Dying, Dying, Dead ! by M. J. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 8, 1866

“Dying, Dying, Dead !”

By M. J. Cottrell

It was Sabbath morning, after the Monthly Meeting held at our house, that these drear words were ringing through and through my brain, "dying, dying, dead." My soul was faint and hungry for want of heavenly food, dying, dying, and painfully I felt a sure consciousness, that unless I speedily found my way back to the living fount, my spiritual life would soon be dead. But I felt so utterly unworthy to look up to Heaven; why was it that I found myself thus? I will tell you frankly, brother, sister, for I would fain have you learn a lesson from my experience. We had been very busy with company, and attending evening meetings all the week, and I had let the cares and pleasures thus occasioned, come between me and my God; between me and secret prayer. I had not lived a whole week without prayer; but my closet, the place where every Christian gains his sure strength, had been sadly neglected, and on that Sabbath morn I felt that I was far from my Father's house, and on every side was desolation and barrenness. I was dying, dying. Oh, what a fearful import those words gained as they were repeated in my mind. I felt as I had never felt before, the danger of neglecting secret prayer. Would that I could make all feel the danger, by telling my sad experience; which I learned to feel by passing through it.

Christian friend, let me warn you; listen not to that voice which says, you have no need of praying now, here is some work that demands your attention, and there is nothing to tempt you now; there is no particular call for spiritual strength. Listen not, I entreat you, to such excuses. Have you not felt that in your secret prayer you enjoyed a visit with Jesus, where your soul drank in rich draughts of heavenly strength, and love; and can you afford to give up such visits? as surely as you do, so surely will your spiritual life languish and die. Neglect prayer, and if you can refuse to listen to that voice which cries, dying, dying, you open your heart to the enemy of all good, and he will lead you to certain death.

“Neglecting prayer, we cease to fight, Prayer makes the Christian's armor bright; And Satan trembles when he sees The weakest saint upon his knees.”

Should the reader be one who is neglecting secret

prayer, let me say to you, Do so no longer. Perhaps you feel as I did on that morning, that you cannot lift up so much as your eyes to Heaven, that you have not confidence to approach the God you have so neglected; pause, then, and ask yourself, Can I give up the struggle? give up my hope, and go on dying, dying, till my religion is all dead? I could not, and falling on my knees I cried, "God be merciful to me a sinner." And for the reader's encouragement I will say, that in confessing my sins, I gained confidence to plead for forgiveness, and I went from my room feeling that forgiveness was mine, and that there was a rift in the clouds, which neglect of secret prayer had caused to gather over me.

M. J. COTTRILL.

Medina, N. Y.