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"The first of all successes is Christ's triumph in our souls. Everything that leads to this, humiliations, afflictions, calumnies, contempt, mortifications, all work for us a glory exceeding the imagination of man. To suffer for Christ's sake is the short-cut in the way of becoming Christ-like." The following anecdote of his missionary days shows Father Hecker's contempt for lazy devotion.
Frances Power Cobbe declares that the most Christ-like thing she ever heard from human lips, was from the "Good Earl" of Shaftesbury: "The friend of all the friendless 'neath the sun; Whose hand had wiped away a thousand tears; Whose eloquent lips and clear, strong brain have done God's holy service through his fourscore years."
"Stinnes, you are wanted," he called. "I have my portfolio. I am the new minister to Russia. I leave for Moscow to-morrow." "Congratulations!" the Baron answered. A tall, contemplative man with a scraggly gray beard an angular Christ-like figure appeared. He spoke. "What are you doing here, Muhsam? There is work inside." "And you!" angrily. "I must think. We must grow calm."
Whatever might be the weaknesses of the ladies who pruned the luxuriance of their lace and ribbons, cut out garments for the poor, distributed tracts, quoted Scripture, and defined the true Gospel, they had learned this that there was a divine work to be done in life, a rule of goodness higher than the opinion of their neighbours; and if the notion of a heaven in reserve for themselves was a little too prominent, yet the theory of fitness for that heaven consisted in purity of heart, in Christ-like compassion, in the subduing of selfish desires.
What makes an individual Christian a light is a Christ-like life, derived from that Life which was 'the Light of men. The lamp which the five wise virgins bear is the same as the light which the consistent Christian is. The inner self illuminated from Christ, the source of all our illumination, lights up the outward life, which each of us may be conceived as carrying in our hands.
August Naab had subdued his to the promptings of a Christ-like spirit; yet did not his very energy, his wonderful tirelessness, his will to achieve, his power to resist, partake of that fierceness? Moreover, after many struggles, he too had been overcome by the desert's call for blood. His mystery was no longer a mystery.
The child can see in a picture or circumstance, and hear in a conversation or a song, what once he could not, because he brings a larger experience to bear upon it. Criticism of others in the home, the lapses from Christ-like living, the scenes of the street, things pernicious as well as helpful have greater significance in character building than ever before.
The president, he who had the Christ-like countenance, said: "Messieurs, Natacha Feodorovna has fallen the victim of terrible machinations whose mystery we so far have not been able to penetrate. She is accused of trying to poison her father and her step-mother, and under such conditions that it seems impossible for human reason to demonstrate the contrary.
He did delight in the doctrines of grace with his whole heart, and it is all the more grateful to me, as a Presbyterian, to pay this honest tribute to his deeply devout and Christ-like character. I knew him when he was a student in the Wesleyan University at Middletown somewhat rustic in his ways, but a bold, bright youth hungry for knowledge.
And it ought to enlarge our natures with a Christ-like sympathy when we contemplate those dark and desperate faiths which are but nightmares of the soul, which see in all the universe only malevolent spirits to be appeased, which, looking heavenward for a father's face, see, as Richter expressed it, "only a death's head with bottomless, empty sockets" instead of a loving smile.
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