p. 351 | SELF-COMMENDATION

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1880

SELF-COMMENDATION.

ONE of the temptations to which all of us are exposed is that of thinking that we have been called to peculiar sacrifices or endurances, and that we have borne ourselves bravely and well in the struggle. If we had done anything noteworthy in this line, we should not be aware of the fact. Our absorbed interest in the contest would forbid our standing off to view it impartially, and to pass complacently upon our bearing in the crucial hour. Commenting to a friend on the written words of a lady, concerning the strengthening effect on her character of sacrifices to which she had been called, Frederick W. Robertson said:

"People who make real sacrifices are never able to calculate self-complacently the good the sacrifices are doing them; just as people who really grieve are unable at the time to philosophize about the good effects of grief." And he added that it would have been much better for this lady to have said: "How dare I talk of sacrifice! and how little of it there is in my life—one perpetual succession of enjoyments!" The trials of life which we make the most of in our thoughts are commonly no real trials at all. As Mrs. Browning puts it:—

"We walk upon The shadow of hills across a level thrown, And pant like climbers."

Or as inspiration rebukes the complaining boasters: "Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." What do you know of real warfare? When Moses had so profited by his personal communion with God that his face was transfigured with a celestial glow, he wist not that his face shone. But many of us have an idea that our faces must be shining, after all we have gone through so valiantly, when in truth our features are flabby from want of any high endeavor, or disfigured with scowls in our overweening estimate of our trials and endurances. It may be that we have borne ourselves nobly and bravely. If so, we are not conscious of the fact. If we think that we deserve credit for heroism, we more likely have pursued a course of which we ought to be ashamed. - Exchange.