The world and the devil will often try hard to make you drop your religion for a little season, and walk with them. Your own flesh will whisper that there is no danger in going a little with them, and that it can do you no mighty harm. Take care, I say: take care when you are tempted in this fashion. Take care of looking back, like Lot's wife. Forsake not your home.
There are pleasures in sin no doubt, but they are not real and satisfactory. There is an excitement and short-lived enjoyment in the world's ways, beyond all question, but it is joy that leaves a bitter taste behind it. Oh, no! wisdom's ways alone are ways of pleasantness, and wisdom's paths alone are paths of peace. Cleave to them strictly and turn not aside. Follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes. Stick to Christ and His rule, through evil report and good report. The longer you live the happier you will find His service: the more ready will you be to sing, in the highest sense, "There is no place like home."
(4) If Christ is the home of your soul, accept a hint about your duty. Mind that you take every opportunity of telling others about your happiness. Tell them THAT, wherever you are. Tell them that you have a happy home.
Tell them, if they will hear you, that you find Christ a good Master, and Christ's service a happy service. Tell them that His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. Tell them that, whatever the devil may say, the rules of your home are not grievous, and that your Master pays far better wages than the world does! Try to do a little good wherever you are. Try to enlist more inmates for your happy home. Say to your friends and relatives, if they will listen, as one did of old, "Come with us, and we will do you good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." (Numbers x. 29.)
XVIII
HEIRS OF GOD
"As many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God.
"For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.
"The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
"And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together."—(Romans viii. 14—17.)
The people of whom St. Paul speaks in the verses before our eyes are the richest people upon earth. It must needs be so. They are called "heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ."
The inheritance of these people is the only inheritance really worth having. All others are unsatisfying and disappointing. They bring with them many cares. They cannot cure an aching heart, or lighten a heavy conscience. They cannot keep off family troubles. They cannot prevent sicknesses, bereavements, separations, and deaths. But there is no disappointment among the "heirs of God."
The inheritance I speak of is the only inheritance which can be kept for ever. All others must be left in the hour of death, if they have not been taken away before. The owners of millions of pounds can carry nothing with them beyond the grave. But it is not so with the "heirs of God." Their inheritance is eternal.