p. 35 | Subject to Whom? by Christian at Work

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 30, 1879

Subject to Whom?

By Christian at Work

WHEREVER we are asked to indulge in amusement or engage in practices over which Christ is allowed to have no jurisdiction, and which would have been as they are now, even if He had never come into the world, we are asked to recognize the world as supreme, and by yielding we dishonor Him. Wherever we are met with the well-worn maxim, that “When we are at Rome we must do as they do at Rome,” we are at the gate of the world, and if we pass through, we part company with Christ. Wherever, therefore, the world is the acknowledged sovereign, then, even though in the abstract we may think the place indifferent, we should not enter. Gessler’s cap, in the abstract, was nothing at all, and it was a small matter to salute it; but, in the circumstances, the salutation meant allegiance to Austria, and William Tell showed his patriotism by refusing so to honor it. The question is not whether, in other circumstances, the things done there may not be done without sin, but whether, in present circumstances, we should do them, when the doing of them is recognized as homage to the world; and when it is thus put, no true Christian can waver for a moment as to his answer. The believer knows no king but Jesus, and where His royalty is ostentatiously repudiated, no Christian can be a subject. That is a plain principle, easily understood, and not difficult of application.

If we are asked to specify individual things which come under this principle, then we have to answer that we decline to be the keepers of other men’s consciences. The Protestant principle of the right of private judgment involves in it also the responsibility of every man to examine such cases and judge for himself. We give the general law. Let every man apply it for himself. That which we repudiate when we come into the Church is the supremacy of the world, and every time we acknowledge the world as king, we are guilty of treason against the royalty of Christ.

But we cannot understand why any one should seek to haggle and bargain here. For us in reference to all such things there is a golden lesson in the parable of the Hidden Treasure: “The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field.” “For joy thereof.” He talks not of sacrifice, or of giving up. His heart is filled with the gladness of discovery and possession, and that he forgets to think of cost. So will be the man who has a right idea of the value of Christ and His salvation; and they who stand outside the Church asking “What must we give up?” have need to be exhorted first to estimate the value of that which they profess to have received.—Christian at Work.