MEDITATIONS by J. F. Ballmer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 15, 1876

MEDITATIONS

By J. F. Ballmer

In order to be proper representatives of the truth, we must live it. But in addition to this, God desires his people to have a missionary spirit. If any one is destitute of this spirit, you can consider it evidence that he is not walking with God. Why? Because Christ was a missionary, and we must imitate him.

We ought to seek opportunities for calling the attention of our fellow-beings to the truth; and whenever we can do so, we should awaken a spirit of inquiry in the minds of others, that they may read and search for themselves. In this way we may help to swell the number of those who shall be saved in the kingdom of God.

When a president of the United States is to be elected, how the opposing parties try to outnumber one another. Both parties try in every way to make a complete success. If men will work so to secure a worldly object, ought we not to have some enthusiasm for a higher, a nobler,—a heavenly one?

It is an honor to be engaged in so glorious a work. When we shall look northward and southward, eastward and westward, upon the land that was promised to Abraham and see the saints that were brought through our feeble instrumentality to behold the beauties of the new earth, our hearts will doubtless thrill with joy, peace, and glory that any have been saved through the feeble work that God enabled us to perform in behalf of our fellow creatures. J. F. BALLMER.