How It Is Done | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 21.

How It Is Done.

I REMEMBER a man who had been a Christian for two years, but he was bemoaning his hard and sinful heart. I said to him one day, "Did you ever know a sinner who had not a hard heart?"

"No;" he said, "but mine is getting no better."

I arose and closed all the shutters, and made the room quite dark.

"Why do you do that?" he asked.

"I want to teach you how to drive away the darkness," I said; so I handed him a long broom and a duster. "Now, sweep out the darkness."

"I can't," he said.

"Can't you if you try very hard? Will no amount of physical force do it?"

"Certainly not," he said.

Then I opened the shutters, and the room was beautifully illuminated. "So you see that, if you want the darkness and dreadings of your heart to be dispelled, it is not by any amount of effort of your own, but by letting in the light of the Sun of Righteousness. But now that we have such a beautiful light in the room, we may close the shutters again; we shall want no more, I suppose, for a month," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that we are not to expect to have a stock of grace laid up, on which we may draw; but that, if we would continue in the light, we must keep looking up to the Sun, and receiving his blessed rays into our souls."—Sel.