Go Forth and Weep by E. S. Willard

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 26, 1865

Go Forth and Weep.

By E. S. Willard

BROTHER, sister, are you going forth under a sense of duty to try and save souls?

Be comforted.

Do you meet with opposition where you have the least cause to expect it? Are you wounded in the house of your friends? Have they no sympathy for your efforts? And yet do they love God and try to serve him day by day? Do these things cause you to weep as you go? Thank God for it.

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Bless God for the trial that made you weep. There is efficacy in tears. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. How consoling these words the heart that needs them only knows!

As a little company of sowers went forth to sow, one day, their way led through a lot that had never been broken by the plow. Only a dim road passed through it mostly covered with sorrel and oak bushes; but to their surprise every now and then on either side of this road, and in it, stood tall heads of rye, sometimes several stalks in a bunch. The secret was this. Last year ripe grain was hauled through this lot; and it scattered, and took root, and here it was before them.

They gathered an instructive lesson as they went on and talked. This is the way we have to do in spiritual things. The field is the world. It is uncultivated. We must go forth and sow the seed of the kingdom, and trust God to give it root in the hearts of men.

And as this rye had come up here most unexpectedly and under the most unfavorable auspices, even so may it be with our labors. In the morning we are to sow our seed, and in the evening we must not withhold our hand, for we know not which will prosper, this or that, or both alike together. May our pathway through the world be thus marked even as this blind road. Thus they were cheered on to their evening toils. Thus may you be cheered, my brother and sister God is able to bless your labors under the most trying circumstances, and all the more for the opposition. Then go on, brother, go on sister,

“For soon the reaping time will come, And angels shout the harvest home.”

[E. S. Willard.