p. 249 | TRUE GREATNESS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 3, 1880

TRUE GREATNESS

"Political eminence and professional fame," says Daniel Webster, "fade and die with all things earthly. Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth. These remain. Whatever of excellence is wrought into the soul itself, belongs to both worlds. Real goodness does not attach itself merely to life; it points to another world. Political and professional fame cannot last forever, but a conscience void of offense before God and man, is an inheritance for eternity. Religion, therefore, is a necessary, an indispensable element in any great human character. There is no living without it. Religion is the tie that connects man with his Creator, and holds him to his throne. If that tie is sundered or broken, he floats away a worthless atom in the universe, its proper attractions all gone, its destiny thwarted, and its whole future nothing but darkness, desolation, and death. A man with no sense of religious duty is he whom the Scriptures describe in so terse but terrific a manner as 'living without God in the world.' Such a man is out of his proper being, out of the circle of all his duties, out of the circle of all his happiness, and away, far, far away from the purposes of his creation."—The Counselor.