How to Live on Christ by Harriet Beecher Stowe
These remarks may assist those, who, conscientiously attempting the duties of religion, find them so often a hard and painful endeavor, and who progress by a con- stant and desperate struggle. How is all to be made easy?— to follow forth spontaneously and delightfully?
Christ certainly had some meaning when he said, 'Learn of me and ye shall find rest;'— he meant just what he declared, when he said, 'my yoke is easy and my burden is light;' and they who do not find them easy and light, may be persuaded that they are not following the practice of religion in Christ's way, but in some colder and more difficult mode of their own. They may be Christians, and their sad and disheartened endeavors may be very precious in the eyes of Him who will not break even a bruised reed; but while their whole life is a constant conflict of a sense of obligation and duty with an ever rebel- lious heart, they may be
persuaded that they do not yet understand the terms on which their Saviour would have them live with him; nor the perfect 'freedom of the sons of God.' There is such a way of living with, or in Christ, that watch- fulness, prayer, devotion, patience, gentleness, meek- ness, become so many sweet and spontaneous impulses, instead of labored acquisitions, alternately the subjects of hope and of despair; and this is true freedom .
The very figure which Christ uses illustrates this idea; 'as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.' Now how does a branch bear fruit? Not by incessant effort for sunshine and air; not by vain struggles for those vivifying influences which give beauty to the blossom, and verdure to the leaf;—it simply abides in the vine, in silent and undisturbed union; and the fruit and blossoms appear as of spontaneous growth.
How, then, shall a Christian bear fruit? By efforts and struggles to obtain that which is freely given; by meditations on watchfulness, on prayer, on action, on temptation, and on dangers? No, there must be a full concentration of the thoughts and affections on Christ; a complete surrender of the whole being to him; a constant looking to him for grace.
Christians in whom these dispositions are once firmly fixed, go on calmly as the sleeping infant borne in the arms of its mother. Christ reminds them of every duty in its time and place—reproves them for every error—coun- sels them in every difficulty, excites them to every needful activity. In spiritual, as in temporal matters, they take no thought for the morrow— for they know that Christ will be as accessible tomorrow as to-day, and that time ...
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