EVERY-DAY RELIGION

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 13, 1881

EVERY-DAY RELIGION.

RELIGION is good for nothing one day in the week, unless it is also good for all the seven days. Character, to amount to anything, must be shown alike in all things. There is no true manliness possible in one relation of life on the part of him who is not true and manly in every relation of life. No boy can be a good son to his parents unless he is a good pupil to his teacher and a good playfellow to his companions. No man can be a good friend unless he is a good husband and a good father. No minister can be a good pastor and a good preacher unless he is a good neighbor and a good man. Among the very many wise and timely words to boys spoken by Mr. Thomas Hughes, none are more important than those in which he has told of the teachings on this very subject by Dr. Thomas Arnold, his old teacher at Rugby. He says: "He certainly did teach us—thank God for it—that we could not cut our lives into slices, and say, ‘In this slice your actions are indifferent, and you needn’t trouble your heads about them, one way or another; but in this slice, mind what you are about; they are important’—a pretty muddle we should have been in had he so done.

He taught us that in this wonderful world no boy or man can tell which of his actions is indifferent and which not; that by a thoughtless word or look we may lead astray a brother for whom Christ died. He taught us that life is a whole, made up of actions and thoughts and longings, great and small, mean and ignoble; therefore the only wisdom for boy or man is to bring the whole life into obedience to Him whose world we live in, and who has purchased us with his blood.” Or, as Dr. Bushnell has said of the putting on of Christ as the garment of the needy soul: “There can be no choosing out here of shreds and patches from his divine beauty; you must take the whole suit, else you can not put him on. The garment is seamless, and can not be divided.” It is this great truth—rather than the duty of sinlessness—that our Lord teaches in his injunction, “Be ye therefore perfect”—complete, entire, not one-sided or partial in our Christian life and character—“even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect.”—Sunday School Times.