(adapted from Winslow's, "The Sensitiveness of Christ to Suffering")

Every believer, however limited and veiled from
human eye his sphere of life, will create a public
sentiment respecting his individual self. His
relations, his friends, his neighbors, will form
their opinion of his character, doings, and life.

Few pass through life incognito to eternity!

Few slide through society unseen, unnoticed, unfelt.

Each individual Christian should especially live
for an object. He should so live as to make his
talents, influence, and example tell upon the
present and eternal well being of all with whom
He comes in contact.

"No man lives to himself."

As a "light," He is to shine!

As "salt," He is to influence!

As a "witness," He is to testify for Christ.

In a world like this, where there is....
  so much evil to correct,
  so much temptation to resist,
  so much sorrow to soothe,
  so much need to supply,
  so much misery to counteract,
  so much ignorance to instruct,
  so much good to be done,
none need be all the day idle, dreaming
away existence, vegetating in selfishness,
not living for man or laboring for God.

Oh, be an earnest, active Christian!

Be up and doing!

Life is too real, too solemn, too responsible,
for sluggishness, inactivity, and selfishness!

  We are gliding down the
stream onward to eternity!

Shall we spend our fleeting moments in grasping
at the floating straw, when for every moment and
act of our present course we shall soon be cited at
Christ's bar for scrutiny and judgment?

Souls are perishing!

Ignorance of the gospel is prevailing!

Iniquity is abounding!

Satan is unslumbering!

Death plies its scythe, and the grave yawns
each moment, and an eternity of bliss or of
woe is gathering at every stroke of the
pendulum, deathless beings to its bosom!

Shall we not, then, be active and earnest in a world like this?