If confessors, Reformers, Martyrs and Covenanters had been cowardly or unfaithful to the name of Jesus, where would have been the churches today? Must we not play the man as they did?
When you go to the zoological gardens you all admire the bear; but how would you like a bear wandering about the streets? You tell me that it would be unbearable, and no doubt you are right. So, we admire a man who was firm in the faith, say four hundred years ago; the past ages are a sort of bear pit or iron cage for him; but such a man today is a nuisance and must be put down. Call him a narrow minded bigot, or give him a worse name if you can think of one.
Yet imagine that in those ages past, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and their compeers had said, “This world is out of order; but if we try to set it right, we shall only make a great row and get ourselves into disgrace. Let us go to our chambers, put on our nightcaps and sleep over the bad times, and perhaps when we wake up things will have grown better.”
Such conduct on their part would have entailed upon us a heritage of error. Age after age would have gone down the infernal deep, and the pestiferous bogs of error would have swallowed all.
These men loved the faith and the name of Jesus too well to see them trampled on.
Note what we owe them and let us pay to our sons the debt we owe our fathers. It is today as it was in the Reformers days.
Decision is needed. Here is the day for the man; where is the man for the day? We who have had the Gospel passed to us by Martyrs hands dare not trifle with it nor sit by and hear it denied by traitors who pretend to love it but inwardly dishonor every line of it. The faith l hold bears upon it marks of the blood of my ancestors.
