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Our Obligations

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1873

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 42, No. 24.

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Our Obligations.

By R. F. Cottrell

How dark is the human mind naturally to the demands of duty! And how slow to learn and feel the obligations we are under, even when we have determined to obey. We set out to serve God, because we know that we must in order to be saved. Selfishness may be the main motive to action; but it is well to see our danger, and wise to make an effort to escape. But how little is realized of what it is to follow Christ; to labor and suffer for other's good; and to serve God because of our great obligation for his love and goodness, and a deep desire to please him. It takes a life-time to learn our duties to God and our fellow-men; because we are so slow to learn. Those who begin early in life can hardly learn the lesson. Yet many put off the beginning, as though they thought that but little time was necessary to learn the way, and to secure the priceless boon of eternal life. So they selfishly hope to be pardoned on a death-bed, perhaps, feeling no obligation to God to spend their lives in his service, not knowing that the goodness of God has a demand upon them, leading them to repentance.
“Is this the kind return? Are these the thanks we owe? Thus to abuse eternal love, Whence all our blessings flow?”
Could we but realize our obligation as we should, we should feel that we have no time to waste. And we should feel that to devote all to God is emphatically our “reasonable service.” Oh! that I may understand my obligation to God; and not only so, but be able by the aid of the Holy Spirit to fulfill my duties. When I am striving to draw near in the night seasons, I get some glimpse of it, sufficient to fill me with wonder that these obligations are not appreciated more. I would have a clear sense of them, and live to glorify God, and save souls for whom Christ died. I want a place with the saved; and besides this, I wish to know at last that I have not lived in vain and merely for self; so that the master may be able to say, Well done.
R. F. COTTRELL.