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Music For the Soul
Devotional: January 14th

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THE CAUSES OF SECRET DISCIPLESHIP

Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord. - Jeremiah 23:24

In a society like ours, in which the influence of Christian affects a great many people who have no personal connection with Christ, it is not always enough that the life should preach, because over a very large field of ordinary daily life the underground influence, so to speak, of Christian ethics has infiltrated and penetrated, so that many a tree bears a greener leaf because of the water that has found its way to it from the river, though it be planted far from its banks. Even those who are not Christians live outward lives largely regulated by Christian principle. The whole level of morality has been heaved up, as the coast line has sometimes been by hidden fires slowly working, by the imperceptible gradual influence of the Gospel.

So it needs sometimes that you should say, " I am a Christian," as well as that you should live like one. Ask yourselves, dear friends, whether you have buttoned your great coats over your uniforms, that nobody may know whose soldier you are. Ask yourselves whether you have sometimes held your tongues because you knew that if you spoke, people would find out where you came from and what country you belonged to. Ask yourselves have you ever accompanied the witness of your lives with the commentary of your confession? Did you ever, anywhere but in a church, stand up and say, " I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, my Lord?"

And then ask yourselves another question: Have you ever dared to be singular? We are all of us in this world often thrust into circumstances in which it is needful that we should say, "So do not I because of the fear of the Lord." Boys go to school. They used always to kneel down at their bedsides and say their prayers when they were at home; they do not like to do it with all those critical and cruel eyes- and there are no eyes more critical and more cruel than young eyes- fixed upon them; and so they give up prayer. A young man comes to Lanchester, goes into a warehouse, pure of life, and with a tongue that has not blossomed into rank fruit of obscenity and blasphemy. And he hears at the next desk there, words that first of all bring a blush to his cheek, and he is tempted into conduct that he knows to be a denial of his Master. And he covers up his principles, and goes with the tempters into evil. I might sketch a dozen other cases, but I need not. In one form or other we have all to go through the same ordeal. We have sometimes to dare to be in a minority of one, if we will not be untrue to our Master and to ourselves.

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