p. 11 | Conversions

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 12, 1865

Conversions.

THE new convert should not expect “his experience” as it is called, will be like that of everybody else. No two faces are alike in any audience; no two trees are alike in the woods; no two blades of grass in the field. So no two human minds are so constituted as to be affected in the same way by the same truths. It matters not if you cannot tell just when you became a Christian. I do not suppose one Christian in twenty could do it. If we sow a handful of wheat in our garden, we could not tell, though we watched it ever so narrowly, the exact moment when it germinated; but when we see the waving grain in the autumn, we know it did germinate, and that is all we care for.

The young disciple should not expect too much light at once. It will grow brighter with every Christian duty he performs. The Christian life is a sort of mountain-path; and the higher one climbs, the clearer the atmosphere, and the sooner he will see the morning sun. To the adventurous traveler who has ascended to the summit of Mount Blanc, the sun rises earlier and sets later, and the night is therefore shorter than to the peasant who lives in the valley at the base. So it is in the Christian life. Clearness of vision, and firmness of foot, and beauty of prospect, come only to those who have struggled up to the heights—to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Conversion may be the work of a moment; but a saint is not made in an hour. Character—Christian character, is not an act, but a process; not a sudden creation, but a development. It grows and bears fruit like a tree; and, like a tree, it requires patient care and unwearied cultivation.—Monthly Religious Magazine.