We need to re-study our Bibles, and learn
what real Christianity is–how holy, how heavenly,
how spiritual, how loving, how morally and socially
excellent a matter it is. What separation from the
world, what devoutness, what intense earnestness,
what conscientiousness, what enlarged benevolence,
what unselfishness, what zealous activity, what
unearthliness, what seeds of celestial virtue–our
profession of godliness implies.
Having examined this, and obtained an impressive
idea of it, let us survey our own state, and ask if
we do not need, and ought not to seek, more of the
prevalence of such a piety as this, which, in fact, is
primitive Christianity.
Is our spiritual condition what it ought to be, what
it might be, what it must be–to fulfill our high
commission as the salt of the earth and the light of
the world? A Christian, acting up in some tolerable
measure to his profession, walking in the holiness
of the Gospel–is the strongest and most emphatic
testimony for God to our dark revolted world, next
to that of Christ Himself. (By John Angell James, 1785-1859)
