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Grace an Educator, May 31
I thank my God always on your behalf, for the grace of God which is
given you by Jesus Christ; ... who shall also confirm you unto the
end, that ye may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
1
Corinthians 1:4-8
.
In this world we have temporal duties to perform, and in the perfor-
mance of these duties we are forming characters that will either stand the
test of the judgment or be weighed in the balances and found wanting. We
may do the smallest duties nobly, firmly, faithfully, as if seeing the whole
heavenly host looking upon us. Take a lesson from the gardener. If he
wishes a plant to grow he cultivates and trims it; he gives water, he digs
about its roots, plants it where the sunshine will fall upon it, and day by
day he works about it; and not by violent efforts, but by acts constantly
repeated, he trains the shrub until its form is perfect and its bloom is full.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ works upon the heart and mind as
an educator. The continued influence of His Spirit upon the soul trains and
molds and fashions the character after the divine model. Let the youth bear
in mind that a repetition of acts, forms habits, and habit, character.... Is
the love of Christ a living, active agent in your soul, correcting, reforming,
refining you, and purifying you from your wrong practices? There is need
of cultivating every grace that Jesus through His suffering and death has
brought within your reach. You are to manifest the grace that has been so
richly provided for you, in the small as well as in the large concerns of
life.... Great truths can be brought into little things, and religion can be
carried into the little as well as into the large concerns of life.
The commandments of God are exceeding broad, and the Lord is not
pleased to have His children disorderly, to have their lives marred by defects
and their religious experience crippled, their growth in grace dwarfed,
because they persist in cherishing hereditary and cultivated deficiencies
in wrong habits that will be imitated by others and thus be perpetuated.
If the grace of Christ cannot remedy these defects, what then constitutes
transformation of character
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The Youth’s Instructor, September 7, 1893.
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