The smiles of an encouraging, if not a believing world, have long followed the writers and preachers of evangelical truth, making smooth and pleasant their allotted tasks. We believe that it will cease to be so: the envoys and ambassadors of the Most High will be dismissed with ignominy on the approach of war, where in a time of apparent peace, they have been feted and applauded…… Shall any be found wanting? Shall voices that in more halcyon days were heard on the Lord's side, grow now so confused and indistinct, that it cannot be known what is piped or harped? Shall trumpets that were used to echo through the camp of Israel their notes of victory or warning, give now so uncertain a sound that none shall know whether to prepare themselves for battle, for fight, or for submission? It may be so. Men sometimes seem to want in things spiritual the wisdom and courage that not uncommonly characterizes the children of this world in their generation. When the wind sets in, and the tide flows strong upon a rocky shore, the skillful mariner turns the vessel's head, makes for the sea , and calls all hands together to keep her off the land. Our helmsmen are doing contrariwise: they have set their sails to wind and their head to the tide, and are doing all they can to near the fatal shore. In some instance they have gone the utmost length their principles will admit, to conform themselves to the fashion of the times, to avoid the imputation of extreme opinions, and relieve themselves of a name they would once have been ashamed to be without…..
…we are apt to talk a little too vaguely about opinion - as if all religious truths were matters of opinion, subjects of reasoning, exercises of judgment. It is not so. The most important truths of the Gospel are not opinions - they are matters of revelation, and therefore matters of fact. A positive declaration, statement, or command in the Holy Scriptures excludes opinion - forbids opinion - stamps on opinion the sin of unbelief. There are more of such things in the book of God than some people are aware of; and the 'I think,' and 'I don't think' of common talk, grates harshly sometimes on the considerate believer's ear; falls unbecomingly sometimes from the inconsiderate believer's lips. He who insists upon such truths as these, however imperatively, is not dogmatical: he who condemns all contradiction and contravention of them, is not uncharitable; while the believer who when called upon to contend for the faith, from deference to opinion concedes or compromises, or withholds these plain declarations of the word of God, is a traitor or a coward, and no true soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Excerpt taken from Christ Our Law - by Caroline Fry Wilson
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