The Difference by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 18, 1871

The Difference.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is a warm, lovely spring day, and I have just been out on the prairie for recreation. Passing a delightful brook of clear, sparkling water, I stopped to admire it and to cool my face with its waters. The channel was narrow and the water ran rapidly. I put my hand in and passed it down stream with the current. How smooth! how gentle! it felt like oil to my touch. Then I passed my hand up the stream against the current. What a change! The gentle waters seemed to become angry in a moment. They dashed and foamed and roared, and gave all the evidences of opposition and anger of which such a brook was capable. Then I fell to meditating. This stream is just like the great current of humanity. When you fall right in with it, go the same way it goes, do as it does, then all goes on as smooth as oil. But just face about, and go in the opposite direction from the current, go up stream, and what a tumult is immediately raised! Shall we therefore give up, fall in with the current, and go down stream to perdition? God forbid.

Again, how much easier to go down stream than up stream. Drift wood, sticks, straws, any worthless thing can go down stream, with the current. But do you see anything going up stream, you may be sure there is life and will and power there. When a person undertakes to go contrary to the mass of the world, it immediately cries out, Fool, weak-mind, shallow-brain, drift-wood, &c. But if there is any truth or force in our illustration

these qualities belong on the other side of the house. Who ever saw drift-wood going against the current? Let no one be frightened by the use of these terms.

D. M. CANRIGHT.