| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 5 |
Page 6 |
You are facing a costly sacrifice. It is a question of loyalty to truth and right. Perhaps it is something which concerns your occupation by which you make the living of your family. If you do right you will give this up. If it were for yourself alone you would not hesitate an instant; but the bread for your wife and children also depends on what you do. Yet you need not question. God is with you.
You are not yet a Christian. You say you never can be a Christian. You hear it said that a Christian is one who loves – loves his fellow men. You think of what it is to love. “Love suffereth long and is kind; love envieth not, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, and seeketh not its own.” You read, further, that love is gentle, forgiving, and patient. As you think of the high ideal of Christian life which Christ sets you grow alarmed. “I never can reach that sort of life,” you say. “I never can love people that way. I never can be forgiving to those who wrong me. There is no use trying – I cannot be a Christian.” But you are not thinking of God. You have left him out in trying to solve the problem. Of course you cannot change your own heart; you cannot transform your own life; you cannot make yourself sweet, gentle, patient, beautiful; you cannot make the ugly things in your disposition, in your temper, in your heart, Christ-like. Oh, no! But do not forget about God. He can make your character lovely with his own loveliness. Do not leave God out.
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