Christianity and Feeling
By H. W. Cottrell
A Soul Experience Not a Mere State of Feeling — The Tint of the Apple or Peach as Related to Its Flavor an Object-Lesson to Professing Christians
CHRISTIANITY is an experience wrought out with one's self and the Lord. It is good for the one who possesses it, and also good in a living degree for those with whom he associates, provided he is in possession of the genuine article. True character is often counterfeited. A truthful person is counterfeited. An honest man is counterfeited. Government notes are counterfeited. Repentance has its counterfeit. Conversion has its counterfeit. CHRISTIAN METHODS COUNTERFEITED
The method of making men Christians is counterfeited nowadays. Christ's method or plan was, and still is, to love, persuade, and impel. The modern yet ancient man-made plan is to compel by civil law, fines, imprisonments, police force, and if necessary at the point of the bayonet, as is evidenced by the Dark Ages. Christianity is soul experience, and not a state of feeling brought upon one as the result of surroundings. Feeling is not Christianity. A Christian may feel happy or he may feel sad. Either of these conditions may be brought to him through circumstances; but whether he feels happy or sad, he is a Christian. Christianity is a life condition, not feeling. "How do you feel?" This is a query often put to Christians. The reply to the query whether one is feeling well or not well, is of no consequence, because feeling is not fact. "How are you?" The Christian can truthfully say: "I am at peace with God. All is well." Blessed experience! No longer a theory of feeling which serves to deceive! Feeling sometimes places one at the top of the ladder, and when the environment changes that brought to him the emotion or feeling, he finds himself on the lowest round of the ladder if on the ladder at all. LIKE TINT OF APPLE OR PEACH
I may say, by way of illustration, that feeling is to Christianity as the tint or color is to peach or apple. The quality of the fruit is first found to be in the seed. Then it enters the trunk, the bud, the growing, green, forming fruit. Then as it ripens, God perchance tints it. Possibly the shade of color extends no deeper than the skin. This may be removed, but the quality will remain. The fruit does not lose its quality when, because of local conditions, the color or tint God placed upon it through nature is removed by some one who desires to eat the fruit. As the tint is to the peach, so is feeling to Christianity. The quality of Christianity, like that of the fruit, is first found in the seed — Christ. The quality is next seen in the individual as he is "growing in grace." He ripens through experience. The Christ who changes sinners to Christians, tints them with feelings of joy and gratitude. As one with a knife may remove the tint from the fruit with the skin, but can not thus134remove the quality, so the severe trial of one's faith may remove feeling, but it can not remove Christian quality. Professed Christianity, composed of sentiment, emotion, feeling, is flavorless when the feeling is, for any cause, extracted therefrom. Reader, let us permit Christ — the seed — to abide in both you and me.