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SILENCE

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1877

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 50, No. 20.

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SILENCE

By Gerard Tersteegen

Your calling is, to forsake in reality the world and its spirit; to die continually to your corrupt nature and all the sinful life of self; to converse night and day with God in your hearts, in the exercise of true prayer. Again, pray much and speak little. Oh, let me particularly recommend to you that sacred, gentle, and peaceful silence, which God and all his saints love so much.
The spirit of loquacity is the bane of all religious society, the extinction of devotion; it occasions confusion of mind, is an abuse of time, and a denial of the divine presence. Love, obedience, courtesy, or necessity must influence the tongue to speak, else it should continue silent. . . . Edify one another more by a holy walk than by a multitude of words. God dwells only in peaceful souls, and the tongue must be at peace also.
Behold the fruit of sacred silence! It gives time, strength, collectedness, prayer, liberty, wisdom, the society of God, and a blessed and peaceful state of mind.—Gerard Tersteegen.