p. 739 | A LIKENESS by C. P. Bollman

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 8, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 47.

A LIKENESS.

By C. P. Bollman

IN reading an article a few days since entitled, "How Mongolians Pray," I was impressed with the thought that after all human nature is much the same everywhere, and heathen and professed Christians are very much alike in this, at least, that they each choose their own way rather than God's way. After speaking of praying barrels, praying wheels, clock-work praying wheels, praying flags, etc., etc., the writer says:—

“The whole thing would be laughable were it not too serious a matter by far for laughter. The deluded worshipers really believe that this charm repeating, and wheel turning, and flag fluttering, makes merit which cancels sin. They live in this belief, and they die with this lie in their right hand. This idea, too, is the cause of much sin. Believing as he does that this merit cancels sin, a Mongol aims not at leaving sin and being holy, but at providing for plenty of merit.”

It is merit that cancels sin; not the merit of saying long and numerous prayers, however, but the merit of the Lord Jesus Christ, received by humble faith in his atoning sacrifice. But the faith that would appropriate this merit must be a faith that works. The apostle James says, "Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone." And again, "But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?" The Mongol trusts wholly for merit to a certain class of works; the misguided Christian makes an equally fatal mistake by trusting wholly to faith without corresponding works.

We know that faith is essential, and that "God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

But we know also that the first strain of the song of the angels on the plains of Bethlehem was, "Glory to God;" the second was, "On earth, peace, good-will toward men." The work of redemption is complete only when all that was lost in Adam is restored in Christ, and this includes not only a right to the paradise of God, but the ability and the disposition to obey God perfectly, as our first parents did before the fall, and as they might have continued to do had they not listened to the voice of the tempter. Indeed, so important is this thought that the apostle Paul speaks of it in one place as though it were the sole object of Christ's coming to this earth; he says: "For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and by a sacrifice for sin [margin], condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

How few, comparatively, there are who ever look at the matter in this light, and so thousands upon thousands in Christian lands are blindly trusting to a dead faith in Christ, which works little or no reformation in the life, and which, instead of glorifying God, brings dishonor upon his cause and name. A faith that does not lead its possessor to a cheerful, willing obedience to all of God's requirements is no better than the senseless mummeries of those who expect to acquire merit by the multitude of prayers which they recite, or which they are supposed to recite, by carrying a flag or turning a wheel.

C. P. BOLLMAN.