THE FOOLISH ONES | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 30, 1907

THE FOOLISH ONES.

THEY tell us that when ostriches are hunted in Africa, they always afford to the hunter a good and long day's sport. The ostrich can outrun the fleetest race horse. But that bird, too, becomes exhausted. After he has left horse after horse far in the rear, after the rider in succeeding mounts finally overtakes him, in his exhaustion he buries his head in the sand and feels secure.

So man, pursued by the evils of time and the fears of eternity, the evils that reason conjures, and the evils that faith dreads, runs madly away from them, until, in sheer exhaustion, he buries his head in the ground; buries his thoughts, buries his reason, in the things of earth, in the interests of time—and then fancies himself secure. Men have run this rapid course of life; like this poor, irrational bird, they flee from the shadow of every danger, run from every fancied enemy; and when surrounded by evils, without hope of escape, bury their minds in the ground, bury their reason in the earth, and think they are secure.

The man that does not fear God is a man that buries his reason. The Preacher of old said, "The fear of God is the root of wisdom; the fear of God is the fulness of reason." The men who have feared God in every age have been the reasoning men, the wise men. The men who have not feared God have been the fools. Our Saviour has called the man who had succeeded in all his worldly enterprises, and had forgotten his God, a fool. "Fool," He says, "dost thou not know that this night thy soul will be demanded of thee? Then whose will all these things be?"—Western Watchman.