A Consecrated Life by Leander Hall

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 17, 1903

A Consecrated Life

By Leander Hall

WHO can estimate the good accomplished in such a life, especially when, in God's mercy, it is continued many years? None but the omniscient Mind can follow the lines of moral influence and power. The Christian throws the pebble of prayer into the ocean of divine providence, and the influence is felt in every direction, widening and deepening along the course of eternal ages. Our mission is not to trace out results, but rather to create and put in motion influences. We spin the threads of life, but God weaves them, and in designs of his own. By simple faith we must do our work, and then leave the results with him. We may have only “five loaves and two fishes,” but under the quickening and directing power of the divine Spirit these are sufficient to feed the multitude, with many baskets of fragments remaining.

Causes are constantly creating changes in the material world, but in all the changes created there is no loss—not a particle of matter is wasted. Through the power of heat a quantity of water is converted into steam, and this passes beyond the reach of human vision, and even beyond the power of human knowledge. So the power of divine grace, acting upon the human soul, generates influences which radiate through the wide expanse of God's spiritual kingdom, but in ways unknown to finite minds. Wonderful beyond the power of human thought is the web woven from the threads of every human life. Eternity will not be long enough to trace all the threads in this marvelous web. What inspiration dwells in this thought! What a powerful motive it presents to the people of God to purer devotion and more complete consecration in his exalted service!—Leander Hall.