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"None Like Christ"
by Octavius Winslow, 1866

"How is your beloved better than others?"
Song of Solomon 5:9

V. No TEACHER like Him.

There is no teacher like Christ. Upon this point we can venture but a single remark. The Anointed of God, it is his office to reveal to us the great things of the Gospel. We are truly and savingly taught only as we are taught by him.

Thankful for human teachers, we yet must exclaim "Who teaches like Christ?" With immediate access to our minds, and a quick avenue to our hearts, by one text, by one trial, and by one circumstance of our history, he can, in a moment, bring us into the experience of the deepest and most spiritual truth. Who teaches with the authority, or with the skill, or with the patience and gentleness of Christ? Become his student, beloved reader, enter as a disciple his school, and the Holy Spirit, whose office it is to glorify Christ, will lead you into all truth.

Oh! that this may be a year of deeper, more spiritual teaching! Oh! that we may know more of our own nothingness and insufficiency, and more of Christ's fullness, loveliness, and love! Lord that which I know not, teach me, for who teaches to profit like yourself?

VI. No FRIEND like Him.

There is no Friend like Christ. Beloved, it is possible that having many friends, you need yet one. God has, perhaps, endowed you with a nature keenly susceptible, your heart expanding to the warm and genial influence of true friendship. There is in your breast the responsive power of love, yet yearning for its object. Or, perhaps, the cold blast of sorrow has swept over the garden of your confiding affections, and the finest feelings of your nature, torn from the support to which they clung, lie broken, wounded, and bleeding.

You yearn for a friend, in the wisdom of whose counsel, in the depth of whose affection, in the delicacy of whose sympathy, in the patience of whose endurance you can implicitly and ever rely; and from whose presence nothing for a moment separates. That friend is Christ! "I call you not servants, but friends," is his gracious avowal of the relation. "He is a friend that sticks closer than a brother."

There is not a friend on earth who loves you with his affection, who compassionates you with his sympathy, or is so powerful, so faithful, so near to you as Christ. Human friends do, indeed, divide our cares and double our joys; but Jesus does more. He takes all our cares upon himself, absorbs all our sorrows in himself, and makes all his joy our own. Let this be a year of closer friendship with Christ! Confide in his love, avail yourself of his power, and abase yourself worthy of so precious a friend. Beware, in your dealings with him, of distrust, of shyness, of cooled affection. Place in him your unquestioning confidence, and give him your undivided heart. Let not the sad memories of past fickleness and failure fling their dark shadows on the future, but enter upon that future surrendering yourself afresh to Christ as your best Friend.

Oh! there is none like him. Leave him for a while, though you may, for others, you return to him again with a yet deeper conviction of his superiority, exclaiming "I find no friend like Christ. No love soothes me, no smile gladdens me, no voice cheers me, no arm supports me as his!"

You are entering upon a year which must be one of human infirmity, toil, and trial. Remember your chief, your best, your only Friend took upon him all your human infirmities, is identified with all your desires, and is acquainted with all your lonely sorrows. Now that he is elevated to the loftiest reach of purity, to the highest degree of dignity and glory, and that that heart, once the abode of overshadowing grief, is all sunshine now, but fits him all the more exquisitely as the all-powerful, all-helpful, all-loving, all-tender, ever-present Friend and companion of your homeward path to God.

O Christ! you ever have been, you are, and you shall ever be my Friend! In adversity, I will hide beneath your sheltering wing; in sorrow, I will nestle within your loving bosom; in weakness, I will entwine around your upholding arm; in need, I will repair to your boundless resources; in sickness, in languor, and in suffering, I will enfold around me your all-divine, all-human, all-pervading, all-soothing sympathy

"And when I die,
Receive me, I'll cry,
For, Lord, you have loved me,
I can not tell why."

VII. No SERVICE like His.

And what service can be placed in competition with the service of Christ? The profession of Christian discipleship involves a service. The Christian life must needs have scope for the unfolding of its powers, and a field for the employment of its energies. But for the activity of Christianity our religion would become paralyzed and be dwarfed. It is a wise and merciful arrangement of its Author, that for the vital forces the muscle and nerve and life of our Christianity there should be provided a sphere ample and appropriate for their full development and play.

The graces implanted in the soul graces instinct with all the energy and power of the divine, before whose invincible might the fiercest assaults of the foe have been repelled, and the armies of the aliens put to flight would become shriveled and collapsed, a moral atrophy seizing the whole soul, but for the service which summons them to action. Christ's kingdom supplies the appropriate and commanding sphere. The field of your exertion may be extended or circumscribed, just as God appoints.

