Presumption | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 16, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 39.

Presumption.

PRESUMPTION is one of the commonest and yet one of the most perilous of human frailties. Marshal Canrobert, whose fame as a military genius has long been familiar to the world, affords a typical example of this kind of folly. Here are his words: "I am a Christian, sir; I am a Catholic, though not a very Roman one, and I do not often practice my religion. Still, for all that, when I am summoned to quit the scene, I shall ask God to sign my marching orders."

Precisely. That is exactly what thousands of presumptuous mortals are intending to do. They don't "practice" any religion, nor do they want to. Such a thing would be against their tastes, their principles, their love of the world and its shams, their habits of lazy and sinful indulgence, in short, against their selfish and unrestrained worship of mammon. Nevertheless they secretly or openly expect, just as the breath is leaving the body, to get "God to sign their marching orders" for a heavenly campaign of immaculate righteousness and incomparable glory! With no religion to speak of here, and not being willing now to serve God, they somehow in some mysterious way hope to become on a sudden eternally religious, and to find that beyond the grave God will reward them with an everlasting crown, as if they had been honoring and obeying him all their lives. Verily the human heart is above all things deceitful and desperately—presumptuous.—Christian at Work.