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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 1, 1867.

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 16

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THE HEALTHY CHRISTIAN.

A HEALTHY Christian is one who can work as well as eat. If there is a heavy load to carry in Christ’s cause, he takes to it at once. If there is a wall to build, he is the man to lift the big stones. If some one has to go out into the storm and endure pelting opposition, who so able to bear it as his broad breast and brawny arms? A man that loves Christ loves work. A dyspeptic Christian dreads work. A lazy Christian shirks it. What a hospital is many a church! Here lies one poor man down with a paralysis of faith. Here is another laid up by a sprain which he got by a sudden fall into temptation. Here is one whom the fever of passion has burned out; he looks hardly worth the medicine to cure him. Alas, for another, he is under pastoral treatment for the blindness of unbelief! and for another, whose gaping wound reveals the spot where Satan’s fiery dart went in! A revival commonly clears the church hospital. But a long period of spiritual declension crams it to the door-way. Oh, what need that he who went through Galilee healing all manner of diseases, should come into some of our hearts.
There is no one point in this world so critical of Christian character as the power to maintain love toward all men—not a love of personal attraction, but a love of benevolence, that begets a willingness to bear with them and work for them. And you will take notice that the only prayer of the Lord on which he made any commentary was this; “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” On this official prayer he says, “For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive your trespasses.” He conditions a man’s own salvation; he makes the evidence of a man’s own piety to depend on his capacity to forgive. And I think there is not another point on which men have such a fight as on that.—Sel.