Page:The Christian Witness - Vol. 1 - 1834.pdf/30

22 the Apostle desires, “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable to His death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.” Have we faith in these things? How shall we show it? By acting on these directions of our Lord which are founded on His divine knowledge of the objects of faith. What follows upon our Lord’s declaration, in the view of His glory, that it must be by His death? “He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world, shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me let him follow me, and where I am their shall also my servant be; if any man serve me, him will my Father honor.” The servant is he who is to be honored. If we would be servants, we must be so following Him who died for us. And in following Him, our honor will be to be with Him in His glory, and the glory of His Father and of the holy angels. It is matter of great thankfulness that notwithstanding the scattering of the Church, by its becoming of this world as a body, and its most imperfect revival by the discovery of the free hope of glory. Believers have a way before them marked in the word; that if we are not given to see as yet the glory of the children of God, the path of that glory in the wilderness should be revealed to us. We are assured, in doctrine, that the death of the Lord, in whom the free gift came, is the sole foundation on which a soul is built for eternal glory. In truth it is only to Believers in this that I address myself. Our duty as Believers is to be witnesses of what we believe. “Ye,” says God, of the Jews, by the Prophet Isaiah, “ye are my witnesses,” in his challenge to the false gods; and as Christ is the faithful and true witness, such ought His Church to be. “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye may show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.”

Of what then is the Church to be a witness against the idolatrous glory of the world? Witness of the glory into which Christ has risen, by their practical conformity to His death; of their true belief in the cross, by their being crucified to the world, and the world to them. Unity, the unity of the Church, to which “the Lord added daily such as should be saved,” was when none said any thing was his own; and “their conversation was in heaven,” for they could