Appeal to D. M. Canright
149
You have ever had a desire for power, for popularity, and this is one
of the reasons for your present position. But I beg of you to keep your
doubts, your questionings, your skepticism to yourself. The people
have given you credit for more strength of purpose and stability of
character than you possessed. They thought you were a strong man;
and when you breathe out your dark thoughts and feelings, Satan
stands ready to make these thoughts and feelings so intensely powerful
in their deceptive character, that many souls will be deceived and lost
through the influence of one soul who chose darkness rather than light,
and presumptuously placed himself on Satan’s side, in the ranks of the
enemy.
You have wanted to be too much, and make a show and noise
in the world, and as the result your sun will surely set in obscurity.
Every day you are meeting with an eternal loss. The schoolboy who
plays truant thinks he is cheating his parent and his teacher; but who
is meeting with the greatest loss? Is it not himself? Is he not cheating
and deceiving himself, robbing himself of the knowledge he might
have? God would have us become efficient in copying the example of
Christ in good works; but you are playing truant, you are nursing a
feeling which will sting and poison your soul to its own ruin, playing
truant upon important eternal things, robbing your soul of the richness,
the knowledge of the fullness of Christ. Your ambition has soared so
high, it will accept of nothing short of elevation of self. You do not
know yourself. What you have always needed was a humble, contrite
heart.
Christ the Pattern Man
What a life was that of Christ? He was just as certainly fulfilling
His mission as the pattern man when toiling as a carpenter, and hiding
the great secret of His divine mission from the world, as when He trod
[164]
the foaming white-capped billows on the Sea of Galilee, or when rais-
ing the dead to life, or when dying [as] man’s sacrifice upon the cross,
that He might lift up the whole race to a new and perfect life. Jesus
dwelt long at Nazareth, unhonored and unknown, that the lesson in His
example might teach men and women how closely they may walk with
God in even the common course of daily life. How humiliating, how
rude and homely, was this condescension of the Majesty of heaven,