God's Goodness Acknowledged.
By GEO. KOON.
The Lord has done so much for me and my family within the last six months that I cannot help expressing my gratitude to him in the most public way; and as the REVIEW has been enlarged, I would like to occupy a little space in its columns. I embraced present truth when the tent was at Winterset last summer. I had been a professor of religion for many years, and thought that I was prepared to meet my God; but when Brn. Butler and Canright came to our place and presented the law of God, the Lord opened my blind eyes and I saw that I had lived in violation of the fourth commandment. I thank God that any one was ever sent here to proclaim the third angel's message and build up a little church of Sabbath-keepers who fear God and keep his commandments, and are waiting and watching for the soon coming of our Lord to give us eternal life and make us heirs of his kingdom. Our little company meet regularly every Sabbath, and the Lord meets with us according to his promise. We have a Sabbath-school well attended by about forty scholars, and the Lord is encouraging us by raising up Sabbath-keepers all around us through the instrumentality of Bro. Canright. But we would not stop here, for we think that we have a work to do. The Lord has done well in instituting a public ministry; but the success of his last message lies in the individual energy of his people. It seems to me that if private members of the church do not labor, pray, and live so as to convince skeptics that they believe present truth, the preachers may preach, pray, toil, and weep, till they fall at their post, and comparatively little be accomplished. Present truth should, and will, increase the spirituality of believers. It should be death to formality and cold indifference, and elevate the tone of piety and kindle a fire in the souls of believers that will consume their lusts and remaining sins and make them aspire after higher and holier attainments in the divine life. They ought now to become more active and zealous in the cause of God. They ought to be ready for every good work. They ought not only to pray daily, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, in earth as it is in Heaven,” but they should also labor that this may be accomplished. Some profess to be willing to labor, but do not know where to begin or what to do. This results entirely from a want of reflection and serious inquiry. If each would sincerely pray, Lord what wilt thou have me to do? this excuse would never be made. We are placed in the midst of sin and ruin. All around us is one vast moral waste, with only here and there a verdant spot warmed into life by the genial rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Ten thousand forms of human misery rise up before us, and pure Christianity is almost gone from the land; and yet many say, We do not know what to do. We ought to attend prayer-meeting, and Sabbath-school, and induce all to attend them over whom we have any influence. We ought to collect all the children in our town or neighborhood, and instruct the young in the doctrines of the Bible. Especially we ought to talk to our families, our relatives, our neighbors, and our acquaintances, about the soon coming of Christ and the terrible day of God's wrath, and do it kindly. Private Christian, you have a work to do; and you are just as inexcusable and guilty before God for not doing it, as is the minister of the gospel who neglects his duty. Oh! how our souls should burn with love to God and love to our fellow-men, so that they may not be found in sin in the day of the Lord's wrath. Winterset, Iowa, Jan. 1, 1871.