p. 12 | Early Training by Mrs. J. C. Brower

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 26, 1903

Early Training

By Mrs. J. C. Brower

MRS. J. C. BROWER

“Making a mistake in the outset of life is like beginning to unwind a skein of silk at the wrong end. It gives infinite trouble, and perhaps it is in a tangle half through, but it often gets smooth and straight before the close. Thus many a man has so conquered himself for duty’s sake, that the work he originally hated, and therefore did ill, he gets in time to do well, and consequently to like.”—Dinah Mulock Craik.

This has been true of men in secular business. Much more in one whose soul has been enlightened by the divine illumination. And what a satisfaction and joy it is to know that the Lord can make of us “a new creation,” and that in him we can turn failure to success, and reproach to praise and benediction.

Yet even though this may occasionally be true, it does not always come about so. For sometimes when the skein of life is more than half unwound, we find ourselves perplexed and hindered by snarls and knotty places that result from beginning things “at the wrong end.”

Beginning right! How much it implies! Youth who are taught lessons of self-control and burden bearing naturally acquire strength of character as a result of such training and exercise.

The Lord expresses the thought in the simple declaration, “It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.” Lam. 3:27. And the blessed crop of good begins to ripen before the skein is half unwound, blessing not only the one who bore the yoke in his youth, but every one who comes within his influence.