My own Work | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 10, 1856

My own Work.

THERE is work for all of us; and there is special work for each. It is work not for societies or alliances, but it is work for individual minds and hands. It is work which I cannot do in a crowd or as one of a mass, but as one man acting singly, according to my own gifts, and under a sense of my personal responsibilities. There is no doubt, associated work for me to do; I must do my work as part of the world's great whole or as a member of some body. But I have special work to do as one individual, who, by God's plan and appointment, have a separate position and also a separate work—a work which, if I do not do, it must be left undone. No one of my fellows can do that special work for me which I have come into the world to do. He may do a higher work and a greater work—but he cannot do my work. I cannot hand my work over to him, any more than I can hand over my responsibilities or my gifts. Nor can I delegate my work to any association of men, however well ordered and powerful. They have their own work to do, and it may be a very noble one; but they cannot do my work for me. I must do it with these hands and with these lips, which God has given me. I may do little or I may do much; that matters not; it must be my own work. And by doing my own work, poor as it may seem to some, I shall better fulfill God's end in making me what I am, and more truly glorify his name than if I were either going out of my sphere to do the work of another, or calling in another into my sphere, to do my proper work for me. The low grass tuft is not the branching elm, nor is it the fragrant rose: but it has a position to occupy, and a work to do, in the arrangements of God for this earth of ours, which neither elm nor rose can undertake.

Besides, I have a crown to win; and who can win it for me? I cannot reach it through the toil of another, through the operations of any society of men. I must win it for myself. No fellow man can wear it for me, and no fellow man can win it for me. I must press forward to the mark for the prize of my high calling. My right of entrance into the kingdom has, I know been won for me by the Son of God—That was a work for him alone to do. And he has done it! I owe my deliverance to his blood alone—I owe my acceptance to his righteousness alone. But still there remains for me a race to run, a prize to secure. And therefore must I work without ceasing, with my eye upon the glory to be revealed when the Lord returns; forgetting what is behind, reach on to what is before, "if that by any means I may attain unto the resurrection of the dead."