p. 143 | Sifted Wheat

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 18, 1868

Sifted Wheat.

GOTTHOLD one day looked on while a farmer’s wheat was being threshed, and observed that the men not only stoutly beat it, but trod upon it with their feet; and finally, by various experiments, separated the good grain from the chaff, dust, and other impurities. How comes it, he asked, that whatever is of useful nature, and intended to be profitable to the world, must suffer much, and be subject to every kind of ill-treatment; but that man, who himself does with other things as he lists, is unwilling to suffer, or to permit God to deal as he lists with him? Wheat, which is the noblest of all products of the earth, is here threshed, trod upon, swept to and fro, tossed into the air, sifted, shaken, and shoveled, and afterwards ground, re-sifted and baked, and so arrives at last upon the tables of princes and kings. What, then, do I mean in being displeased with God, because he does not strew my path with rose-leaves or translate me to Heaven in an easy chair? By what other process could the wheat be cleansed? And how could I be sanctified or saved, were I to remain a stranger to the cross and to affliction?