Your ShelfYour Projects

Untitled article

17%

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, August 20, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 10

Read the full edition

DISCIPLINE

By JOS. CLARKE.

COMES to us in different ways. Sometimes the child is disciplined, sometimes the man. It may be a kind earthly parent chastises his child; or our Heavenly Father applies the wholesome correction; or it may be a church that attempts to restore an offending member. In whatever way discipline may be applied, we may not consider it as punishment, but a kind and merciful hand which aims to save us.
When an intoxicated person or one insane would throw himself into the sea, his friends and acquaintances gather around him and use all the art and persuasion possible to dissuade him from so wild a freak; so the church aims only to save their offending members from self-destruction; and the madman who stubbornly persists in throwing himself into the sea, is not more beside himself than he who resists wholesome discipline; neither are the consequences less disastrous; one destroys his body, the other loses eternal life.
The drowning man is overjoyed if a friend throws him a plank or a life preserver, to which he may cling until a boat arrives to bring him to land. Why should not we thank God for wholesome discipline, whether it come from God or man; whether severe or mild, when it is so necessary to save us from shipwreck of our faith. As writes the poet;
“Why should my foolish heart complain, When wisdom truth and love Direct the stroke, inflict the pain, And point to joys above?”
JOS. CLARKE.