SELFISHNESS.- | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 29, 1873

SELFISHNESS.—

He who only lives for himself and consumes the bounty of Heaven upon his lusts, or consecrates it to the demon of avarice, is a barren rock in a fertile plain; he is a thorny bramble in a fruitful vineyard; he is the grave of God's blessings; he is the very Arabian Desert of the moral world. And if he is highly exalted in wealth or power, he stands inaccessible and strong, like an insulated towering cliff, which exhibits only a cold and cheerless prospect, intercepts the genial beams of the sun, chills the vale below with its gloomy shade, adds fresh keenness to the freezing blast and tempts down the lightnings of angry heaven. How different this from the gently rising hill, clothed to its summit with fruits and flowers; which attracts and receives the dews of heaven, and retaining only sufficient to maintain its fertility, sends the remainder in a thousand streams to bless the vales which lie at its feet.—Payson.