Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1882-06-12
4eliaions department.
CHRIST PRECIOUS IN THEM
THAT BELIEVE.

THAT BELIEVE.
a fact, test, and an internal JOY
are proposed to us in the apostolic
assertion: 'sUDto you, therefore.
which believe He is precious
The fact, though asserted abso-
lutely and without reservation as a
part of every Christians experience
is laid down in lines bounded by care
full definition and limitation to them
(which believe" The preciousness
of Christ, like the sweetness of all he
roic triumph, is the sweetness of
faiths great victory to those who
have won and held it: the sweetness |
of an acquaintance with the Master,
gotten in long campaigning with Him
and experience of Him. The lad
who for the first time drops on his
tongue the honey cell-found in the
field, hid away among the clover,
will know that it is sweet and be will
ling to risk the stings of the angry
maker for a second drop. But all
the art and pains in the world may
not be enough to stir in the same
lad or man the sense of the Savior as
precious. Some general view of him
as worthy, as divine, as the worlds
Redeemer, it might be easy to i'm
press on him; but until he became
something more than a seeker for
sweet drops in the clover and had a
thorough-going stirring up and max
ing over in that kind of experience
which men get when Christ has been
revealed to them, or as Paul says
''revealed in them,' it is just as GER
tain that Christ would not be really
and personally precious to him as
that honey would be. One expert
ence is matter of nature Given
the organs, the delight will follow.
The other is matter of character,
and that character, of a certain very
costly kind, developed in the disci-
pline of Christian life. Men learn
to believe in God in this world, be-
cause his presence in its history is a
pressure on their minds to which the
more they feel it the more they yield.
When we believe in Christ as Re-
deemer: give up all to that faith, and
hold it by the strong hand and on the
costly terms of daily victory, we
come to know something of him not
known before, and to get our reward
as we 60, in the fact, deny it or
doubt it who will, that in them that
believe ''He is precious"
This fact is also test, along
whose lines men divide and by which
the believer may try himself. Wher
some one gets up to scott at Christ
what should l say? One more witness
against Jesus of Nazareth? So much
= lost to the argument for faith? Why
. no! All the lines of Christian teach
3 ing lead me to expect this very thing
!, which 1 see. If it is only faith tina
T. has taught me the divine things tina
lie in Christ, what more than the sam
: truth on the dark side of it do / nov
see in all this unhappy bravery
\ which assume to annul the fact tina
l do know Christ to be precious b
the fact that it does not.
But there are closer questions tina
these for me to put to myself.
n Christ precious to me? Does FL
stand before us at the cold distanc
J of a general beneficence, or in som
non-personal dignity of theologic:
Id divinity? Is it precious Saviour "
have found, or only one with who
we are convinced rests the potene
of salvation.
There is largeness in the divi1
mercy which forbids us to say hal
things even of those whose faith
> summed up in bow or an affirmativ
cal and who think of Christ only as son
redemptive principle or agency in Il
world. But, meantime, let it be gi
q en- unto US to advance on the line
the blest assurance that there is
faith which rests on acquaintan
Wv pno with Christ as in all ways and fore
er precious to the believer. God b
end granted us type of this experien
TVS ! is in the preciousness to each other
the two noble, lifelong friends. Eve
AIRY joyous, peaceful fiber of the wht
happy fabric rests ON love, confden,
amt amt faith in each other, developed in
buy buy long acquaintance. So acquaintar
:" with Christ, developed in the life
emu faith, must conduct us toward Tho
free and happy relations with him
which he is forever precious to
D, soul.
But to each believer in his o
It. way. There have been child
= whose precious things, when Il
>, came to them, tied up the strings
life, froze the currents of feeling,
til all seemed to stand still. Th
are men who when they feel m
sIud, think colby, and whose passion
else expressed in thoughtful propositio
y as Winters joy may be taken to
- ice. We can imagine that the
! mite preciousness of the Saw
!. sweeping over believers of some
v, culiar frame, might affect them '
what TO other men are Indication