Absent Friends | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 10, 1873

Absent Friends.

Who shall describe the night-watches of those who know that the ocean bears the treasure of their souls—who shrink within themselves, yet seem to find no shelter from the howling blast—who listen and hope that the storm is abating, when it does but retreat to come again with redoubled fury, roaring and bellowing, till the wild wind, and the creaking branches, and the hissing rain, are mingled as it were into one universal shriek! and then the dark, heaving waters seem to rise again, and all is swept away by the booming waves, or by the moaning blast, that groans and murmurs as it falls lower and lower into the abyss of destruction.

UNQUIETNESS is the greatest evil that can come to the soul, excepting sin. For as seditions and civil discords of a commonwealth ruin it entirely, and disable it to resist a stranger, so our heart, being troubled and disquieted in itself, loseth strength to maintain the virtues which it had gained, and with it the means to resist the temptations of the enemy, who, at that time, useth all kind of endeavors to fish (as they say) in troubled waters.—De Sales.