It may be the vast amphitheater encircled by a great crowd of witnesses, gazing intently and anxiously upon your wrestling with sin and your battle with error; or, it may be some shaded nook, secluded from every eye, unaided and uncheered by human sympathy. Perhaps the sacred enclosure of home, or the night-watches of a sick-room, or the self-denying task of instructing a crude and sluggish class in the simple elements of the Gospel yet is it Christ's service which engages you, and as such, it is perfect freedom and exquisite delight.

And truly there is no service to be compared with it so ennobling, so satisfying, so joy-inspiring or that brings with it so much of present and rich reward. Servant of Christ! keep good heart! Listen to your Master's feet behind you, upholding and cheering you on. He will soon come and pay you your full wages will wipe the sweat of toil from your brow, and wreathe it with an amaranthine crown of glory, honor, and immortality. Then comes the welcome and reward "Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Lord."

With such a service, and such a recompense, who, with but a spark of the love of Christ in his heart, will not exclaim "Here, Lord, am I, what will you have me to do?" I have but one life you have bought it with your life-blood may it be yours yours wholly, forever yours."

Christian reader, be up and doing why do you stand all the day idle? Go, work in your Lord's vineyard. With a significance more profound, and with an earnestness more intense than that with which the words were uttered by the Mohammedan chief, pointing his sword to earth and then up to heaven, would we say to you "Here is the place of labor; there is the place of rest."

'Tis not for man to trifle; life is brief,
And sin is here;
Our age is but the falling of a leaf,
A dropping tear.
We have no time to sport away the hours;
All must be earnest in a world like ours.
Not many lives, but only one have we;
One, only one
How sacred should that one life ever be
That narrow span!
Day after day filled up with blessed toil,
Hour after hour still bringing in new spoil."

VIII. No FRIEND like Him.

The truth upon which we have been endeavoring to concentrate your thoughts, and with which we would yet a few moments longer detain you, is one of great practical influence. It chimes with every event, circumstance, and situation of your life. Let your faith deal with it as a divine verity, as a practical reality, that in whatever position God places you, he intends, by his dealings in providence, and by his teaching in grace, to bring you into the deeper experience of this the most precious of all experimental and practical truths "No one can meet my case like Christ."

Whatever, through this year, your position may be and I will hypothetically place it let faith reason thus "I am in great adversity; why should I resort to the help of man, he may fail me there is none like Christ. I am in profound grief, my heart is melted within me; why should I repair to the soothing of human sympathy, it may disappoint me there is none like Christ.

I am in a great strait; insurmountable difficulties, inextricable perplexities weave their network around my path, and I am at my wit's end; why should I betake myself to human counsel it may mislead me there is none like Christ. My future looks dark and lowering disease undermining my health my energies failing, and the duties, responsibilities, and labors for which I have taxed my utmost powers, all lie untouched and neglected, yet why should I despond there is none like Christ.

My temporal circumstances are narrowing, resources fail me, poverty, with its humiliating attendants, stares me in the face, yet why should I yield to unbelief there is none lice Christ. My corruptions are strong, my temptations irresistible, my sins many, my doubts and fears weigh me down to the dust, yet why should I despair there is none like Christ. I am approaching the solemn hour of death, heart and flesh are failing me, and the veil of eternity is slowly rising to my view, yet why should I fear, and tremble, and shrink back, I have committed my soul to my Savior, and there is none like Christ."

And, oh! what a mercy that you have never found one that could for a moment take his place; that, separated, perhaps exiled from all others, you are enclosed to Christ alone, nor wish another being to share your confidence or divide your affection with him. It is possible that you have made the experiment. You have traveled the circle of creation's good, have sipped at many springs, have gathered many flowers, have sought repose in many an embowered spot, but all have failed. You have returned to your true rest, exclaiming "None like Christ. I find no love so soothing as his, no friendship so true, so gentle as his, no communion like communion with him. Christ is my all and in all."

Does the world challenge, "What is your beloved more than another beloved?" Your answer is at hand "My beloved bore my sins, opened in his heart a fountain in which I am washed whiter than snow. My beloved sustains my burdens, counsels my perplexities, heals my wounds, dries my tears, supplies my needs, bears with my infirmities, upholds my steps, and cheers my pathway to the tomb. My beloved will be with me in the valley of the shadow of death, and with his presence I shall fear no evil. My beloved has gone to prepare a place for me in the many-mansioned house of my Father, and will come again and receive me to himself, that where he is, I may be also. My beloved will walk with me in the gold-paved streets of the new Jerusalem, will lead me to fountains of living waters, and will wipe every tear from my eyes. This is my beloved, and this is my Friend!"

