“I would converse with Thee from day to day,
With heart intent on what Thou hast to say,
And through my pilgrim-walk, whate’er befall,
Consult with Thee, O Lord! About it all.
Since Thou art willing thus to condescend
To be my intimate, familiar friend,
Oh! Let me to the great occasion rise,
And count Thy friendship life’s most glorious prize!”
We are in danger on several sides of superficial and shallow conceptions of a religious life. One of these is that it consists in correct doctrinal beliefs, that holding firmly and intelligently to the truths of the gospel about Christ makes ones a Christian. Another is the liturgical, that the faithful observance of the forms of worship is the essential element in a Christian life. Still another is that conduct is all that Christianity is but a system of morality. Then even among those who fully accept the doctrine of Christ’s atonement for sin, there is ofttimes an inadequate conception of the life of faith, a dependence for salvation upon one great past act of Christ, — his death, — without forming with him a personal relation as a present, living Saviour. In the New Testament the Christian’s relation to Christ is represented as a personal acquaintance with him, which ripens into a close and tender friendship. This was our Lord’s own ideal of discipleship. He invited men to come to him, to break other ties, and attach themselves personally to him; to leave all and go with him. He claimed the full allegiance of men’s hearts and lives: he must be first in their affections, and first in their obedience and service. He offered himself to men, not merely as a helper from without, not merely as one who would save them by taking their sins and dying for them, but as one who desired to form with them a close, intimate, and indissoluble friendship. It was not a tie of duty merely, or of obligation, or of doctrine, or of cause, by which he sought to bind his followers to himself, but a tie of personal friendship.
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