June 20

Don’t avoid being unpopular

“If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20).
“Rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name” (Acts 5:41).

Oh, for an enthusiasm for Christ that will not endure to be popular when He is unpopular, but will be fired rather than be quenched when His claims are unrecognized and His Word is slighted; that will thrill us with joy if He allows us to share in the faintest measure in His dishonor and loneliness; that will set every pulse throbbing with exultation as we go forth unto Him.—I. Lilias Trotter.

Measure your life by loss, and not by gain,
Not by the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth;
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice,
And he who suffers most has most to give.

We are refining on Christian work—the whole tendency is in that direction. We are so refined that we send apologetic word to iniquity when we propose to attack it. With a sword, silver chased, presented by the ladies, we ride out on a white palfrey covered with embroidered housing, and we put spurs into the war charger just enough to make him dance gracefully, and then we send a missive, delicate as a wedding card, asking the old black giant of sin to surrender.


Christian women saved by the sacrifice of Christ, and with a glorious mission given them, sometimes staying at home from the Sabbath-school class because their new hat is not finished, and churches, which used to shake our cities with rousing revivals, sending around a committee to ask demonstrative worshippers if they will please to say “Amen” and “Hallelujah” a little softly. We are trying to baptize the Church of God in this day with Cologne and balm of a thousand flowers, when it wants a baptism of fire from the Lord God of Pentecost. O! we are so afraid somebody will criticize our sermons, or our prayers, or our exhortations, that we forget our desire for the world’s conquest in the fear we shall get hurt.
—De Witt Talmage.

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