Article August 19, 1905 Issue

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with contributions from Phillip S. Moxom

To be a follower of Christ is a very different thing from acquiescence in the present order of society, conformity to the standards of our time. No man is burned at the stake to-day for his faith, nor is any man driven into the desert in order that he may keep himself pure; but in the twentieth as in the first century, he who follows Christ must separate himself in aim and practice from the society about him. For him, as for the earliest lover of the Christ, there must be a decisive and dominating choice between the aims and standards of his age and the aims and standards of the Christ. The outward conditions have changed, but the inward necessity is as great as ever; for no man can belong wholly to the world of his day and to the Christ of centuries, the God of the eternities. No outward dress marks the lover of the Christ; no unescapable necessity of protest against the entire social order separates him from his fellows; there is no sharply defined path of outward non-conformity in which he must walk; but let no man lull his conscience and silence its questions by mere acceptance of conventional Christian standards, unresistingly yielding to the external Christian movement of his time. For every real follower of the Master there is appointed the silence and solitude of the desert, the testing of temptation, the sharp and final detachment from widely accepted aims and ideals, the consecration to the principles and spirit of one who came not to accept but to uplift, to change, to put the heavenly in place of the earthly in the hearts of men.

The Outlook.

There is also another way of looking at life which, in an even more satisfactory way than the hope of the future, will make life seem well worth living, and it is just as Scriptural as that. This is the life which is lived in continual and conscious fellowship with God. To move through this world always in touch with the forces which move the world and shape the lives of men; to be in intimate contact with the Mind which directs and watches over the complete courses of the universe; to work always in harmony with the plan which is certain to arrive at a successful consummation; to be sure that every step is in advance, that every act is effective, that every wish is in line with the Great Will, that every decision is right, that every purpose is parallel with the progress of things, that every labor is aided by unseen forces, that every thought is prompted by the Perfect Mind; in fine, to feel that the life we now live is molded and aided and made certainly successful in a perfect sense; this is to live a life which is worth living and which we will know every day and every moment to be worth living.—The Watchman.

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