TRIALS NEEDED.- | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 5, 1868

TRIALS NEEDED.—

Who is there that does not know that there is a joy higher and more stately, than is known to our ordinary experience? There are some natures, that only tempests can bring out. I recollect being strongly impressed, on reading the account of an old castle in Germany, with two towers that stood up mighty and far apart, between which an old baron stretched large wires, thus making a huge aeolian harp. There were the wires suspended, and the summer breezes played through them; but there was no vibration. Common winds, not having power enough to move them, split, and went through them without a whistle. But when there came along great tempest winds, and the forests rocked, and the heaven was black, then these winds, with giant touch, swept through the wires, which began to ring, and roar, and pour out terrific melodies. And so God stretches cords in the human soul, and ordinary influences do not make them vibrate; but now and then great tempests sweep through them, and men are conscious that tones are produced in them, which could not have been produced except by some such handling as that. —Selected.