Going by Feeling

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 39.

Going by Feeling.—Our feelings of duty and field of labor are not always the safest guide. They are more or less influenced by early education and surroundings. The apostle Paul felt that he must go to Jerusalem and the Jews. Dr. Alexander McClaren, in his always excellent notes, on the Sunday-school lesson of October 10 (Acts 22: 17-30) in the S. S. Times of September 25, thus forcibly expresses it:

“But the apostle's heart clung to his nation, and not even his Lord's command was accepted without remonstrance. His patriotism led him to the verge of disobedience, and encouraged him to put in his ‘but, Lord,’ with boldness that was all but presumption. He ventures to suggest a reason why the Jews would receive his testimony, as he thinks. They knew what he had been, and they must bethink themselves that there must be something real and mighty in the power which had turned his whole way of thinking and living right round, and made him love all that he had hated, and count all that he had prized but dung. The remonstrance is like Moses’, like Jeremiah’s, like that of many a Christian set to work that goes against the grain, and called to relinquish what he would fain do and do what he would rather leave undone.”

So also when Paul would preach in Asia the Lord forbade him, and then when the apostle thought to go to Bithynia, the Spirit suffered him not. Acts 16: 7. See also Rom. 1: 13; 15: 22. God knows best. Our present dream may be our future duty; leave all with God unmurmuringly, and follow his opening Providence. God's time is the best time; his way the best way.