Following Christ by Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 12, 1861

Following Christ.

By Cuyler

"FOLLOW me!" This is the Christian's marching orders. And whosoever takes not up his cross and follows the commands of Jesus, cannot claim to be a true disciple.

1. And the very first thing that is requisite in following Christ is to have a new heart. This takes a man back to the "wicket-gate" of the way of life—conversion. Stop a moment, my reader! right here. Settle this question first. Have you a new heart attuned to the love of Christ? You cannot take the first step in a life of holy and happy obedience until your affections have been given to the Saviour. The carnal heart is wholly and forever as intensely hostile to Christ as is the most tyrannical slave-driver hostile to Fremont's proclamation of liberty. The carnal heart weaves no crown of glory for the lowly Jesus; it plats for him only a crown of thorns. It bows not to his scepter; but only holds out to him a reed of mockery. It takes up no cross for him; rather does it nail him to the cross, and by every willful sin crucifies afresh the Lord of glory.

But when the converting power of the Holy Spirit has come to you in answer to prayer, and changed and sweetened and purified your affections, then springs up a deep, genuine love of Jesus. This is the prime essential to a right noble and godly life. In fact, love to Christ is essential Christianity. It is more than a mere admission of his divinity—more than an admiration of his sublime character—more than a cold assent to his claims. It involves a faith in him so deep, an attachment to him so real, and a devotion to him so thorough, that it amounts to a new principle in the heart. Attachment to Jesus Christ, implanted in the soul by the Holy Spirit, is the groundwork, and the only possible ground-work, of a beautiful and effective Christian character. The deeper this love, the deeper the piety. The stronger this love, the greater will be the readiness to make costly sacrifices for his cause.

Does not my reader remember the famous political campaign of 1844, which furnished such wonderful instances of romantic devotion to the idolized orator of Kentucky? Time, talent, gold, were all laid at his feet. The counting-room and the work-shop, the loom and the anvil, harvest-fields and law-books, all appealed to their owners in vain. Their ears were deaf but to their leader's call. For him they journeyed afar to mighty gatherings; for him they mustered vast processions—wore his name on their breasts and floated it from their house-tops. And when the long, arduous struggle ended in dark disaster, we saw strong men weep aloud, and like Judea's stricken mothers they "refused to be comforted." There are men in this country who will carry down that political sorrow to their graves. To-day they worship a tomb under the oaks of Ashland with more veneration than they feel for any living statesman.

Now that is what we mean by devotion to a leader. Where the heart-loyalty is strong, there is but little difficulty in making the external manifestation. Paul found it easy to cry out, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" when the newly implanted love of the Crucified leaped into a blaze on the altar of his heart. Peter girds his fisher coat about him, and impatiently plunges into the sea, when he sees his risen Master on the strand. Patmos with Christ is a sunnier spot to the beloved disciple than Cæsar's throne would have been without Christ. For these were the men who "followed the LAMB whithersoever he goeth," and love was the vinculum that bound them to the Captain of their salvation.

2. A good definition of serviceable piety would be—following Christ without a question and without a murmur. Does the pierced hand point us up the Hill of Difficulty? Then up the steep acclivity let us go, even though we fall from running to walking, and from walking to clambering on the knees. Does he bid us follow him into the Vale of Humiliation? Then welcome be reproach for the sake of one who entered Gethsemane for us. The cost of the sacrifice is never to be counted. He that loveth father or mother, houses or lands, more than Christ, is not worthy of him.

One day, duty lays his hand of impressment on the shoulder of a gifted young man or woman, and commands them to a foreign field. Christ says, "Yonder is thy sickle waiting for the reaper; yonder is the harvest waiting for the garner. No place for thee in these parts; thy place is beside the Ganges, or on the torrid sands of Africa." Following Christ makes such men missionaries. John Howard was but searching for the foot-prints of Christ in the dismal vaults of prisons and of dungeons. David Brainerd found them amid the forests wild—and Henry Martyn was but treading them when he explored the jungles of India and the sand-plains of Persia.

A man need not cross oceans either to follow Christ. Whenever the owner of a winning tongue turns away from the allurements of the bar or the rostrum for the privilege of preaching salvation to the dwellers in some remote unnoticed parish, he is following Christ. Whenever a layman determines not to sleep away his Sabbath afternoons on his sofa or over his newspaper, but go out after the ignorant squalid waifs of the alley and the tenement-house, what is he but following his Master, who if on earth would delight in the mission-school more than in the cathedral? Whenever a sweet daughter of the church decides that instead of passing an idle hour in pulling silver bells on marble doorsteps, she will climb to the attics where wretched poverty is groaning on its sick-bed, she is surely following Him who went about doing good. Whenever you see a heroic statesman standing up in his high place for justice, truth, and liberty, you see one (as far as that noble act is concerned) who obeys Christ rather than man. And on the other hand, when a professing Christian is seduced into scenes of frivolity and folly, or into the cabals of intrigue and chicanery, then he or she has turned squarely away from their Master and their Model. For where Christ would not go—if on earth—no Christian ought to go. Would it not be a strange place to look for the Saviour in the ball-room or the theater, at the card-table or the convivial party, in the caucus where honor is sold and righteousness bartered for "the spoils?"

Blessed is the man who never sets his foot in any path of conduct without looking carefully for the way-marks of his Master, and consulting his guide-book! Through some lowly doors, where pride must stoop low to enter, he may be called to pass. Over thorny paths he may be made to tread. Up more than one mount of sacrifice, bearing heavy crosses, he may be summoned. But so that Christ be the leader, he may not be afraid to follow. And in heaven it will still be his joy and his glory to "follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth." There the "Lamb who is in the midst of the throne shall feed him, and lead him unto living fountains of waters."

"Our knowledge of that life is small, The eye of faith is dim; But 'tis enough that Christ is there, And we shall be like him."—Cuyler.