p. 11 | MORNING-CLOUD RELIGION by Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1862

MORNING-CLOUD RELIGION.

By Cuyler

I HAVE stood in a Swiss valley at the time of sunrise, and seen the mountain-peak above me crowned with a beautiful white coronal. As the first sunlight strikes it, the cloud of morning incense is tipped with rosy fire. One moment it is fleecy white. Then it is glowing pink—then burnished gold like the robe of the seraphim. Then—gone for ever! Before we could call out our companions to behold the beautiful spectacle, the glory-cloud was dissolved into empty air. And the icy mountain-top stood out sharp and bare against the eastern sky.

Turning from the rocky peaks of jasper toward the valley about us, lo! the grass is a floor of diamonds. The dewdrops are all jewels. On the hedges hang the necklaces of pearl—over the fields are sown the living sapphires. We go in reluctantly to our morning meal; we come out again, and where is the jewelry? Gone for ever in the hot rays of the conquering sun. The mountain-top is bare; the earth is dry. The "morning cloud and the early dew" are both among the things that were. Opening our Bible and turning to the book of Hosea, we find these very words employed to describe a certain sort of showy but short-lived religion.

As nearly every church may contain more or less members whose religion is no more real and abiding than the vapor on the mountain-top, it is worth while to inquire the causes, and the cure, of transient piety. May we not find in one or all of the three following reasons the answer to this inquiry?

I. The convicted soul, in its first awakening, was not brought to a genuine loathing and abandonment of known sin. In other words, there was no Bible-repentance. The impressions of many awakened persons are merely terror. They feel the danger of sin, but not its abominable filthiness. They quake at the sight of God as a punisher, but do not quake at their own guiltiness. They see that there is a hell that follows after their sins, but do not see that there is a hell too in their sins. Of course such persons do not abandon sin thoroughly or seek after a radical change of heart. And without "grief and hatred of sin" there can be no Bible-repentance. A religion that began in mere spasmodic terror is likely to end as it began. For a man who has not abandoned his favorite sins, his petted and his profitable sins, cannot claim to be a genuine enduring Christian.

II. The awakened soul when troubled by legal terrors did not betake itself to Christ. Sensibly diseased, it compounded quack remedies for itself. Christ was not sought after—believed on—and heartily embraced. There was no love of Jesus awakened as a master-passion with the man. Had the soul reached Christ, it were safe. For there are few apostasies from Calvary. Believers hold to the cross, because the cross holds them.

III. A third cause of morning-cloud religion is the attempt to live on promises instead of performances. The man trusts in resolutions, and never reaches actual downright doing of duty. He means to be—hopes to be—promises to be actively obedient to Christ,—but never does one deed or makes one sacrifice for him. On the day when the covenant of church-membership is made, the young novice is fluent in promises for his future life. He will serve God to-morrow. The morrow comes and goes, and sees not one stroke of thorough service done, not one sin crucified, not a single labor of charity undertaken. Before a week has rolled by, the man's religion has begun to evaporate, and in a year there is nothing left but a name on the church-register.

How many a brilliant beginning have we seen that so soon ended in nothingness! For a brief time the "cloud" was beautiful. As it hung in prominence before our eyes, the rays of hope painted it with a ruddy glow. Christian friends hailed it as a cloud of promise. Praying souls—who had longed for just such appearances of piety in the man—grew thankful that their prayers were receiving a fulfillment.

But presently it grew thinner. It began to scatter into looseness; then into emptiness. It was not a shower-cloud of spiritual blessings like the life of an Oberlin, a Raikes, a Haldane, a Whitfield, or a Harlan Page. But only vapor! Beautiful vapor for a little time, and then vanishing away!

In every church there may be just such professors. They are not backsliders, for they never had any genuine grace to lapse from. Are they hypocrites? Perhaps not; for that is a harsh word, and implies cold-blooded deception and falsehood. These unhappy persons never intended to deceive others; they were simply deceived in themselves. They entered the church from an entirely mistaken view of their own condition. Perhaps they were the subjects—or rather the victims—of a spurious religious excitement. Or, under the foolish persuasion of injudicious friends, were hurried into church engagements. Their vows are no longer regarded. Their professions no longer deceive. A galling yoke of bondage is their church-membership now, when it ought to be the symbol and the seal of a happy wedded union to Jesus Christ.

What is the duty of such persons? To leave the church at once? I do not think so. Shall they abandon the table of the Lord? I think not. Let them rather seek anew the Lord of the table. Let them come back to Christ with genuine contrition for their sin, and honest acknowledgment of their sad mistake. Let them "repent and do their first works." Wiser from the bitter experience of their own failures, let them begin afresh and begin aright. We never knew a false professor saved by leaving the church. But we have known of scores who were saved in it by timely repentance and faith in Christ. Candid reader! If you have a false hope, throw it away and seek a better. So shall your "goodness" be not merely a morning vapor, but a cloud of blessings through life's long useful day, and at sunset it shall burn with the golden glories reflected from the better world.