Christian discipline involves steadfast commitment to spiritual growth and faithful service, emphasizing active pursuit of holiness and good works (Hebrews 12:11). It pictures the believer as industrious and responsible, striving not merely for salvation but for a richly adorned crown through diligent obedience and use of divine privileges (2 Timothy 2:5).
Christians should grieve missing a day without doing some good work or spiritual exercise.
As Apelles the painter much lamented if he should escape but one day without drawing some picture or line, so ought a Christian man to be sorry if any day should pass without some good work or exercise.
Believers should aim for a richly adorned crown through faithful service, not just a plain entrance to heaven.
A retiring young disciple, who shrank from labor for Jesus, had a dream, which she thus relates: "I thought I was in heaven; and I saw there two crowns, — one plain, and the other jewelled. I thought, 'Oh! if I may but wear the plainest crown, I shall be satisfied, and ask or wish for nothing more.' But, as I spoke my thoughts to myself, one of the bright-winged company came to me, and said, 'It is your duty to wear a jewelled crown;' and when I thought of my advantages, my Christian friends, my means of religious improvement and usefulness, I saw it was not right that I should be content with a bare entrance into heaven, but mine must indeed be a jewelled crown."
Christian privileges require faithful and proper action, not just passive enjoyment.
The Christian's privileges lie in pronouns; but his duty in adverbs: it must not be only bonum (good), but it must be bene (well): that good must be rightly done. Mead.
Joining a Sabbath school taught a man to search Scriptures, not just read them.
An aged man in America, a military pensioner, who commenced his Christian life at threescore years and ten, was induced to join a Sabbath school. Speaking of the benefits derived from the school, he said he had been in the habit of reading the Bible from his youth, and had read it through many times, and thought he understood it tolerably well; but when he joined the Sabbath school, he found it was necessary to do something more than read the Bible. He had to search the Scriptures. And it led him to observe, that we are nowhere commanded to read the Bible, but every where directed and encouraged to "search the Scriptures."
### 388. Influence in Promoting Attendance on Public Worship.
Neglecting spiritual discipline leads to lost souls, like a lighthouse keeper letting his light go out.
Some time ago a vessel had been off on a whaling voyage, and had been gone about three years. The father of one of the sailors had charge of the light-house, and he was expecting his boy to come home. It was time for the whaling-vessel to return. One night there came up a terrible gale. This father fell asleep, and while he slept his light went out. When he awoke he looked toward the shore and saw a vessel had been wrecked. He at once went to see if he could not yet save someone who might be still alive. The first body that came floating toward the shore was, to his great grief and surprise, the body of his own boy! He had been watching for that boy for many days. Now the boy had at last come in sight of home, and had perished because his father had let his light go out!
I thought, what an illustration of fathers and mothers today that have let their lights go out! You are not training your children for God and eternity. You do not live as though there were anything beyond this life at all. You keep your affections set upon things on the earth instead of on things above, and the result is that the children do not believe there is anything in Christianity. Perhaps the very next step they take may take them into eternity; the next day they may die without God and without hope.
Discipline removes pride and self-will to shape us into vessels for God's treasures.
A visitor to a pottery establishment was puzzled by an operation that seemed aimless. In one room there was a mass of clay beside a workman. Every now and then he took up a mallet and struck several smart blows on the surface of the lump. Curiosity led to the question, “Why do you do that?” “Wait a bit, sir, and watch it,” was the answer. The stranger obeyed, and soon the top of the mass began to heave and swell. Bubbles formed upon its face. “Now, sir, you see,” said the modeler, “I could never shape the clay into a vase if these air-bubbles were in it, therefore I gradually beat them out.”
Is not the discipline of life just a beating out of the bubbles of pride and self-will, so that God may form a vessel of earth to hold heavenly treasures? (Text.)
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