p. 67 | Work in God

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 12, 1873

Work in God.

How many men keep their hearts green and fresh, clear up to the time when they shuffle off this mortal coil? Who go through life, beset by its care, toil and trouble and yet grow younger all the time? Only those who have discovered the great secret of replenishing their higher natures with the life that cometh down from above. No man ever comes so near to accepting and being guided by sheer folly as he does who, reaching the years of discretion and of reason, fails to set to work to cultivate his spiritual nature. No man ever did or will set to work to do that thing without finding God. No matter where he lives or what his station, if he sets out with a teachable spirit, with a persistency that knows no hesitation, to cultivate according to the laws, the economy, and the fundamental organization thereof, his spiritual nature, he will find God.

God, beloved ones, is everywhere present, beholding the evil and the good. And so attached is he to good, and so does he hold evil in disesteem, that any human being living on the earth may wake up in him a great throb of love by resolutely cherishing the good. The least spark of goodness in a man, honestly entertained by himself, is a thousand times more lovingly entertained by God. He will not allow any human soul to perish for want of assistance. When that soul says, in its extremity, however desperate, “Save me, O God, save me, for the waters cover my soul!” that cry for help will find its way to the ear of God where he sitteth in the glory of his nature and down from him to that soul will come spiritual blessings.

So there is no necessity on any one for going through life unhelped; for being a poor, selfish creature; for taking up the meanest elements in his nature and cultivating them. Men go to hell because they want to, not because there is any need of it. They go to damnation because they choose to, not because they are forced to go. They take all the consequences of sin; because they love darkness rather than light.