Untitled article by Mary Stratton

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · July 23, 1867

TIME.

By Mary Stratton

THE old adage is just as good to-day as ever. “Time once past never returns.” And it seems to me there must be even more importance attached to it at the present than ever before, when we take into consideration the magnitude of the work of spreading the third angel's message, and the short period there is left in which to perform it. The world in its history has arrived at fast times. Go into our cities and villages; the people of the world can hardly stop to walk a common pace, they have to run to keep up with business. And shall we be less in a hurry upon whom (will it be too much to say) the destiny of the world hangs? Time rightly improved is more precious than gold. No one would think of throwing a piece of gold into the fire, and yet they would even dare to misspend time.

In our abbreviated lives of these last days, we shall have to work with all our might if we accomplish much. How solemn the thought that a moment once lost is lost forever. I need not speak of home duties, the hours of the day go by so swiftly that we cannot find a moment to sit with our hands folded in useless reverie, or to spend at our neighbors, in idle gossip. It cannot be that a Seventh-day Adventist man will let his family suffer for the common comforts of life while he squanders his time in idleness, or a woman so far mistake her duty as to neglect the real wants of her family. And yet when I see a family with not half its wants supplied, and the parents blessed with good health, I cannot help thinking that something is the matter, there is trouble somewhere or it would be otherwise in this land of plenty. A poor man's time is his estate. I cannot help suspecting a man's Christianity who does not provide for his own household if it is within his power to do so. Ministers of all men have the least time to spare. They should set an example of persevering industry, and the people should follow. Indeed very few of them find time for the rest and recreation that the system really requires, and must have, or wear out prematurely. It is my earnest prayer that we may so spend our time that when our blessed Saviour comes to bring his reward with him he can consistently say to us, “Well done.” MARY STRATTON.