p. 66 | What is Christianity ?

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 27, 1863

What is Christianity ?

“THIS people draweth near to me with their mouth, and honereth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.”—Bible.

“Every stoic was a stoic; but among Christians where is the Christian?”—Emerson.

The broad principle of Christianity, as exemplified in the life and teachings of Christ, is simply that the religious truth of man is better than his worldly comfort. That it is the duty of man to set himself, with all the might God has given him to fulfill what he believes to be the law of God. That it is the duty, in doing this, to cast aside, if necessary, father and mother, and all earthly ties; he must be willing to throw away all the allurements of the world, the pomp of station, and the luxuries of wealth; to retire away from the haunts of the profane, and dwell in hunger, cold, and danger ; must be willing to brave all peril, suffer all persecution, be beaten, and tortured, and ridiculed, and spit upon, and even be slaughtered with all the inhumanities man can inflict, rather than to be false to the laws of God, rather than to succumb to the allurements of the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Christianity is a crucifixion

of the animal of our nature for the good of the spiritual of our nature. Said Jesus, as he walked to Emmaus with the two disciples, after his crucifixion; “Ought not Christ so to have suffered, that he might enter into his glory?” And ought not Christians to be willing to crucify their animal besetments, that they, too, may be accounted worthy to be partakers with Christ of the heavenly glory ?

Christianity teaches man that he has a soul to be saved; to be saved from the corruptions of the flesh, and to be presented, pure and holy, and without blemish, at the throne of God. “But, alas!” cries out the despairing, sinful, struggling soul, “Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” The Lord responds: “My grace is sufficient for thee: I died that you might live. By faith consider your body as dead with mine, that there be no longer any let or hindrance to the life of the spirit within.”

Christianity teaches man that he should “work while the day lasts.” He is taught at all times and in all seasons, to have this before him; that every opportunity passed by is chronicled against him; every light, unmeaning word, and even thought, recorded. He is taught that every man, rich or poor, is his brother, and, by natural birth, as good, and as much God’s son, as he ; that all pride toward his fellow man is sinful ; that to allow one human being to want and to be in misery, while he, by denying himself, can save or solace him, is a crime not hereafter to be overlooked. He is taught the immense, the awful, scarcely-bearable responsibility of riches; that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to be saved; that it is not the amount a man gives that is to be counted, but how far it is a personal deprivation of comfort and ease to the giver; that suffering man has a claim upon his rich brother, even to the extent that he should “sell all that he hath and give it to the poor.”

Christianity teaches us that all men are alike in the eye of God; that he should be kindly affectionate one to another; that we should bear one another's burdens—weep with those that weep, and mourn with those that mourn.

But man has a duty to do to himself as well as to others. His life should be one proud, unwavering effort to act in conformity with Conscience. Deep in the heart of man is placed the voice of God to guide him. When he passes on to virtue, this inner voice assists him and applauds : when he rushes into vice, it struggles to arrest him. Neglect this monitor, and it retires within itself; it becomes fainter, till it is heard no more, and the bark of life floats rudderless on a sea of strife. Listen to its admonitions, be guided by its counsel, and it enlarges with the enlarging intellect, and however high we may mount, it is still far above us, shedding light upon the mazy wilderness, and becoming the path to God. The following of Conscience, with the qualities we have named in full exercise, never has been, and never can be, an easy or a gentle task. A sterner and a harder life is more in keeping with the idea of a heavenly crusade, wherein, by battling, we must win ourselves victory and a home.

There is a time in the life of such as are led to join that heavenly crusade, when the faith of boyhood falls away, and the fair sunshine of childish trust has to undergo the dark eclipse of doubt, and when, from the shivered fragments which lie around him, the young crusader has had, amid tears and uncertainties, and huge heart-bursting appeals to God for light and assistance, to shape for himself a new belief. He may reconstruct that in which he was nurtured, or he may not. But such a crisis is necessary to the manliness of his being, that his faith, his chief being here below, be not received as a bequest, second hand, but be verily and indeed his own. When that era is safely ended, sluggish idleness must not even then ensue. There must be no looking back. A professed faith is a mockery, if it be not acted on in life. In the battle of life on which he now enters, there are first the outer sensuous temptations to oppose and conquer; hot desires, foaming and raging, which must be kept in control; there is, also, a tendency to ease and luxurious enjoyment, preying upon and striving to deaden the sense of duty which leads to self-denial and active labor. Then, when all is accomplished in that quarter, and the allurements and dangers of the world of sense are

trodden under foot, there follows a fiercer conflict within the soul itself—the disappointment and humiliation of beholding incessantly a perfect ideal, and achieving but an imperfect reality; the path of duty lying so clear and manifest before us, and the constantly recurring departure from that path; the soaring upward into the sunny regions of a holy life, and then suddenly, in the very midst of our triumph, falling back into the depths of abasement, with nothing left for us to re-arise and struggle onward again undauntedly, and, in the end, only purchase victory by death.

Such is the life of man when he casts aside falsehood, and poises himself on the eternal truths of his nature. The vocabulary of every-day life has many epithets for such men; they are “visionaries;” “enthusiasts,” “fanatics;” and worldly wisdom sees nothing in it, save insanity, that should be, at any cost, put down. But put down it never can be; for he who is conscious of following out what the voice of God within him dictates, can afford to smile at the expletives of the shallow world.—Franklin Almanac.