p. 2 | STUDY II by A. Reader

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 7, 1900

STUDY II.

By A. Reader

A. READER.

Study what?—The Review. “Oh, I do! I never think of attempting to review the Sabbath-school lesson with the school without giving it a careful, prayerful examination.”

I am glad to hear you say so; however, I was not thinking of the Sabbath-school lesson especially, but of our dear old paper, the REVIEW AND HERALD; and let me say again, dear brother, do not be satisfied with the common, careless way of going over its columns, but study it. Read slowly, in the fear of God, and make the thought your own. I have been a bookworm nearly all my life of more than fifty years, and I know that bookworms amount to very little; but I know that the Lord has forgiven me that sin, and has answered to a happy extent my anxious question, “What, when, and how shall I read?”

Oh, the precious articles contained in our dear paper from week to week! Are they not written and selected by men and women who are walking with God and have learned of him? and are they not much more valuable than many of us have given them credit for? Take, for example, No. 24 of the present volume, although each number later seems just as precious.

But now let us reread that paper together, beginning with “The Things I Miss.” Ah! have we really thanked our Father for them?

Then “Caiaphas:” can we possibly conceive what he will pass through before he suffers the second death? May God save us from pride and jealousy.

Then “Our Words:” can we speak or write in future enough of them to atone in some measure for past wrongs?—Maybe so; but they must be brimful of love, joy, peace, long-suffering.

Now let us glance at “Life’s Mirror.” Who of us has committed it to memory, with a determination to profit by the sentiment?

Now Brother Westbrook’s article on the third commandment: how good the dear Lord has been to urge this upon our attention! I read that article over four times, thanking the Lord more heartily at each reading. The next day I met a dear old Irishman, a member of the Catholic Church, spading on the street, and swearing because of the hardness of the ground.

I gave him this new version of the third commandment in as kindly a manner as I knew how, and he received it in the same way.

“Rome in the Book of Daniel”—here is portrayed the sad fate of a nation that was inconsistent with its profession. Then follow “The Hour of God’s Judgment Is Come” and “Be Thou Prepared.”

Then that good “Food for Soul and Body.”

Then the good things in the Home department, and “Suitable Reading for Children.”

Then the Editorial department—“The Third Angel’s Message: The Place of Sunday Legislation in the Making of the Beast;” the “Studies in Galatians: the Two Covenants;” “Mine;” “The Cause of Babylon’s Fall Is Revealed;” and “A Call” to the church-school work.

And now comes the last, but by no means the least,—Brother and Sister Lamie’s faithful efforts in Scotland. We said, when they and their dear ones left us, “We’ll pray for you;” and now we know that God has blessed them.

And besides all this, there are precious bits of news, and the last-page notes, telling us how stand the world’s affairs as related to the signs of the times and of the end.

Is there a Seventh-day Adventist on the globe who does not regard the REVIEW AND HERALD as one of God’s special instruments in the closing work of the gospel?—I think not. But when we take it in our hands as it comes to us from week to week, and begin to peruse it, do we fully and clearly sense this fact?