VEGETATING IN SELFISHNESS
by Octavius Winslow

Every believer, however limited and veiled from human eye his sphere of life, will create a public sentiment respecting himself. 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 sighted at Christ's judgment bar?

Souls are perishing. Ignorance of the gospel is prevailing. Iniquity is abounding. Satan is unslumbering. Death plies its sith, and the grave yawns each moment, And an eternity of bliss or of woe is with every stroke of the pendulum, Gathering deathless beings to its bosom. Shall we not, then, be active and earnest in a world like this?

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