Gratitude for the Review
By Arlina R. Penniman
BRO. SMITH: I have just finished reading the last Review, and have been so profited by its contents that I wish to thank the dear brethren and sisters next to God, for their contributions. I am glad of the enlargement of the paper, but wish it might yet be doubled. My opportunities for meeting with the church are very few, and the Review is often my only meeting, so that I take great interest in reading the cheering testimonies which come from distant ones in favor of those precious truths revealed in God's word, and I wonder that more do not confess Christ in this way. I have been much edified to-day in reading Bro. Loughborough's sermon, and most of all things do I desire to be a dweller in the kingdom of God, and not only so, but feel a great burden for those around me. It is my daily, earnest prayer, that God would especially bless the messengers of the truth, and raise up more laborers to proclaim the last message of mercy and warning to a perishing world, and I am striving also to have my life an example in favor of the truth, and do all in my power to spread the same among my friends. I feel grateful for the Health Reform, and while I conform my life to its teachings, and strive to glorify God in all I do, I feel that sweet peace that “flows like a river.” I often think of the dear brethren and sisters whose names I see in the Review, but whose faces I have never seen, and feel my heart knit with theirs in the bonds of Christian love and sympathy. Surely we are united in the great and blessed work of overcoming, and preparing for the coming of Jesus, and for translation into his glorious kingdom. Thank God, we are permitted to get a glimpse by faith of that rich inheritance, and now and then a foretaste of the joys of that heavenly country. Oh let us count it all joy if we suffer want and sorrow here, knowing that beyond there is fullness of immortal joys. “Oh! what are all my sufferings here,
If, Lord, thou count me meet,
With that enraptured host to appear,
And worship at thy feet.”
ARLINA R. PENNIMAN.