Living Epistles by A. Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 8, 1874

Living Epistles.

By A. Smith

Such is the appellation of the children of God in the relation they bear to their fellow-men while passing through this world as candidates for immortality. Upon the tablet of the Christian’s daily life are inscribed, thoughts, words, and acts, that are more or less open to the gaze of mankind, who readily trace the intricacies of the inscription, and pass judgment favorable or adverse to the religion of the Bible.

What carefulness, then, ought to characterize the deportment of the Christian in public and private life, knowing that such weighty responsibility rests upon him as a representative of divine truth. The fact that heavenly angels are ever near to encourage or reprove, should be an incentive to purity of speech and holiness of life. The little child, if a lamb of Christ’s flock, is watched over with tender solicitude by a holy angel, and in every act of its life it should consider whether it would be approved by that pure guardian, who ever beholds the face of our Heavenly Father. Matt. 18: 10.

The mother, moving amid the duties of the domestic circle, may improperly consider her life a blank in the volume of Christian achievements, and, desponding, relax her diligence at the post of duty Heaven has assigned.

But no influence in the Christian world is more potent for good than that of the domestic circle where religious principles control its operations; and who has greater influence to mold the plastic mind of children than their own loved mothers?

Most of the great and good men that have blest the Christian church and the world, owe their greatness to the benign influence of their childhood’s home. Christian mothers, you are living epistles whose indelible character may, if you will, with joy be traced by your children and others, even though you should pass away. Christ is the vine, and his people are the branches. John 15: 5. If they abide in him, they bear fruit. Verse 5. See also Gal. 5: 22. They are holy. Rom. 11: 16. They are temples of the Holy Spirit. 1 Cor. 3: 16. And they are attended by angel guards. Heb. 1: 14. The daily life is an inscription read by men whereby they judge concerning the truth of this.

Reader, what have you transcribed for the gaze of men and angels? How read they concerning you? and how judge they through you concerning the faith you profess? A. Smith.