p. 263 | Untitled article

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, October 8, 1867

COMFORT FOR THE FORGETFUL.

WE must not measure the benefit we receive from the preached word according to what of it remains, but according to what effect it leaves behind. Lightning, you know, than which nothing sooner vanishes away, often breaks and melts the hardest and most firm bodies, in its sudden passage. Such is the irresistible force of the word; the Spirit often darts it through us, it seems like a flash, and gone, and yet it may break and melt down our hard hearts before it, when it leaves no impression at all upon our memories. I have heard of one, who returning from an affecting sermon, highly commended it, and being demanded what he remembered of it, answered, “Truly I remember nothing at all; but only while I heard it, it made me resolve I would live better, and so by God’s grace I will.” To the same purpose I have somewhere read of one who complained to an aged, holy man, that he was much discouraged from reading the Scriptures, because he could fasten nothing upon his memory which he had read. The old man bade him take an earthen pitcher and fill it with water; when he had done this, he bade him empty the pitcher again and wipe it clean, that nothing remain in it. While wondering at what this tended, he said, “now though there be nothing of the water remaining in it, yet the pitcher is cleaner than before; so, though thy memory retain nothing of the word thou readest, yet thy heart is the cleaner for its very passage through it.”—Bishop Hopkins.

EVERY day is full of a most impressive experience. Every temptation to evil temper which can assail us to-day will be an opportunity to decide the question whether we shall be tossed by the restlessness and agitation of the world, or whether we shall gain the calmness and the rest of Christ. Nay, the very vicissitudes of the seasons, day and night, heat and cold, rain and sunshine, affecting as variably and producing exhilaration or depression, are so contrived as to conduce toward the being we are to become, and decide whether we shall be masters of ourselves or whether we shall be swept at the mercy of accident and circumstance, miserably susceptible of merely outward influences. Infinite as are the varieties of life, so manifold are the paths to a saintly character; and he who has not found out how, directly or indirectly, to make everything converge toward his sanctification, has as yet missed the meaning of this life.—Sel.