p. 67 | Things that Endure by Celia Burleigh

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 2, 1875

Things that Endure.

By Celia Burleigh

DID you ever think what it must be to be shut away from all the activities which are so much to you—to give up the work that you love, the plans that you have laid, the pleasures that you enjoy—to be shut up with pain and weariness, left alone with yourself? Sooner or later this experience comes to most of us. We find ourselves with nothing to interpose between us and our own soul. It is a great thing to have friends about one at such a time, but a still greater to be at peace with one's self. As we sit in that solitude, unable to work, unable to read, unable to converse with friends, how fortunate are we if memory brings us the record of days well spent, good deeds done, kind words spoken. Then, indeed, may the sick-room be the vestibule of Heaven, its stillness freighted with the peace of God.

In one of the families where I visited recently, was an old man, blind and deaf, and almost helpless. Passing through the room where he sat, looking into the still face, I tried to picture to myself the world in which he lived. Does he live over again, thought I, his far-away childhood? Does his mother's face shine in upon the darkness in which he sits? Do his youthful days come back to him, and were they innocent, unselfish, such as it gives him pleasure to recall? Was he a good husband and father, and a useful member of society? Did the poor find in him a helper—the wronged and oppressed a friend? Then is the darkness in which he sits only apparent, not real. All the past befriends him and makes populous his solitude. He has laid up a store of the things that endure; they serve him in the winter of age; they procure for him divine compensations and abundant entrance into life.

We are not half particular enough about the motives and acts that we admit into our lives. We are particular about the people we invite to our houses and admit into our families; how is it that we are so careless about the thoughts that come and go in the secret chambers of the soul? We can get rid of the unwelcome guests, we can make a little space between ourselves and the disagreeable member of the family; but how shall we rid ourselves of the stain left by an impure thought, of the effect of a hate that had in it the spirit of murder, from the memory of the unkindness that wrung another's heart, the indifference that failed to sympathize with another's distress?

Have you ever stood by the grave of one dear to you, and been compelled to remember, how much happier you might have made that life which has now passed beyond your reach? Has the hasty or unkind word come back to you, and repeated itself over and over again till you would gladly have given a year of your own life to recall it, and make it as if it had never been? Let us remember that those who are now the living may soon be the dead, and beware of adding to the things done that ought not to have been done, the things undone that ought to have been done.—CELIA BURLEIGH, in Christian Union.