Plain Words for Christ, Being a Series of Readings for Working MenDutton, Reginald G.
Religion
Plain Words for Christ, Being a Series of Readings for Working Men
Dutton, Reginald G.
Christian life; Religion
Now let us just consider this for a few moments. To-day, we will say, is
Sunday, God’s holy day! To-day, of all days in the week, God has chosen
to be set apart for His worship. He has given you time to be so
employed. He has given you an open church to go to. He has given you
health and power to go, and yet perhaps you reject all, and never go at
all. Don’t you see that you have taken of things of God, that you have
taken His gift of health, and His gift of Sunday rest--things given that
they might be spent in His service, and in worshipping Him in His
church. And yet you accept these gifts, you take them as the most
natural things in the world, and use the gifts of Almighty God for your
own selfish purposes. And is this honest? Certainly not.
But we will take another and a commoner case, if you like. God has
perhaps given you influence among your fellows, and as you go about
among them, you hear some person spoken against in terms which you know
are not true. And yet you allow the matter to pass, because you are
afraid that if you spoke, you might lose your influence. You forget
that even if you lost it for the time, God, for Whose sake you spoke,
would surely give it back, if He thought it good for you; and besides
this, you would have the consciousness of having done an honest deed,
and of having done it in an honest fearless way.
And so you see that it is quite possible to be a strictly honest man in
the sight of men, and a very dishonest man in the sight of God. And
which, think you, is the best? Which will stand you in good stead at
the day of judgment, your character as it has appeared to men, or as it
appears to God? I think the latter. For in the Bible we are taught that
the sight of God and that of men are two utterly different things, "for
the Lord seeth not as man seeth, for man looketh on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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