The Abundant Life by Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 18, 1902

The Abundant Life

By Maltbie Davenport Babcock

CHRIST said, “I am come that they might have life.” Life is back of love, back of believing, back of hoping, back of everything. Ezekiel in his vision of the “river of life” understood life; he knew what it meant; at first a little stream to the ankles, then, as he went farther on, it came to the knees, and then to the loins, and finally a wide, mighty river. That is life. Do you know what life is?—No; neither does anybody else. Life is indefinable; life is an ultimate; life is God; life is effectiveness; life is power. Adjustment to the things around you—correspondence to environment—that is life. The plodding man does not live. He goes out in the morning and hears the birds, the heralds of the spring, sweetly singing in the trees. The flowers are blooming in the fields, the whole world is full of music, it is everywhere; but the sweet primrose growing on the bank does not for him contain life and beauty and music—it remains a primrose still. Life is measured by the number of things you are alive to. The fullness of our life means what we are about to do. I must have a life that is more abundant than my own poor nature. I must take the power of Jesus, and have inside fellowship with him.—Maltbie Davenport Babcock, D. D.