SILENT FORCES | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 31, 1877

SILENT FORCES.

The grandest forces in this world are silent and unperceived. They operate unnoticed, but yet with resistless power. A child's tin trumpet makes more noise than the attraction of gravitation, which binds the whole universe as with chains of adamant, but works so quietly that it was thousands of years before mortals discovered its existence.

A babbling brook, or a little fountain throwing its jet into the air, attracts more attention than the hidden forces of nature, which draw millions of tons of water from the earth beneath, and spread it out in herbage and foliage, clothing the fields with beauty, crowning the forests with green, and diffusing fertility and life through all the land.

The forces of vegetation are silent. No lightning flashes to herald the swelling buds; no thunder peals to tell us when the flowers unfold their fragrant beauty; no trumpets are blown when spring unfolds her leafy banner to the breeze, but in the sunshine of the day and in the silence of the night, the work of nature goes noiselessly on, until the desert blossoms as the rose, and the wilderness becomes fair as Eden's garden.

God, who works thus silently in nature, also works in quiet in the realms of grace. Christ the great worker, did not strive nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. Some of the grandest changes that have ever revolutionized the character of society, have been the product of secret causes, working unnoticed and unknown, and bringing to pass the most wonderful events imaginable.

A copy of the Word of God planted in a benighted neighborhood; or a single text impressed upon the mind of a child, has often produced results which no amount of noisy and tumultuous effort could attain. The seed must be cast into the ground, and abide in darkness and in silence there, but in due time God, who giveth the increase, brings it forth in growth and beauty and fruitfulness.

Let us take courage, then, if we be called to work in silence unnoticed and unknown; and let us be careful not to judge others, whose quiet, unpretending labors may be far more successful in ultimate results than the works of those whose brawling clamor makes them the observed of all observers.

Vast heaps of wood, hay, and stubble, will perish in the fires of the last day, but he that buildeth upon the one foundation with gold and silver and precious stones, may look forward to the day that shall try all things with fire, and rejoice that his work, though tried, shall abide the burning ordeal, and shall ensure to him a great reward.—The Christian.