Items by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1871

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 37, No. 13.

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Items.

By Jos. Clarke

REPROOFS should be mingled to a greater or less degree with encouragement.

Proper rest does not hinder labor, but rather makes it productive.

God has provided the teacher for the school, not the school for the teacher.

Some sins are like an ague, periodical; wisdom dictates foresight in dealing with such sins.

The worker who divides his labor wisely, may often rest while he labors.

The true student is one who not only reads, but studies, meditates, thinks, arranges, investigates.

Those who most scorn the idea of the advent, may perhaps be spared to see the last of the terrors of that event without experiencing its benefits.

That God requires obedience, is not strange; but his mercy and long-suffering are wonderful.

We should examine our hearts as a seaman does his ship before a storm, not as a coquette does her person and her dress for a ball.

The Christian esteems it his greatest pleasure, and highest privilege, to work for God; the sinner considers such expense lost.

If your room is cold, you build the greater fire; so if your heart is cold, have the more of the love of God in it; this will warm the coldest heart.

The more wealth you possess, the more grace and humility you need; for want of this, many are overthrown by wealth.

Get in the habit of looking long and steadily at your own heart, gazing down into its depths of corruption, and do this, until you look your sins out of countenance, and they flee abashed.

Many examine their hearts as they would a den of wild beasts, only to run away affrighted.

Errorists and surmisers are on a par—both are blinded by Satan. A well-balanced mind takes no pleasure in error. Wisdom sifts carefully the chaff from the grain.

The ways of humility are admired by all; but few, however, attain to the practice of this virtue.

We are exhorted to follow the example of Christ; yet how many instead of this, take erring man for a pattern, oftener copying the vices than the virtues of this poor pattern. Many excuse their sins by the poor apology that others sin too. What but the insanity of sin could produce such fruit? Poor sinner, has Christ ever directed you to adopt any standard less than his own? Can you be so demented as to follow the example of a sinner like yourself, when you have such a noble example as Christ has given?      JOS. CLARKE.