p. 4 | Volume 45 by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1875

Volume 45.

By Uriah Smith

THE REVIEW enters with this number on a new year and a new volume. Through all its past history we can see that the Lord has led. The future presents only omens of encouragement and good cheer. In ourselves we have nothing of which to boast. But we have a right to make our boast in the Lord. Whatever in our history has been achieved which he has not done, had better be thrown away, and left out of the account; but the good things which he has wrought for us, it is well to acknowledge to his praise, and thus glorify his name.

And standing here on the dividing line between 1874 and 1875, and between volumes 44 and 45 of our beloved paper, and from this height sweeping all the horizon round, taking in a retrospect of the past, a survey of the present, and a glance into the future, we raise a loud and fervent note of gratitude to God for the way in which he hitherto hath helped us.

All things combine to assure us that this is the cause of God. And to the lover of truth, no assurance could be more precious. It is more than houses and lands, more than earth's pleasures and treasures. What are these to the fact that the cause in which we have enlisted heart and hand, is the work which the Most High is now accomplishing among the children of men? And of this we have the most abundant assurance. Oh! that more of the power of this great truth could be felt in our hearts and manifested in our lives.

We need have no fears for the progress and triumph of this work. The hand of Omnipotence is behind it, to carry it forward to swift and certain victory. The only anxiety we have occasion to entertain is whether or not we shall triumph with it; whether or not we shall be faithful in the station, and the work, to which we are called. We can defeat the grace of God in our own cases; but we cannot retard the work, nor hinder the swift approach of the great day which is drawing near. Let us be faithful. Our all depends upon it.

John heard the living beings in Heaven crying day and night without ceasing, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” because they were ever gaining new views of his greatness and glory. So the workers in God's cause on earth, well assured as they have been in the past of the genuineness of this cause, are continually receiving new assurances that it is the work of the Lord for this time. What God is doing, and what he is to do, who can hinder? Men may misrepresent and oppose it; devils may rage and try to crush it; but what are men or devils when compared with God?

Everywhere the cry is coming up, “Watchman, what of the night?” The spirit of inquiry is abroad. The REVIEW, with some noble co-workers in the field, pants to go into all the land to meet it.

A most interesting season in this place, the Biblical Institute, is drawing to a close. Many young men and some men of age, all strong in faith, and most of them strong in body, have spent the time in an earnest review of the evidences of our position. And with the study of the theory has gone a spirit of devotion, and a desire for more spirituality and the power of the truth. This must be a characteristic of that work which is to fit up a people for translation to Heaven. We expect soon to hear from these earnest soldiers, from all parts of the field.

And the end is near. Soon the rest will repay all the weary toil. The warfare is almost over. A little longer the jeers and scoffs of an unbelieving world may fall upon our heads; but soon, in the crown of God's everlasting approbation, they will all be lost and all forgotten.

U. S.