p. 82 | Untitled article by R. F. COTTERELL

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, March 24, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 15

NOTHING GAINED BY BACKWARDNESS.

By R. F. COTTERELL

God is leading his people in a great work of reform, in order to prepare them to endure the trials of the days of peril, the hour of temptation and the time of trouble, and finally to be translated at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who move forward with alacrity in this work, and embrace with readiness every step of progress, will receive the benefit which he designs to confer on us, and get the needed preparation. Our Father is pleased with willing and ready obedience, and is displeased with unbelief and tardiness. Every step taken with cheerfulness in the work of reform, prepares us the more easily to take another in the same direction. But those who hesitate, increase their own weakness, and diminish the probability of enduring the tests which are to come. We need not expect our trials and crosses will decrease. We have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin. Small trials well borne will prepare us for greater ones. Hence, what we need is faith and courage now.

The fearful are nearly related to the unbelieving. They distrust God, as ancient Israel did. They indulge fears that the Lord is not leading them, as Egypt and its dainties are left behind. Therefore they are slow and hesitating, and at every new difficulty their hearts turn back to the things they have left behind, and they anxiously inquire, What next?

Now if we have faith in God, believe he is fulfilling his own promise and doing his own work, we will not fear that he has led us out into the desert to kill us with hunger and thirst. We shall move cheerfully onward, and not go murmuring by the way. We would do better to decide, if we have not, whether this way leads to the promised land, whether we are under divine guidance, a guidance that we can fully trust will bring us safely through. For my part, fellow-travelers, I started to go through. I made up my mind, before I left Egypt, that this was the way to Canaan, and I have now no misgivings or fears that the pillar of light we have followed so far will lead us wrong, or that those who move forward cheerfully with their whole hearts will fail of possessing the goodly land.

The Lord will not harm us, but will do us good, if we trust and obey him. He is able to carry the weakest through. What we need is to trust him, and not displease him with our unbelief and reluctance to follow his guidance. Then let us move forward with courage. Let us not draw back to perdition, but believe to the saving of the soul. There is nothing gained, but much lost, by slowness to believe and backwardness to act. Those who come fully up to the light already given, bear the little crosses intended to put the “old man” to death, will be prepared for the real trials that lie yet before us, which none but those who have been faithful to the light they have already received will be able to endure. Our future safety depends on our faithfulness now.

Let every one who prizes eternal life and the heavenly inheritance above the fleeting pleasures of earth, and the unsanctified desires of the flesh and of the carnal mind, take courage and press forward. But those who love this world more than the world to come, those who think it hard to become dead to the world, who love the praise of men more than the praise of God, and an earthly inheritance more than the heavenly, unless they can be induced to change their minds and die to self and sin, become dead to the world and alive to God, need not flatter themselves with the hope of the future. Let them make the most of the present, and not hope for the future, while they choose the present. But the whole-hearted need not fear. Those who choose the unseen and eternal things of the future world, and are willing to give all for it, may hope and trust that they will obtain the object of their choice.

R. F. COTTERELL.