| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 8 |
Page 6 |
In these modern days when Christianity is so widely in favor, and when persecution is rare, we may think that such testing will not be experienced. But never have there been days which more sorely tried believers in Christ than do our own very days. Persecution is not the only trial which tests faith. It is harder to live nobly than to die heroically. It may be easy now to profess Christ, but it is not easy to live the true Christ like life year after year. Prosperity is ofttimes sorer testing than adversity. Many a man who could endure the hardness of war as a good soldier fails utterly in the days of peace. Luxury slays more, both bodies and souls, than poverty. Only the plant that has deep root can live through heat and drought.
We must provide for both summer heats and winter storms, if we would be ready to stand all the tests of life. We may be tried by sorest assaults of tempter, or by the most gentle fascinations of unsuspected evil. We must be ready for either. The only preparation that will avail is a faith fixed upon Christ, a life rooted in him, a purpose which no tempest of temptation can shake. The winds and storms make the well rooted tree stand all the more firmly.
So it is with the Christian life which is truly rooted in Christ. It has its temptations, its trials, its struggles, but they only strengthen it, making it cleave to Christ the more closely and firmly, and grow into all the more beautiful character. But if our faith is feeble, if our religion is one of feeling only instead of principle, if we are ruled by the emotions instead of by the power of an inner life, then we shall not be able to endure the storms, and shall faint and fall under their sweep and strain.
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