BREVITIES by J. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 22, 1861

BREVITIES.

By J. Clarke

POPULARITY. How the desire of popularity creeps in at every avenue of the heart. One is honest, and his neighbors applaud, and he is fed by it; he is exemplary, and hears of it from the world, and it pleases him; he is talented, and it is wafted to his ears, and his bosom is warmed at the compliment; he is kind to the unfortunate and distressed, and benevolent in his designs and acts, and all give him credit for the noble trait, and he takes pleasure in this, too. The thanks of the grateful orphan and fatherless come like cordial to the heart; he loves to be thought well of by his fellows; and unless God keep him, unless he keep his own heart, this desire of praise will outgrow his desire to please the good and kind Creator.

God is good, and all good comes directly from him. Let us do all as to him, and for him, and as in his veritable presence. O, how kind and liberal he has been with us all! and now in the distribution of what he has committed to us, let us remember whence we derive all we possess; and bear in mind, too, that all mere popularity will disappear, as letters written in the sand; while deeds arising from pure and holy motives are engraved in heaven.

LEANING UPON THE ARM OF FLESH. One is not always sensible of how much he leans upon his fellows, until tried. When the enemy cuts down one of our friends, or comes into the family circle, and carries away a companion or near relative in whom our hearts were bound up, then we realize, in some degree, how much we rested upon the arm of flesh.

How natural it is, when one is wrong, to try to find some one or more to think as we do; and when one or another declares off, to try to find some one else who will be a safe depository for our wrongs (as we imagine). Thus we run from prop to prop, seeking as one fails to rest upon some other.

Thus do the world. As the pleasures of youth fade, they rest upon those pursuits and pleasures suitable (as they suppose) to their age and sphere, until life is spent in the vain pursuits of pleasure and profit.

This will not do for the Christian. He must get into such a position that he can lie as submissively in the care of God as the infant in its mother's arms.

ANTIQUITY. The Gibeonites [see Josh. ix] deceived the Israelites in regard to their distance from them as neighbors by showing their old and mouldy bread, their worn shoes and clothing, their patched garments, &c. But soon after the league was formed, it was discovered that the wily Gibeonites were near neighbors, their mouldy provisions and worn out garments to the contrary notwithstanding.

So now, the traditional doctrines of Sunday-keeping, natural immortality, endless misery, infant baptism, &c., are upheld by a show of antiquity which will finally prove like the mouldy bread of the Gibeonites, not so old after all.

AN ILLUSTRATION. A kind father settles upon his son an income of seven thousand dollars a year, with this condition, to test his honesty: he says to his son, You may draw upon my stock in bank $7000 per year; but one thousand you must pay back to me.

The son draws his money, but pays back always a little less than the stipulated $1000. Some years $10 less, some years $7 less, sometimes a little smaller, sometimes a little larger sum. Now would he not be a miserable, ungrateful son? Not less the professed commandment-keeper who is so fearful of losing a part of the six working days, that he encroaches upon the seventh. O, how low and mean, when God has given us six-sevenths, to filch a trifle from his fraction of one-seventh. J. CLARKE.