ON THE CAMP-GROUND by S. M. Spicer

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 1, 1877

ON THE CAMP-GROUND.

By S. M. Spicer

Upon my first day at the camp-ground, before quarters were assigned us, I seated myself apart from the busy throng, and gazed more than gladly into the thick, silent forest. So long had I been deprived of the privilege of thus communing with nature, whose scenes were fondly loved in my childhood, that I now feasted upon the beauties spread out before me.

So dense was the foliage that only here and there a sunbeam found its way through the treetops, and the earth beneath them was wrapped in shadow. But as I glanced upward, my eye following the trunk of a lofty tree, I saw that each successive branch received a greater share of sunshine, till at last the shadows all disappeared in the bright golden sunshine and the cloudless azure.

This upward path from darkness to light seemed to me something like Jacob's ladder, reaching to Heaven, and I longed to see the angels descending to shed blessings on the needy soul. Oh the contrast between the cold, dark clods of earth, and the warm, cheering light of heaven! How significant! the closer to earth we cling, the darker, more deathlike our life; but the higher we climb heavenward, the more light and warmth, the more life and joy. I wonder not that the happy birds seek the high, sunny branches, and pour out their glad anthems to Him who gave life and sunshine, while the moles and the bats cling to the dark ground for their groveling career. Strange that many of God's more intelligent creatures fail to look up to the Sun of Righteousness, and finally perish in the death-damps of sin and darkness.

Here, just before me, is another symbol: Beside that living, majestic tree, which lifts its head rejoicing in the genial sunbeams, lies prostrate a crooked tree, shorn of its beauty and already in decay. Never again will it seek the sunlight of heaven, or rejoice in the vernal bloom of springtime. How came it thus? It died not of age, having reached its perfect stature; some disease or accident must have brought premature death. We see it has a crooked trunk; doubtless from impressions received when a tender twig, which grew stronger and may have hindered it from reaching toward heaven for vitality. Perhaps some noxious insect has long, though unseen, worked within, till the heart is all corruption, leaving only the outward appearance of life. Perhaps, without fruit or sightly grace beside its stately, towering mates, it was removed as a cumberer of the ground.

Whatever the facts in the case, it has a good lesson for the child of humanity. It warns against the early bias of sin, the covert growth of corrupt habits and passions, and the inner death of hollow-hearted hypocrisy, which will deform, defile, and undermine the once noble and upright character, till it shall crash, with its weight of corruption, to the depth of utter darkness.

S. M. SPICER.