The Pen of Heaven

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 30, 1872

The Pen of Heaven

The most common action of life—its every day, its every hour—is invested with solemn grandeur, when we think they extend their issues into eternity. Our hands are now sowing seed for that great harvest. We shall meet again all we are doing and have done. The graves shall give up their dead, and from the tombs of oblivion the past shall give up all that it holds in keeping, to be witness for, or against, us. Oh, think of that! In yonder hall of the Inquisition see what its effect on us should be. Within those blood-stained walls one is under examination. He has been assured that nothing he reveals shall be written for the purpose of being used against him. While making frank and ingenious confession, he suddenly stops. He is dumb—a mute. They ply him with questions, flatter him, threaten him; he answers not a word. Danger makes the senses quick. His ear has caught a sound; he listens; he ties his tongue.—An arras hangs behind him, and behind it he hears a pen running along the pages. The truth flashes. Behind that screen a scribe sits committing to the fatal page every word he says, and he shall meet it again on the day of trial.

Ah! how solemn to think that there is such a pen going in Heaven, and entering on the books of judgment all we say or wish, all we think or do. Would to God we heard it—everywhere and always heard it! What a check! and what a stimulus! Are we about to sin, how strong a curb; if slow to duty, how sharp a spur. What motive to pray for the blood that blots out a guilty past, and for such grace as, in time to come, shall enable us to walk in God's statutes, to keep his commandments, and to do them. “Knowing therefore the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.”—Dr. Guthrie.