Young and Old

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 11, 1870

In the first years of a church, its members are willing to endure hardships and to make great exertions; but when once it is prosperous, they desire to take their ease. As one who builds a ship is willing to work all the way from keel to deck until she is launched; thenceforward he expects the ocean to buoy him up, and the winds to bear him on. The youth time of churches produces enterprise; their age, indolence. But even this might be borne, did not these dead men sit in the door of their sepulchers, crying out against every living man who refuses to wear the livery of death.—Henry Ward Beecher.