Closer to Christ | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 22, 1875

Closer to Christ.

REV. DR. PUNSHON, in closing his grand speech at the Wesleyan Missionary Anniversary, Exeter Hall, London, May 4, carried his hearers to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, when, after an eloquent tribute to fellow-laborers who had fallen at their posts of duty, he said:—

“The sole remedy for all our woes, all our apprehensions, for all our sorrow, is just to come closer to Christ—closer to Christ in personal experience, closer to Christ in daily communion, closer to Christ in perpetual reliance, closer to Christ in importunate prayer, closer to Christ in honest and hearty work! When the good Dr. Alexander, of Princeton, New Jersey, lay a-dying, some one came to him, and quoted a passage for his comfort as he lay half unconscious—‘I know in whom I have believed’. A fire lit up his glazing eye and the old Christian warrior roused himself as for an utterance of latest testimony, and he said to his startled listeners—‘No, I cannot allow even a preposition between me and my Saviour; I know whom I have believed!’ Let us get up to that level; let the great baptized heart of the church get up to that level of intimate, close, faithful union with Christ, and we and our cause are safe! No fear of the confessional then. Assuredly those who will not bear an intervening preposition will never brook an intervening priest. No fear of over-weening sorrow then, for we shall remember that although God buries his workmen, he carries on his work. No fear of relaxed efforts then, for idleness will be seen in its hatefulness as a sin against boundless love. No fear of straightened means and empty exchequers, and niggard doles, and small-hearted liberalities then, for the frost of every heart must melt that is so near the Saviour; and men putting away the large greeds and little givings of their childish days will, like Araunah, ‘as a king give unto the king;’ pouring out their treasures as brave warriors their blood, and giving, or striving to give, in some far-off and reverent manner, after the measure of him, who, that we and the world might live, spared not his only begotten Son!”—Bible Banner.