Standing for Truth Against All Opposition — B.B. Warfield
“How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” – John 5:44
“Truth has a poor show, when the tide sets against it. How hard it is to face the gibes of our companions. ‘Old Fogy,’ ‘Narrow-minded’—these are not very bad words in themselves, but they have a baleful power. How natural to desire to be ‘in the swim’! How delightful to feel the approval and to enjoy the aid of our fellows pressing us on. It is human to love human applause and to seek it.
But it is Divine to stem the tide for God. Jesus preached unpopular truth. Men could so little endure it that they crucified Him for it. Paul preached unpopular truth, and suffered a thousand deaths for doing so. Will we say that they were wrong? After all, it is only when the ‘vox populi’ (Latin: the voice of the people) is really the ‘vox dei’ (Latin: the voice of God) as well, that we can afford to follow it. When the ‘vox populi’ stands in opposition to the ‘vox dei,’ let us breast it at all hazards! In other words, let it be the ‘vox dei’ that we unhesitatingly and unwaveringly follow; and if the ‘vox populi’ agree with it, so much the better for the ‘vox populi.’ As ministers of God’s grace let us make up our minds firmly and once for all to seek His glory and not men’s. After all, is it not to his own Master that every man stands or falls?”
- Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield (1851-1921)
taken from: Faith and Life: ‘Conferences’ in the Oratory of Princeton Seminary, 1916, pp. 101-102.
