Evening, April 26
Go To Morning Reading
“Blessed is he that watcheth.”
Revelation 16:15
“We die daily,” said the apostle. This was the life of the early Christians; they
went everywhere with their lives in their hands. We are not in this
day called to pass through the same fearful persecutions: if we were,
the Lord would give us grace to bear the test; but the tests of Christian
life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are
yet more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age. We
have to bear the sneer of the world—that is little; its blandishments, its soft words, its oily speeches,
its fawning, its hypocrisy, are far worse. Our danger is lest we grow
rich and become proud, lest we give ourselves up to the fashions of
this present evil world, and lose our faith. Or if wealth be not the
trial, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn
in pieces by the roaring lion, if we may be hugged to death by the
bear, the devil little cares which it is, so long as he destroys our
love to Christ, and our confidence in him. I fear me that the Christian
church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and
silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for
we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep
to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our
love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession
are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks
on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God.
Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense
with watchfulness or with holy ardour; you need these things more
than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display his omnipotence
in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things, as
well as in the rougher, “We are more than conquerors through him that loved us.”