The Cedar Christian

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 7, 1861

The Cedar Christian.

STROLLING one bright summer morning over the velvet carpet of "Chatsworth Park," we came suddenly upon a cedar of Lebanon! It was the first and only one we ever saw; our first impulse was to uncover our head and make obeisance to this monarch in exile, this lone representative of the most regal family of trees upon the globe. Every bough was laden with glorious association to us. Broad, gnarled, severe, rough old tree as it was, yet it blossomed with poetry, and hung golden with heavenly teachings. As we gazed through our tears at the exiled sovereign, the voice of the Psalmist was in our ears—"The righteous shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon."

With that hardy veteran of Chatsworth in our mind's eye, let us say a word about the style of cedar Christians that we need in our day. Of pliant, willowy church-members—of brash and brittle basswood professors—of pretentious, fashion-following, bay-tree Christians, we have quite too many. Give us more cedars for the pulpit, for the deacon's seat, and for the pews.

And the first quality of the cedar is that it grows. It is a live tree. Where there is hearty life there must be growth. And it is the lamentable lack of inward godliness that makes the stunted professor. There is not vitalizing sap enough in his heart roots to reach up into the boughs of his outward conduct. There is not vigor enough in the trunk of his character to stand erect. No answering showers brought down by fervent prayer cleanse the dust of worldliness from his yellow sicklied leaves. There he is—just as he was "set out" in the church a score of years ago, no larger, no broader, no brighter in graces than he was then; the caterpillars of lust having spun their unsightly webs all over his branches. He has not grown an ell in any one Bible trait. He has not yielded one single fruit of the Spirit. He is a cumberer of the ground—in the way of a better man—all the while drinking up God's pure air and water, and yet fulfilling Satan's purpose. Not of such a prayer-neglecting professor, not of such a time-serving, money-loving, fashion-worshiping professor, could we honestly say, "He grows like a cedar in Lebanon."

But the cedar not only grows; it has a peculiar style of growth which God's people may well imitate. It grows through all weathers. It is a hardy tree, or else it could not live a month in the Arctic climate of Lebanon's sky-piercing summits. Delicate plants might thrive on the warm lap of southern exposures, but not among the rifts of whirling snows, or where the steel-like air gleams under the silent moon. Sudden hurricanes may twist off the gorgeous magnolias of the vale, or crack the brittle bay-tree, but let the gale rage ever so fiercely on Lebanon's blustering heights, let the snow-squadrons join battle in the hurtled air, the cedar tosses the tempest from its elastic bows, and stands like the everlasting mountain under it. In God's church there are to be found just such lignumvitæ characters—storm-proof, gold-proof, temptation-proof. What a plantation of such cedars were the early apostles! What a coronet of stalwart storm-defyers graced the summit of God's Zion in Reformation days! Zwingle of Switzerland—John Knox, who never feared the face of man—burly Latimer, who marched singing to Smithfield's kindled stake—John Huss, gazing up into the open heavens from the suffocating smoke and flame which are wrapping his tortured limbs—all these were cedars through whose branches the very gales of persecution made glorious music.

Here and there is such a cedar Christian discoverable in our century. They never bend. They never break. They never compromise. To such Christians, worldliness cometh, and smooth-tongued expediency cometh, and sensual pleasure cometh, and slavery cometh, but "findeth nothing in them." Popular hurricanes come down amain upon them, smiting a Hopkins, a Pierpont, or a Dudley Tyng in the pulpit—smiting a Wilberforce, a Jay or an Adams in the legislative hall—smiting a Jonathan Edwards in his quiet study—a missionary Lyman in his lonely toils—a Neal in his labors for the drunkard, and a Jonas King in his labors for the besotted bigots of Athens. But the cedar of principle proved an overmatch for the blasts of selfishness, spite or superstition. Persecution only made the roots of resolution strike the deeper, and the trunk of testimony stand the firmer.

The greatest peril to such Christians as read these lines will not come in the form of persecution; but rather from those insidious worms that gnaw at the very heart of gospel piety. Secret influences are the most fatal in the every-day life of the every-day, unconspicuous professor. There is a whole colony of busy insects that will try the quality of a believer's timber. And when the community is startled by the spiritual defalcation of some prominent man in the church or in a religious society, it is only the crack of a beam or a pillar that was worm-eaten by secret sin long before. He only is a cedar of Christ's training and polishing who is sound to the very core. For the pride of Lebanon was not more famous for its vigor or its hardiness than for its solidity of wood. It knew no decay. It afforded asylum to no stealthy insect turning its aromatic wood into dust and ashes. Therefore did Israel's royal temple-builder select it for the most conspicuous and important portions of the edifice on mount Moriah. With its fine grain, its high polish, and delightful fragrance, every lintel and every door-post was at once a strength and an ornament to the temple of the living God. So stands the faithful, fearless minister of Christ, the incorruptible Christian patriot, the unflinching testimony bearer of the truth as it is in Jesus. They bid defiance to the worm of sin while they live, and to the worm of calumny when they are dead.