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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, November 19, 1867

Nearness of the Lord's Appearing.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, on his memorable voyage across the Atlantic, was pacing the quarter-deck one morning in deep concern. The previous night, his officers and crew, reproaching him with his illusive hopes, had been threatening to abandon the enterprise in despair. "A new world," he was saying, as he paced the deck that morning, "A new world is yonder!" At length as he gazed upon those "untried waters," his practiced eye discerned a "sign." Some drift-wood floated past. Like Paley's watch on the desert-heath, it was its own certain interpreter. They must be near the mouth of some majestic river by which that drift-wood had been floated down. "Brothers!" exclaimed Columbus, his eye glistening with a calm ecstasy, and his finger pointing to the "sign"—"Brothers! look at that! We shall soon see land." The infirm hearts were bold again; from that hour they were other men.

Is not the church of the living God at this hour on the wide untried ocean steering her course to the kingdom—the "New World" of her "faith and hope!" The voyage has been protracted, till the men of feeble faith have begun to lose heart and to "faint." But stay, my brother! look at that drift-wood. The "signs" declare that the glory is not far off.