Our Basket | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 6, 1879

Our Basket.

“A little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts and almonds.” Gen. 43:11.

THERE is just now a great clamor and demand for “culture,” but it is not so much culture that is needed as discipline.—Shedd.

SET a guard on the outward senses. Thoughts and words are but preparative to deeds. Subdue thy flesh to the Spirit and discipline of God.

ADVICE AND AID.

He who gives much advice and little aid, When on the heart woe’s heavy load is laid, Is one who sweeps a cobweb from the wall, And leaves the great black spider after all.

“WELL, madam,” said John Newton to one who was complaining of the imperfections of others, “if there were a perfect church on earth, it would cease to be so the moment you and I entered it.” And that remark still has a pertinent application for those who we fear won’t apply it.

MOTHER, your work is a hard one; but it pays. It costs something to be a good mother; it costs time, and devotedness, and self-sacrifice; but no love on earth is like that which a faithful mother wins and holds from a faithful son. That love is accumulating for you with every breath of generous Christian fidelity to the interests of your boy.

FORGIVENESS OF THOUGHT.—Do we not sometimes forget that the thoughts of our hearts may be as sinful as any acts of our lives? The Saviour has taught us that all sin commences there, that the angry thought is murder, that every passion in its embryonic state has in it all the elements of sinfulness which pertain to the completed act. When, then, we turn to God for “forgiveness of sins that are past,” we need to pray that our hearts may be cleansed, and that the sins of thought as well as of word and deed may be blotted out.