Editorial by Frederick M. Wilcox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 16, 1914

Editorial

By Frederick M. Wilcox

Everyday Religion; Some Personal Questions

DEAR reader, are you a Christian? I do not ask if you have been baptized and joined the church. You may have done this, and still not be a true follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. You may be an officer in the church; you may stand every Sabbath before a class of boys and girls, seeking to instruct them in the ways of righteousness; you may be a Bible worker, going from door to door and instructing the people in this precious truth; you may be a distributor of gospel-filled literature; you may be even a minister of the gospel; but though you are any one or all of these, this of itself does not constitute you a Christian.

The vital question is, Does your daily life measure up to the standard of Christ's character? Are you working with an eye single to the glory of God? Does your love for God and your love for souls prompt your service? What kind of life do you live in your home? Do you growl because your meals are late? because the baby keeps you awake nights? Do you answer the fretfulness of your children with impatient words? Do you gossip about your neighbors? Do you find fault with God and with his people? Do you fail to keep your promises, neglect your debts, and prevaricate and falsify in your efforts to avoid censure? If you habitually do these things, you do not know the power of a truly consecrated life.

Your profession may be as high as heaven. You may occupy some official position and receive honor of the world or of your brethren, and still be nothing in God's sight. All this does not make up for the lack of that practical Christian experience which really constitutes the foundation of all that you may hope to achieve for God and for your fellows. The Jews of old trusted to outward form for salvation. They felt that in observing with scrupulous regard the Sabbath of the Lord, in the payment of tithe to the smallest minutia of their income, they constituted themselves the true children of Abraham. But our Saviour did not so view their experience. He charged them with omitting the weightier matters of the law, and these he declared to be the exercise of "judgment, mercy, and faith." "These," he says, "ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone."

Will it be that we shall find at last that our religion after all has consisted of a form, a pretense, an outward cloak? that while we have been careful to observe outward forms, while in our zeal for God, like the Jews of old, we compass sea and land to bring men to the gospel of Christ, we are neglecting in our living, practical experience the cultivation of those qualities of heart and mind which above everything else constitute us Christlike? These come first. These are vital, and with the doing of them the outward forms will not be neglected. The man who in his own consciousness comes to know God, who exemplifies before his own family and his own neighborhood the principles of the government of heaven, O, that man's influence will be carried by the angels of God to earth's remotest bounds! It will find its expression in Christian service, in gifts to the treasury of God, and in the performance of every good work.

Of all kinds of deception self-deception is the most terrible. May God forbid that we shall be self-deceived; that we shall go on trusting we are right, and hoping we are right, when in the consciousness of our own hearts, if we but stop to think, we know that we are far from God. Let us be true to God, true to the interests of our own souls, and true to our fellow men. F. M. W.