Therefore Stand Firm.

And yet have we need of constant vigilance, lest we should not always and in everything give Christ the preeminence. The rival interests, and the antagonistic forces of the world and the flesh are in perpetual play. These demand that, with the prophet, we should "stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and be set in our wards whole nights." Should you discover any encroachment of your worldly calling upon the claims Christ has to your time and service, any rival affections to the claims he has to your whole heart, any secret demur to the claims he has to your unreserved obedience; should you, in a word, detect the undue ascendency or influence of any one being or object whose presence and power tends to shade the beauty, lessen the attractions, weaken the supremacy, or share the throne of Christ in your soul that being and that object must be relinquished at once and forever!

Oh! what competitor can stand side by side with Christ? No minister, or pastor, or church, or friend, or companion, can bear a moment's comparison with Jesus. Not one who can assist you, defend you, provide for you, or bear with you as Jesus, who when the snow-flakes of wintry adversity fall thick and fast, and its cold blast moans drearily around you, will not leave yet side, who will be first to enter the house of woe, across whose threshold the loved remains have just been borne, to speak words of comfort to your bereaved heart; who will sustain you in languor, bend over you in sickness, and when the last look, before the eye is fixed and glazed, and the last breath, before the lips are mute and immovable in death, shall come, will be with you, viewless and noiseless to the attendant watchers, sustaining your spirit in the parting hour, then bearing it in his own warm bosom to the home eternally made ready. Then cling and adhere to Christ, and in all things give him the preeminence.

"Enthrone the precious Savior in your heart,
Let all your homage unto him be paid;
Allow no idol to usurp in part
The glory due to him who all things made.
In thought, word, deed, your life to him be given,
You shall be blessed on earth, and saved in heaven."

Be Faithful to His Word.

There is yet another caution I would venture to give in reference to some of the social and popular movements of the day, the tendency of which, without due vigilance on the part of the sincere and earnest friends of true religion, may be adverse to its best interests, fatally injurious to the individuals contemplated by these movements, and subversive of the supremacy of Christ and his truth. We hail with gratitude and hope all efforts to advance "social science" and intellectual improvement, provided those endeavors are sustained and sanctified by Christian principle. I am thoroughly convinced that true national advancement can only be successfully secured by the power of a living Christianity.

All other modes of elevating the masses utterly fail of reaching them. It is impossible to close the eye to the fact that, after all the exertions of our literary and scientific institutions, our libraries, reading-rooms, and lectures, there teems outside and far beyond our efforts, a vast outlying population of living beings, dwelling in ignorance and neglect, each one of whom might give utterance to the exclamation "No man has cared for my soul!"

By what agency are we to compass and by what means are we to instruct them? We at once answer, by the feet of the city and the rural missionary, and by the sole instrument of Christ's Gospel. But widely different from this is the object promoted by "social science" and its kindred associations. And what is the result? We are advancing in secular knowledge and science, but, at the same time, we are equally advancing in worldliness, luxury, and indulgence; in extravagance of dress, and modes of life that, in numerous cases, far overtop reasonable and legitimate income. The consequences must be serious! The history of nations is luminous in the testimony it bears to the fact that high perfection in art and science, in intellectual improvement, luxury, and indulgence, apart from the conservative influence of Christianity, has ever been the culminating point that has marked their decadence and dissolution.

We have passed through one phase of our national history, and "heroworship" is nearly giving place to the worship of "social science," secular knowledge, and intellectual advancement. I can not look but with the most painful apprehension and alarm upon the unchristianized condition toward which we are as a nation fast drifting. Compromise at home, and neutrality abroad, is gradually blotting Christianity from our national escutcheon. It seriously behooves the ministers of the Gospel, our devout statesmen and senators, to be fully awake. If we are to retain the position God has given us in the scale of nations, or to rise to a yet loftier altitude of moral greatness and power, it will not be by the means of social science, worldly knowledge, wealth, luxury, and refinement but by the influence of a living, vitalizing Christianity alone!

The Bible and its religion must be paramount; Christ and his Gospel must have the preeminence. Reason and learning must stand at the bar of Revelation, reverence its precepts, adopt its principles, and obey its voice. The moment that finds this nation glorying in her strength, in her wisdom, in her wealth, in her prowess, in her social progress, and in her high civilization, will date the beginning of her decline, and foreshadow the certainty of her downfall as a great, religious people; and her last history, like that of Greece and Rome, will be written in mourning, lamentation, and woe. Let the apostles and promoters of social science and of secular knowledge solemnly beware how, in the advancement of their objects, they ignore our Bible and abjure our God!

