Publisher's Synopsis
Do you know what kind of a Christian you are? There are at least three others that do. First of all there is Satan. He knows. Many of our church officers are skilled in gathering and compiling statistics, but they cannot hold a tallow-dip to Satan in this matter of exact information. He is the ablest of all statisticians, second only to one other. He keeps careful record of every one of us, and knows just how far we are interfering with his plans. He knows that some of us-good, respectable people, as common reckoning goes-neither help God nor hinder Satan. Does that sound rather hard? But is it not true? He has no objection to such people being counted in as Christians. Indeed, he rather prefers to have it so. Their presence inside the church circle helps him mightily. He knows what kind of a Christian you are. Do you know? Then there is the great outer circle of non-Christian people-they know. Many of them are poorly informed regarding the Christian life; hungry for something they have not, and know not just what it is; with high ideals, though vague, of what a Christian life should be. And they look eagerly to us for what they have thought we had, and are so often keenly disappointed that our ideals, our life, is so much like others who profess nothing. And when here and there they meet one whose acts are dominated by a pure, high spirit, whose faces reflect a sweet radiance amid all circumstances, and whose lives send out a rare fragrance of gladness and kindliness and controlling peace, they are quick to recognize that, to them, intangible something that makes such people different. The world-tired, hungry, keen and critical for mere sham, appreciative of the real thing-the world knows what kind of Christians we are. Do we know? There is a third one watching us to-day with intense interest. The Lord Jesus! Sitting up yonder in glory, with the scar-marks of earth on face and form, looking eagerly down upon us who stand for Him in the world that crucified Him-He knows. I imagine Him saying, "There is that one down there whom I died for, who bears my name; if I had the control of that life what power I would gladly breathe in and out of it, but-he is so absorbed in other things." The Master is thinking about you, studying your life, longing to carry out His plan if He could only get permission, and sorely disappointed in many of us. He knows. Do you know?
