p. 7 | APOLOGIES | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 46.

APOLOGIES.

THE most tedious utterances, because the most superfluous, and often the most hypocritical, to which the public has to listen, are apologies, whether in sermons or speeches.

Canon Fleming, an English author, says: "Apologies have been called the cant of the platform. They all spring from pride. In plain English they mean but this: ‘Let me beg of you not to take my present address as any criterion of my abilities. I assure you I am a much wiser and much cleverer man than you would suspect me to be, were you to judge of my talents by the speech I am about to deliver.’”—Christian Advocate.

WATCHING FOR EVIL.

WE are told that when the Jews saw Christ in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, "they watched him that they might accuse him." Jeremiah tells us, "All my familiars watched for my halting." Jer. 20:10. When the viper had bitten Paul, the barbarians looked for him to swell and fall down dead suddenly; but they looked in vain, and changed their minds and said he was a god.

Many a time men have predicted and have expected the downfall of the servants of the Lord. They have accused them, condemned them, cast them out, and waited to see them sink in oblivion. They have rejoiced to be rid of their presence—like the people in that "great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt" (Rev. 11:8-10); they have rejoiced when the voices of the witnesses which accused them were silenced, and they have prided themselves upon the peace and quiet that they had when every protesting voice was hushed and when nothing but uniformity remained.

The ancient Romans said of certain ones, "They make a wilderness, and call it peace!" So when the silence of death broods, and only dumb dogs remain which can not speak, people boast of the "peace and quiet" they have, when they can have their own way, with nobody to object or complain. But great questions are not settled by majorities, by caucuses, or by snap judgments; and men in whose pulses beats the energy of everlasting life are not to be destroyed by rash speeches or ungodly acts. They live long after they are supposed to be dead; they stand when men have pronounced them fallen; they go forward when opposers try to stop them; and long after the men who have waited and watched for their halting are gone into oblivion, the men who have been condemned, rejected, and cast out, live to keep on the even tenor of their way and finish the work which God has given them to do.

It is hard to kill a man whom God has bidden to live; it is hard to cast down a man whom God is holding up; and those who watch for the halting of the servants of the Lord, and who expect the downfall of men whom God upholds, have yet much to learn of the ways in which God deals with the sons of men.

Let those who are despised, rejected, and cast out for Christ's sake, take courage and be strong. Their time of conflict and sorrow will soon be past; and that God who has been with them and helped them and loved them thus far, will not forget them nor forsake them if they will but trust in him. Above the storms of persecution shines the light of God's countenance, and beyond earth's conflicts and strife there spreads the everlasting peace which passeth understanding. We can await the Lord's appointment; we can trust in the Lord's providences; we can cast our cares and burdens and sorrows upon him; we can spread before the Lord everything that troubles and distresses us; and we may be sure that he will see and watch and overrule and care for those whom he has called to stand in the battle's front and to endure hardness as good soldiers.

Let us cast our care on him, and then when assailed by doubts and fears and dangers, we can say, "Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."—The Christian.