January 13

The world notes inconsistencies

“Cleanse thou me from secret faults” (Psa. 19:12).
“Be diligent that ye may be found of him without spot, and blameless” (2 Peter 3:14).

The world’s only estimate of religion is holiness. The world wants men who are saved from secret faults. A little crack will spoil the ring of the coin. The world expects that a Christian man shall be free from little tricks of gain and all crooked ways of business, even though they of the world made light of them. They expect, and rightly, that the Christian should be more gentle and patient and generous than he who does not profess to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus. For the sake of those who take their notion of religion from our lives we need put up this prayer earnestly, “Cleanse thou me from secret faults.”

Doubts are born not so much of bad books as of un-Christlike Christians. Prejudices against religion find much of their strength in the keen and hard (business) ways of religious people; or else in their easygoing indifference about the little things of daily life. No amount of “heavenly-mindedness” can make up for the lack of the exactness in our words, or of straightforwardness in our dealings.—Mark Guy Pearse.

Let your lives preach.—George Fox.

If you want your neighbor to know what the Christ spirit will do for him, let him see what it has done for you.—Henry Ward Beecher.

To be sincere. To look life in the eyes
With calm, undrooping gaze. Always to mean
The high and truthful thing. Never to screen
Behind the unmeant word the sharp surprise
Of cunning; never tell the little lies
Of look or thought. Always to choose between
The true and small, the true and large, serene
And high above Life’s cheap dishonesties.
—Maurice Smiley.

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