A True Christian — Sharing Christ's Ideals

1903

Children enjoy music long before they understand the color, scale and the laws of harmony. Indeed, millions go through life enjoying the beautiful in nature and art without ever knowing anything about the laws by which colors complement each other. Also millions go through life as Christians without ever stopping to work out philosophically their ideas about the Bible or the church or the creed. And yet they are Christians, because they are loyal to Christ.

History tells of a young paint-grinder in the studio of Italy's great master who developed striking evidences of artistic skill. When an enemy of the great teacher came to the boy and urged him to found a school of his own, saying that wealth and honors and invitations to kings' palaces might be his, the youth answered in effect: "I am not ambitious to found a school or dwell in a palace, but I am ambitious to catch Raphael's spirit and reproduce in myself his ideals."

Now, that simple thought condenses in a word the essence of the Christian life. It is an ambition to rise to the level of Christ's thoughts, to feel His throb of sympathy toward the poor and weak, to abhor evil as He abhorred it, to hunger for righteousness as He hungered for it and to walk with our Father as Christ walked with His. He is a Christian who is loyal to Christ in thoughts, sympathies, friendships, purposes and ideals. — Newell Dwight Hillis.