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How much more surely will real communion with Jesus lead us to look on all men, and especially on the vicious and outcast, with His eyes who saw the multitudes as sheep without a shepherd, torn, panting, scattered, and lying exhausted and defenceless! Indifference to the miseries and impending dangers of Christless men is impossible for any whom He calls 'not servants, but friends.
Object. But if God deals thus with a man, how can he otherwise think but that he is a reprobate, a graceless, Christless, and faithless one? Answ. Nay, but why dost thou tempt the Lord thy God? Why dost thou sin and provoke the eyes of his glory? Why "doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?"
A Christless democracy will be as bad as, if not worse than, a Christless monarchy or aristocracy. If the bricks remain the same, it does not much matter into what shape you build them. These would-be exorcists but irritated the demons by their vain attempts at ejecting them, and it is sometimes the case that efforts to cure social diseases only result in exacerbating them.
If you lay this to heart, you shall easily forget your suffering, and suffer cheerfully. For we are to consider that we were once in such a Christless state as those, but have now, through Christ, been converted, as St. Peter concludes and says: V. 25. Ye were like sheep going astray, but ye are now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of your Souls.
If He is, and we are therefore 'light in the Lord, we shall 'reprove' or 'convict' the Christless life. Its sinfulness will be shown by the contrast with the Christ-life. A thunder-cloud never looks so lividly black as when smitten by sunshine. Our lives ought to make evil things ashamed to show their ugly faces. Christians should be, as it were, the incarnate conscience of a community.
He says the Church is "sleeping." He deplores its "deadly apathy," He says that "a thousand millions" have not heard of the Saviour. He says that "a Christless multitude" dies at the rate of thirty millions a year. He says that "many millions have gone to Christless graves." He says that for these uncounted millions "death and the future are the very blackness of despair."
Ah! the Cross, with its burden of the sacrifice for the world's sin, is the only power which will supply us with a sufficient motive for the loftiness of Christlike service. I know that there is plenty of entirely irreligious and Christless beneficence in the world. And God forbid that I should say a word to seem to depreciate that.
Ungodly, Christless, prayerless families are little hells filthy fountains, whose waters cast up mire and dirt; they are the blind and willing captives of sin and Satan, going down to the chambers of death and endless despair. Ed. 'In grain, material dyed before it is manufactured, so that every grain receives the colour, which becomes indelible. Ed.
After that door had closed for the night, she followed Sister Taylor and me, trying to summon up courage enough to approach me, fearing that if she did not I should soon get on a car and her opportunity of ever meeting me would be lost. At the time of our meeting, Anna was well-nigh homeless, friendless, penniless, and, worst of all, Christless.
What a Christless and hopeless life it had been! What a Christless religion! Now we praised the Lord together for His marvellous goodness to us, and desired that we might henceforth live unto Him, singing in heart and life, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will towards men."
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