JAMES Brainard Taylor says in his journal, that we may regard it a bad sign when we find ourselves looking back to past Christian experience for evidences of piety. Truly it is one of Satan’s most effectual devices.
In the early ardor of a Christian hope, in the full energy and enthusiasm of youth, we may seem to accomplish much in the service of Christ. But when that youthful ardor has abated, and enthusiasm has become tamed by defeat, when worldliness has crept over the soul, slumbering on some lap of ease, and has shorn its strength, we awake to take up the lamentation, ―
“Where is the blessedness I knew
When first I saw the Lord?”
Then the danger is that we shall not return at once to our first love and devotedness to the service of Christ, but shall be content with an indolent purpose to do so, which day after day remains unfulfilled. Then self-examination becomes a dark task from which we shrink. We avoid such present and personal questions as, “Have I today prayed as much and earnestly as I ought? Have I today set a holy example before my family and the world? Have I today tried to lead any soul to Christ?” How must easier for such a one to think and speak of what he has done, or means to do, than of what he did today!
I have heard people tell what they were enabled to do for Christ twenty-five years ago, till their hearts seemed to grow warm in the recital; but they spoke no word of what they had done for Christ that day.
O there is no more fearful crisis in the soul’s history than that in which it stands while it can only look back for evidence of a living faith in Christ.