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TAKE IT TO YOURSELF

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 29, 1877

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 49, No. 13.

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TAKE IT TO YOURSELF.

By Annie Teague

Reader, when you look over the pages of a book or paper, be sure to have your mind ready to grasp whatever of good is to be gleaned from it. Do not allow any business to be entertained by your thoughts, other than that afforded by the present company of your author. The careless reader is as accountable for what he loses as is the individual to whose care God has committed other important duties.
Not long since, a lady replied, in answer to my question whether she did not like one of the S. D. A. publications, that she did not know, could hardly tell how she did like it, for she had only occasionally read a verse or so at a time. If you have only time to read a verse each day, much good may be derived, if that little is carefully treasured for future use, and the subject familiarized by thoughtful analysis as your daily work proceeds.
The person who is most benefited by what he reads is he who makes an application of every truth he finds. It may be an unwelcome truth; nevertheless, we should make the personal test, letting the conviction melt down, by the power of God’s love, till it reaches the most hidden and secret recesses of our lives, as the ice and snow melt under the summer sun, filling the dark and dreary caverns in the rock, till cooling springs and streams burst forth with blessings on the earth, from a once cold, unwelcome thing.
If you cannot do a deed of mercy or a work of love, if you have not ability to form wise plans or to preach like a Paul, do not imagine your time need run to waste. Get useful books, and cultivate! cultivate! dig! dig! till you have prepared a brain soil, and planted it with seed that shall “bear thirty, sixty, or an hundred-fold.” You will find daily use for all knowledge that is guided by wisdom.
The Lord has no place for slothful, careless servants, no place for the superficial Christian. He requires us to search for the hidden treasures of his promise, which, when we have found them, we may be accounted worthy to receive, as tried servants of the Most High. ANNIE TEAGUE.