Men and Things by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 11, 1871

Men and Things.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

AN ENCOURAGING THOUGHT.

I fully believe the sentiment of the following words to be true; and it encourages me much to hope on and trust in God that he will lead me in the right path though it be a dark and rugged one for a time. If there are any sad and sorrowing souls who read this, may it lead them to hope in God “for the bright, the better day.”

NO EVIL IS WHOLLY EVIL.—No evil is wholly evil! This is one of the bright gleams of light that stream in upon all nights, even the darkest. No evil is wholly evil. Behind the blackest cloud the sun shines—or the stars. All our trials and sorrows have elements of good in them; hopeful features which smile upon us in gentle reproof of our unbelief and discouragement. Now and then, as the swift shuttle passes, we catch glimpses of bright threads weaving themselves into the dark web of our afflictions. Hidden relations of events are discovered in this or

that direction, when we did not look for them. And, by-and-by, the future good, which at first was shut out by the present and nearer evil, begins to lift itself into the line of vision; and we feel our faith increased and confirmed at last, in the ever joint action of the infinite power and love of the Father. Long time ago I wrote this; and as the years drift by, and the sphere of observation is extended, and I discover how singularly the threads of good and evil, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, cross and recross as warp and woof in the loom of life, and intertwine and weave up into the web of destiny, the more firmly do I believe this, the greater is my confidence in that Wisdom which orders with equal mercy darkness and light, suffering and rejoicing, death and life.

TOUCHING LINES.

Who can read the following lines, and not see in them an image of his own life? Who can look over his past life without feelings of regret and remorse? Could we but go back and correct the mistakes, undo the wrongs, and wipe out the sins, who would not give much, very much, to do so? But, alas for that poor soul who cannot look back on any green spot, on any sweet moment, on any noble deed, on any good done. Old age would be intolerable without these. These lines are entitled, “Reward,” and were written by J. G. Whittier.

“Who, looking backward from his manhood’s prime, Sees not the spectre of his misspent time? And, through the shade Of funeral cypress planted thick behind, Hears no reproachful whisper on the wind From his loved dead?

“Who bears no trace of passion’s evil force? Who shuns thy sting, O terrible remorse? Who does not cast On the thronged pages of memory’s book, At times, a sad and half-reluctant look, Regretful of the past?

“Alas! the evil which we fain would shun We do, and leave the wished-for good undone; Our strength to-day Is but to-morrow’s weakness, prone to fail; Poor, blind, unprofitable servants all Are we alway.

“Yet who, thus looking backward o’er his years, Feels not his eyelids wet with grateful tears, If he hath been Permitted, weak and sinful as he was, To cheer and aid in some ennobling cause, His fellow-men?

“If he had hidden the outcast, or let in A ray of sunshine in the cell of sin— If he hath lent Strength to the weak, and, in an hour of need, Over the suffering, mindless of his creed, Or home, hath bent,

“He has not lived in vain, and while he gives The praise to Him in whom he moves and lives, With thankful heart; He gazes backward, and with hope before, Knowing that from his works he nevermore Can henceforth part.”

CALL THINGS BY THEIR RIGHT NAMES.

A late writer in the Christian Union ends an article on the Sunday question thus: “Is it not time for all good Christians to quit calling Sunday the Sabbath?” Yes, indeed; and we are glad people are beginning to think so. This Sunday-Sabbath question is beginning to attract the attention of all classes. The least move in the right direction we hail with joy. When people find out that really Sunday is not the Sabbath, perhaps they will begin to inquire which day is.

A WORD TO IDLERS.

“That doesn’t mean me,” perhaps the reader will be inclined to say, and so pass it by. But stop a minute. What are you doing in the world? Whom are you benefitting? Whom are you making happier or better? What is your life amounting to any way? Do you begin to say that if your circumstances had been more favorable, if you had means, if you had opportunity, if you had time, &c., &c., what great things you would have done? No; you would not have done any such thing. God placed you just where you were wanted, and if you have failed there, you would have failed anywhere. Read the following, and then go to work in good earnest with the ability, means, and opportunity you have:

“If I only had capital,” we heard a young man say a few days ago, as he puffed away at a ten-cent cigar, “I would do something.”

“If I only had capital,” said another as he walked away from a dram-shop where he had just paid ten cents for a drink, “I would go into business.”

The same remark might have been heard from the young man loafing on the street corner. Young man with the cigar, you are smoking away your capital. You from the dram-shop are drinking yours and destroying your body at the same time; and you on the street corner are wasting yours in idleness and forming bad habits. Dimes make dollars. Time is money. Don’t wait for a fortune to begin with. If you had ten thousand dollars a year and spent it all, you would be poor still. Our men of power and influence did not start with fortunes. You, too, can make your mark if you will. But you must stop spending your money for what you don’t need, and squandering your time in idleness.

HOW CAN IT BE REMEDIED?

What is that? I mean the terrible fever for moving, so prevalent in the West. We go into a town, raise up a small, but promising, church, go back in a year or so, and frequently find a good portion of the members gone to Kansas, Missouri, Nevada, or somewhere else, and the remnant discouraged, and the church about broken up. This is occurring all the time. Indeed, it seems to be growing worse. I am satisfied that this is not right. It is a restless, uneasy, and frequently a covetous, spirit that is at the bottom of it. This is not always the case; but I fear it is largely so. The glory of God and the salvation of souls is not the object. Persons who once get in the habit of moving, never know when to stop. They never find just the place for them. And so you will find them moving every two or three years from place to place. With such, life is always sure to be a failure.

But other churches are troubled in this way as well as ourselves, as may be seen from the following:—

“The difficulties attending clerical work on the border is thus hinted by a Nebraska correspondent of the Christian Register: ‘There are good elements in all these western cities to work upon in a desultory way; but they are hard to organize and consolidate. The minister hardly lays hands on a parishioner and calls him his, than he (the parishioner, I mean) is off to Chicago, or St. Louis, or Indianapolis, or New York, or Salt Lake, or Kansas, or out “on the plains,” and somebody equally transient, if anybody, must fill his place. What do you think of that, you New England parsons, who have learned to love and be loved through long series of years?’”

JESTING UPON THE SCRIPTURES.

How carefully should this be avoided by all pious persons, especially the ministers. There is no good in it, no excuse for it. It is evil, and only evil. A writer has well said:—

“The evils arising from jesting upon Scripture are even greater than appear at first. It leads in general to irreverence for Scripture. No man would jest with the dying words of his father or mother; yet the words of God are quite as solemn. When we have heard a comic or vulgar tale connected with a text of Scripture, such is the power of association that we never hear the text afterward without thinking of the jest. The effect of this is obvious. He who is much engaged in this kind of false wit will come at length to have a large portion of holy Scripture spotted over by his unholy fancy.”

D. M. Canright.