Be Spiritually Minded.

It is an important practical deduction from the subject of these pages, that if true godliness is anything to us, it surely must be everything. There is no principle God has more closely and universally calculated in the universe than 'harmony'. And it is this nice adjustment, this perfect balance, and exquisite symmetry, everywhere pervading his works, which proves the mind that planned and the power that executed to be one and the same divine.

Now it is this same harmony, as exhibited in true godliness, which illustrates its beauty and augments its power. How much is true religion shorn of its strength by the lack of more spiritual-mindedness in its professors! The worldly amusements to which many addict themselves the opera, the cardplaying, the ball, the gay party, the novel-reading, the luxurious living, the extravagant customs in which multitudes of religious professors, church members and communicants indulge, are sad blots upon their avowed Christianity, and effectual hindrances to the advancement of religion in their own souls and in the world. Oh! that with us vital religion the pure, simple, self-denying, unearthly religion of Christ might be paramount; its holy influence permeating our whole being, and giving form and tint and direction to all our engagements and conduct.

Difficulties we shall, indeed, have to overcome in the world, and, perhaps, opposing influences in our own homes; nevertheless, if Christ sees that our hearts are set upon ruling our lives by his divine precept, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness," he will aid our holy strivings and give his grace that, in our principles, our spirit, and our conduct, yes, in all things and everywhere, Christ may have the preeminence.

My reader, what is your "beloved"? If it is not Christ, what is it? The world? the creature? wealth? self? Are these the objects you place in competition with the Redeemer, and prefer to a religious life, a happy death, and a glorious eternity? Oh! what will they avail you when Christ, the Savior you have slighted, despised, and neglected, cites you to his judgment bar? Without the experience of a real conversion, of the new birth, of a saving interest in Jesus, should you die this year, you are forever lost! Pause, solemnly pause, upon the threshold of a new period of your probation, and ask the Holy Spirit to enthrone the Savior upon your loving, believing heart, that henceforth Christ may be the first, Christ the chief, Christ preeminent; so that for you to live or die may truly and emphatically be CHRIST; and then Christ and you will be together through eternity!

There is None like Him.

Such is the truth, child of God, your heavenly Father has given you to learn through this coming year None like Christ! Could he bring you into the experience of a truth more needful, more sanctifying, or more precious? Impossible! Strive after a closer walk, a more childlike transfer of every care, anxiety, and need to your heavenly Father, and his beloved Son, your elder brother. "He cares for you." Do not overlook today, in your anxious thoughts about the morrow. Travel not out of the present into the future.

The grace that supports, the love that comforts, the resources that supply today's need, will, with tomorrow's demand, be ready at your hand. Do justice to the solemn present, and live with the same calm reliance upon God, and looking to Jesus, as if there but one second of time intervening between you and your heavenly home. Make the prayer your own of one of the earliest missionaries of the Cross to Ireland "May the strength of God pilot me this day, the power of God preserve me, the wisdom of God instruct me, the eye of God view me, the ear of God hear me, the hand of God protect me, the way of God direct me, the shield of God defend me.

Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ after me, Christ in me, Christ under me, Christ over me, Christ at my right, Christ at my left, Christ at this side, Christ at that side, Christ in the heart of each person whom I speak to, Christ in the mouth of each person who speaks to me, Christ in each eye which sees me, Christ in each ear which hears me. Salvation is the Lord's, salvation is Christ's. May your salvation, O Lord! be always with us." (Patrick's prayer on his going to preach before the King of Ireland)

Imitating the spirit, and adopting the petitions of this remarkable prayer, your daily, happy, and holy experience and testimony will be, "None but Christ, none like Christ."

"I'll not leave Jesus never, never!
Ah! what can more precious be?
Rest, and joy, and light are ever
In his hand to give to me.
All things that can satisfy,
Having Jesus, these have I."
Love has bound me fast to him,
I am his, and he is mine;
Daily I for pardon ask him,
Answers he with peace divine.
On that rock my trust is laid,
And I rest beneath its shade.
Without Jesus, earth would weary,
Seem almost like hell to me;
But if Jesus I have near me,
Earth is almost heaven to me.
Am I hungry? He does give
Bread on which my soul does live.
Oh! how light upon my shoulder
Lies my cross, now grown so small.
For the Lord is my upholder,
Fits it to me, softens all.
Neither shall it always stay,
Patience! it will pass away."

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