p. 117 | BEGINNING AT ONCE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 2, 1879

BEGINNING AT ONCE.

There is great gain in beginning at once to be a Christian. Besides the time lost that might have been given to God and men, there is the matter of personal development. Just as, in this life, two persons may not get the same amount of pleasure from one of Beethoven’s symphonies, so, in Heaven, one person may find a thousand times more than another, because of developed capacity and fitness to receive. He who stands on the border land the truest in service, and the most highly developed, will be the best fitted to enter in and possess the glory and happiness and beauty.

Since, then, Christianity is the law of human perfection, any lack of allegiance to it is high treason against man. The life of one is inextricably intertwined with the other. Not a selfish thought is entertained, or a selfish wish harbored, but is a wrong against man. Not a selfish pleasure is tasted, or a selfish scheme pursued, but is just so much obstruction placed across the path of human progress. Suppose that during the fearful conflagration in Boston there had been one engine house in the city that contained machinery and appliances capable of immediately stopping the flames; and suppose that some person had possessed and retained the key. While granite walls are crumbling, and fortunes are shriveling in the heat, while men and women and children are struggling to save themselves or their goods, while homes are being ruined, while strong men strive, and women weep, the possessor of the key, the knowledge of which might end it all, goes lounging about, whistling or humming a tune, with hands in his pockets. Is there any plummet of language capable of sinking so low as to measure the depth of his guilt? Not a heart pang, nor a falling tear; not a broken home, nor a ruined fortune; not a lost dollar, nor a lost life, but would equally and justly be chargeable on him. And if the number of persons holding keys were a hundred, or a thousand instead of one, the principle would be the same.

This is but a fair illustration of the case we have in hand. Each man holds in his hand the key to the deliverance from all evil of the sphere which he occupies and controls. Only let each one accept and live out the Christ ideal, and evil would disappear as the mist flees the valleys and hillsides when the sun is up.

The first and pressing duty, then, of every man is to become a practical Christian. You have no right to delay it an hour, for nothing else can be so important. As an individual, for the sake of your own development and highest self-interest, you are bound to the duty of being a Christian. For the sake of the disordered and broken family life of the world, and by the importance of perfected households, you are bound to be a Christian. For the sake of society, and that its infinite wrongs and wounds may be healed, you are bound to be a Christian. Your first political duty, that national and international relations may be perfected, and that the dawn of the world’s future morning may hasten the rising of its star, is to become a Christian. No reason is valid against, and every voice of Heaven and earth combines in, the one ceaseless and urgent utterance, It is your first great duty to become a Christian.

—Savage’s “Christianity the Science of Manhood.”