Untitled article by Henry F. Phelps

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 5, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 21

REFORMED.

By Henry F. Phelps

This is the past tense of the verb reform, and signifies, corrected; amended; restored to a good state; formed anew. Yes, made anew, changed to a good state; no longer in a bad condition; for, having bid farewell to the lusts of the appetite, brought our unruly passions under control, we can press on our way in the Christian journey with alacrity and delight. Yes, reformed. Oh! delightful! Who would desire to change this “good state” back again for that bad one. No longer dependent upon those unhealthy, poisonous narcotics, tea, coffee and tobacco, for strength, nor from the stimulant of flesh-meat. We press our way onward, nothing fearing, our minds clear, unclouded, our whole system in good working order. We suffer but few of those aches and pains we once endured. In short, we are so changed that those trials and temptations that we once so much dreaded and thought to be so hard to endure, are become of little or no account; and greater trials are surmounted with very little difficulty. We almost fancy that one might become a youth again, by reforming.

But what we have said is no fancy sketch. It is real. A great change can be made. A great change is being made in many, and is it not desirable? Come, brother,

sister, you who look with suspicion upon this reform, to you I say, Try it. The benefits to be felt in this life are worth all, yea, more than all the expense. But, thank God! our hope does not all end here. No, no. If we continue this work of reform, we shall, in a little while, be reformed, made anew, even to heavenly perfection, our vile bodies changed and made like to Christ’s glorious body. Oh! joyful thought! Come brother and sister, come sinner, begin and go on with us in this noble work. The pay is good, the reward is sure. “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee. There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.”

The time is near to come when the church of God will be “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.” “And I looked, and lo, a Lamb stood on the Mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, having his Father’s name written in their foreheads. And in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God.”

This is the company I ask you to join. This is the company I mean to be found with. May God help me to keep pace with them, and at last stand with them on Mount Zion.

HENRY F. PHELPS.

Pine Island, Minn.