The Side of Regrets by Uriah Smith

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1878

The Side of Regrets.

By Uriah Smith

REGRETS are not pleasant. Every considerate person wishes to avoid all occasion for them, and will do so if possible. We do not consider a person wise who deliberately enters and dwells upon ground which he well knows bears only the bitter fruits of repentance and regret.

Yet how often, and how extensively, is this very course pursued in spiritual things. On which side in spiritual life do regrets lie? On the side of zeal and activity? or on the side of indifference and backsliding? Who ever heard a person regretting that he had been too much engaged in the cause of God, and lived too near to him, and enjoyed too much of his blessing? On the other hand, who has not heard persons regret that they had not lived nearer to God, and been more faithful in the discharge of their Christian duties?

Here is where the regrets come in, and where they are sure to come if the person ever recovers from his backsliding. Yet with this inflexible rule, this unavoidable certainty before them, people pass on weeks, months, even years, letting slip Heaven's richest blessings, and heaping up work for future repentance and sorrow of heart. Is not the strong language of Christ to his unconverted disciples applicable—“Oh! fools and slow of heart?”

U. S.