Walk Closely With God
I would charge everyone whom my voice can reach to be quite clear about what his duty is towards God as a Christian; and, once clear as to what it is, to go right straight ahead in the performance of it.
I am obliged to refer to myself, because we must each one tell his own experience. Upon the matter of baptism, reading the Scriptures, I found that believers were baptized. I had never heard anybody preach about believer’s baptism. When I read about it in the New Testament, I did not know another person in the world who thought as I did, and I came to the conclusion that it did not matter to me whether anybody agreed with me or not, my duty was plain. I was bound to obey it, for I believed it to be God’s will that believers should be baptized on profession of their faith, and I fancied that I should be the first person in modern days to make such a confession. That idea made no difference to me, nor does it now. If there is anything that is taught in the Scriptures, which has not occurred to anybody else before, I should not ask whether any other person has or has not seen it. If God commands it, it is not for us to ask whether it is in the fashion, or according to the order of other people, but to obey it straightway without a question.
At first, people used to get in my way. Then I drove along the right side of the road, and if they did not move, I was obliged to run into them; or if they ran into me, I could not help it. Now, I find that they just let me take the right side of the road, and go straight ahead. I should do that whether they let me or not; therefore I have got to be “a chartered libertine” in these matters, permitted to do what I conceive to be right according to the Word of God.
It is, after all, the easiest way to take the hardest way when that way is right. Oh, that in early life you may bravely follow your God!