Being Right or Doing Right.
By Sunday School Times
No man can determine what he is except through what he does. He can not set up for his ideal a certain kind of man, then persistently do things that are utterly out of accord with that ideal, and expect to become the kind of man that his ideal represents. For it is his doing that determines his being. Hence it is that the Bible says little or nothing about what we ought to be, except in terms that we can translate into action. It would be a discouraging book if it told us chiefly what we ought to be, and left us to decide for ourselves what we ought to do. Yet a prominent English preacher actually makes the following statement—or misstatement: "In the manifesto of the King not a single blessing is pronounced upon . . . doing. All the blessings are upon being." From Matthew to Revelation, the New Testament controverts this error, and is crowded with promises of blessing upon those who do what they ought to do.6Jesus acknowledges as His brother and His sister those who "do the will of My Father;" He says, "Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing;" He pronounces wise "every one therefore that heareth these words of Mine, and doeth them;" and in the last chapter of the Apocalypse, John is told, "Blessed is he that keepeth the words of the prophecy of this book." Trying to be is a discouraging, self-centered, hopeless task. Our only hope lies in turning from all thoughts of what we are, or even of what we may become, and in doing, with all our might, the will of the Master. He will see to it, then, that we are what we ought to be.—Sunday School Times.