Christian discipline involves steadfast commitment to spiritual growth and faithful service, emphasizing active pursuit of holiness and good works (Hebrews 12:11). It pictures the believer as industrious and responsible, striving not merely for salvation but for a richly adorned crown through diligent obedience and use of divine privileges (2 Timothy 2:5).
Christians should grieve missing a day without doing some good work or spiritual exercise.
As Apelles the painter much lamented if he should escape but one day without drawing some picture or line, so ought a Christian man to be sorry if any day should pass without some good work or exercise.
Believers should aim for a richly adorned crown through faithful service, not just a plain entrance to heaven.
A retiring young disciple, who shrank from labor for Jesus, had a dream, which she thus relates: "I thought I was in heaven; and I saw there two crowns, — one plain, and the other jewelled. I thought, 'Oh! if I may but wear the plainest crown, I shall be satisfied, and ask or wish for nothing more.' But, as I spoke my thoughts to myself, one of the bright-winged company came to me, and said, 'It is your duty to wear a jewelled crown;' and when I thought of my advantages, my Christian friends, my means of religious improvement and usefulness, I saw it was not right that I should be content with a bare entrance into heaven, but mine must indeed be a jewelled crown."
Christian privileges require faithful and proper action, not just passive enjoyment.
The Christian's privileges lie in pronouns; but his duty in adverbs: it must not be only bonum (good), but it must be bene (well): that good must be rightly done. Mead.
Joining a Sabbath school taught a man to search Scriptures, not just read them.
An aged man in America, a military pensioner, who commenced his Christian life at threescore years and ten, was induced to join a Sabbath school. Speaking of the benefits derived from the school, he said he had been in the habit of reading the Bible from his youth, and had read it through many times, and thought he understood it tolerably well; but when he joined the Sabbath school, he found it was necessary to do something more than read the Bible. He had to search the Scriptures. And it led him to observe, that we are nowhere commanded to read the Bible, but every where directed and encouraged to "search the Scriptures."
### 388. Influence in Promoting Attendance on Public Worship.
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