p. 149 | Marred by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1872

Marred.

By Jos. Clarke

You write a good letter, it is just the thing; you feel that it could not be improved; but still writing on, alas, you write an imprudent paragraph. You were hasty. Your mistake is prominent and glaring. It is astonishing you did not see it. But the letter is spoiled. You will not send it. You burn the whole, because of the error. It would not do to send; your friend would be astonished, perhaps displeased.

So with our lives. We live on from day to day in security. We feel the blessing of God upon us. We think it will be so always. We love holiness and hate sin. We do the thing that is good, and eschew evil. Our hope is bright, and our peace as a river.

All at once a crash! some snare of Satan has been hidden from our feet, and we are fallen. “Where are you now?” says Satan. “All your hopes are gone, your prospects for this warfare are blighted. You might as well give up the race.”

Your three friends, Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, Zophar the Naamathite, all echo about the same sentiments. You feel a good deal as you did about the spoiled letter, as if you might as well be put into the waste basket. But perhaps the voice from the cloud, though more terrible, is more considerate, and you now say, “I am vile,” but it is because of the voice from the cloud that you say it.

Jos. Clarke.