p. 87 | LEFT TO HIMSELF

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 26, 1880

LEFT TO HIMSELF.

In this world it is needful not only to put things right, but to keep them right. Anything left to itself soon goes to ruin. Very often to do nothing is to do mischief. The sluggard's garden was overgrown with thorns and nettles, not because he had sown them there, but because he had neglected to root them out. "The stone-wall thereof was broken down," not because he had thrown it down, but because he had allowed it to fall. Prov. 24:31. It is astonishing how soon a house gets out of repair and becomes a ruin if shut up and neglected. The tiles drop off one by one, the timbers give way, the windows fall in, the floors decay, and in the course of a few years, a house left quite to itself is in a state of dilapidation.

It is just so, with human beings. The seeds of evil are already sown in the child's heart, as the weeds were in the sluggard's garden. They will spring up of themselves, and it is for us to root them up, or they will cover all the soil.