LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE by S. S. Times

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1887

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 13, No. 36.

LET YOUR LIGHT SHINE.

By S. S. Times

THERE could hardly be a greater mistake than that of supposing that a Christian gains influence over those who are not Christians, by laxity rather than by strictness, in any matter of questionable or debatable propriety. The world's standard for Christians is higher than Christians' standard for Christians. A Christian is not so likely as a man of the world to judge a Christian severely because of his indulgence in theater-going, or card-playing, or dancing, or wine-drinking, or tobacco-using. Apart from the question whether these things are in themselves right or wrong, it is a fact that men of the world who practice them have a higher respect for a Christian who abjures them, than for a Christian who indulges in them.

Two Christian gentlemen were sitting with a gentleman who was not a professed Christian. The latter and one of the former were smoking, and when a cigar was proffered to and was declined by the third, the Christian smoker expressed regret that his companion did not smoke. "And I honor him the more for that," was the instant response of the man of the world. "His standard is clearly higher than ours."

An army chaplain thought to bring himself on better terms with his fellow-officers by sharing a simple game of whist with them. That course so lost him the respect of officers and men who were not Christians, that his usefulness as a chaplain was at an end.

On an ocean steamer, a clergyman and his young companion were the only total-abstainers at their cabin table. They were repeatedly urged to drink for their own good, and they were spoken of as unwisely strict in their abstinence. But the very men who thus criticised them spoke with a contemptuous sneer of the course, in this line, of another clergyman at an adjoining table, who was supposed to take a glass of wine socially—although he really did not do so.

A young girl who had been brought up to dance and to go to the theater, and whose father seemed to have little interest in religious matters, connected herself with the church. Wishing not to seem a gloomy Christian, she continued in her old habits of social life. Yet her father told a clergyman friend that he should have a higher regard for his daughter's religion, if it kept her from dancing and theater-going.

And these incidents are but illustrative of the great sweep of popular feeling concerning personal habits of self-denial and constraint as a fruit of the Christian life. Whatever may be said in favor of these laxer social customs, it will have to be admitted that men of the world have a lower estimate of the Christian standard which tolerates them.—S. S. Times.