury, he is but a sorry specimen of the Christ man.

What a touching lesson of self-denial we behold in every crutch and in every “empty sleeve” of those heroes in blue whom we yet meet on all our public thoroughfares! These men counted not their limbs dear, if even the nation might be saved, and freedom might triumph. Yet there are thousands of professed Christians who are unwilling to deny themselves the paltry gratification of a glass of wine or ale in order to help the sentiment of total abstinence to become popular, or to aid in saving the “weak brother who stumbleth.” They know they are setting a bad example when they use or offer the poison-cup. They know that they are throwing their influence on the side of the tipplers.

Yet because it is “genteel” to partake of wine or punch, they do not hesitate to “take a drop” in the social circle. Perhaps they thrust the decanter before some weak, temptable friend to his everlasting damnation! If the drunkard shall “not inherit the kingdom of Heaven,” what right has a professed Christian to ask to be admitted to Heaven if he has helped to make a drunkard of his neighbor? I fear that God will say to the “pious” tempter, “That man’s blood will I require at thy hands.” Paul acted with a truer spirit of Christ when he uttered the noble precept, “It is good not to drink wine whereby my brother stumbleth.”

Brethren, let us pray for the grace that pinches. If it goes against the grain,” all the better. If it wounds our pride, so much the better. If it makes us look “singular,” let us remember that we are commanded to be a “peculiar people,” and not to look like the votaries of Satan. Brave old Dr. Wisner, was once the most singular man in the village of Ithaca. He dared to stand alone. He was ever ready to testify on the Lord’s side, on which he had planted himself so valiantly.

Oh! for a new baptism of self-denial! Oh! for a new training in that lesson which our dying Master taught us, which apostles and martyrs echoed from the prison cells and kindled stakes, the sublime lesson that,

“Not to ourselves alone, Not to the flesh we’ll live, Not to the world henceforth shall we Our strength and being give! “No longer to be our life A selfish thing, or vain, For us, even here, to live be Christ For us to die is gain!”

T. L. Cuyler in the Interior.