Your ShelfYour Projects

A. E. PLACE

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 10, 1914

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 91, No. 38.

Read the full edition

A. E. PLACE

By A. E. Place

“Judge Not”—No. 7

A. E. PLACE

A BIBLE worker once said to one of her readers who was hesitating over the Sabbath question, “Well, I have shown you the truth on this question. The seventh day is the Sabbath, and if you do not keep it you will be lost.”
This judgment may have been right theoretically, or it may have been wrong. It may have been the truth, or it may not.
That the worker was sincere and honest, we do not question. To her, the Sabbath truth was in no sense a question, but to her reader it may still have been, notwithstanding the worker’s earnest efforts to make it plain. The great question is, “What would Jesus have said to that woman? What would he do today?” Of him we read, “The same yesterday, and today, and forever.” Then, if we know how he dealt with humanity while in the flesh, we may know how he would deal with humanity, and how he is dealing with them today.
As workers, we need constant communion with Christ; we must have his Spirit and his way if we would be successful in leading souls to him. We may lead them to the theory or form without a living connection; but how poor, how empty, is the man or woman who has been led to theory, but not to Christ!
But let us note what effect the judgment had upon the lady in question. Without hesitation she replied, “Very well, I will not trouble you to come here to give any further readings.”
Please note the logic. When a judge renders a verdict, or passes sentence upon a prisoner, his work for that prisoner is at an end, and at once the prisoner closes his relations with the judge. A gulf is fixed, which, if the sentence is not suspended, is final.
The sad question comes to me with force as I write, How many gulfs have I made between myself and God’s children by an unwise, un-Christlike use of my tongue? At times an almost inexpressible sadness comes over my soul as I look back across chasms which I can see (and doubtless many have been made which I do not see), chasms which can never be filled in this world, and across each one is written, “Unjust Judgment.”
A word or a sentence, how easily it slips through unguarded lips, and is gone! We can never overtake it, and its influence may never be corrected.
Our only hope is in God. How blessed is the thought that “his hand is stretched out still”! I pray that he will in pitying tenderness place one of those hands over the dark chasms of the past, and with the other lead us in the paths of wisdom for all the future, breathing into our hearts such love for our brethren, his children, that we would rather die for them than misjudge them.
Perhaps I may be permitted to give one of my personal experiences. In a series of tent meetings I had practically finished the Sabbath question. At the close of a sermon of arraignment, a lady whom I had noticed was much agitated during the service, came to me with the question, “Do you mean to tell me that I can’t be a Christian unless I keep Saturday?” I replied, “The Bible says plainly that the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God, and you know that Saturday is the seventh day.” She replied, “I won’t keep it! If I knew I should go to hell if I did not keep it, I want to tell you that I would not keep it!” And with that she turned and hurried out of the tent, apparently in a rage.
I was young in the ministry then, and I at once judged that poor woman. Do you ask how? I simply said to myself, “That woman is lost!” So convinced of this was I that I did not even look for her. But consider my surprise when in less than two weeks from that time that same woman came into the tent at our Sabbath services. In the testimony meeting she arose, and with weeping eyes and a happy heart she thanked God that she was a Sabbath keeper, a seventh-day Sabbath keeper.
Later she told me that the day she left the tent she was under such deep conviction that she was in agony, and longed to ask me to earnestly pray for her that she might not be lost.
Think of it! That very day when a soul was in agony, longing for deliverance, longing for me to pray for her, I was not only not praying, but I was judging—misjudging. But thank God, there was one who did pray. Jesus prayed for her. He made intercessions for her according to the will of God; and another daughter of Adam was delivered from bondage, and led into the way of truth. Jesus said to her also, “Go, and sin no more.”