Hold up the Standard by Nudis Verbis

International Tract and Missionary Society · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Feb 4, 1886

Hold up the Standard.

By Nudis Verbis

CERTAINLY one of the most important duties made obligatory on Christians of this age, is to hold up the standard of duty and obligation in the Christian life; and this he can do only by holy living. It is natural for the world to drift away more and more into the ways of sin and into habits of iniquity; and if Christians do not lift up a standard for the people, and thus set before them the example of holy living, to whom can they look for example in this world?

One of the prevailing sins of this age is the disposition, on the part of some of the ministers and church leaders, to lower the standard of Christian duty and obligation to meet the desires and tastes of the giddy and pleasure-loving element of society. It seems to be as hard for some of us to resist the smiles of the world as to bear its frowns. In many instances, comic entertainments are given in the name of the church of Jesus Christ, which would be much more becoming in the profane and ungodly theater. Ministers sometimes arrange their services, and work into their sermons many comic expressions and ridiculous anecdotes, that they may in this way amuse and attract those who love fun and laughter more than they love Christ. It is this unholy pandering to the tastes of the weak and the ungodly that is taking away from the church much of her true sanctity and her Christian influence. When the church thus reclines her head in the lap of worldliness, instead of winning souls to Christ, she is soon shorn of her spiritual strength, and becomes as other men.—Nudis Verbis, in Methodist Recorder.