Looking Back | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1866

Looking Back.

JAMES BRAINARD TAYLOR says in his journal, that we may regard it a bad sign when we find ourselves looking back to past Christian experience for evidence of piety. Truly, it is one of Satan's most effectual devices.

In the early ardor of a Christian hope, in the full energy and enthusiasm of youth, we may seem to accomplish much in the service of Christ. But when that youthful ardor has abated, and enthusiasm has become tamed by defeat, when worldliness has crept over the soul, slumbering on some lap of ease, and has shorn its strength, we awake to take up the lamentation,

Where is the blessedness I knew When first I saw the Lord.

Then the danger is that we shall not return at once to our first love and devotedness to the service of Christ, but shall be content with an indolent purpose to do so, which day after day remains unfulfilled. Then self-examination becomes a hard task from which we shrink. We avoid such personal questions as, have I to-day prayed as much and earnestly as I ought? Have I to-day set a holy example before my family and the world? Have I to-day tried to lead any soul to Christ? How much easier for such a one to think and speak of what he has done or means to do, than of what he did to-day.

I have heard people tell what they were enabled to do for Christ twenty-five years ago, till their heart seemed to grow warm in the recital. But they spoke no word of what they had done for Christ that day.

O, there is no more fearful crisis in the soul's history than that in which it stands, while it can only look back for evidences of a living faith in Christ.—Sel.