HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 15, 1862

HIGHWAYS AND HEDGES.

"Go out into the highways and hedges."

Scattered all over the country, on the hills, among the woods, in back-roads and cross-lanes, are many who almost never hear the words of life. With too poor health or clothes, without conveyances to go, and often without the habit or inclination to seek the house of God, they pass their lifetimes neglected. In the central parts of the same towns sit Christian women reading the stories of martyrs and missionaries, till their imaginations glow, and they think their hearts warm with a missionary zeal. They wish they could do great things for Christ—how they could labor and suffer if they only had a field! They sew in the sewing society and occasionally for the distant missionaries or the city poor, and think, perhaps, that their alms-deeds, like those of Dorcas, should rise up

in remembrance of them. They deplore their lack of "opportunities;" they wish they lived in a city, that they might be actively engaged in missionary schools. For want of some great work many grow indolent and selfish, cherishing all manner of aches and nervous fancies.

To such come the commands of our Saviour: "Gather up the fragments;" "Feed my sheep; feed my lambs." We have often thought that these last simple commands of our Saviour to Peter were intended to rebuke his ambitious boasts. A little while before he had been vaunting, "I am ready to go with thee both to prison and to death!" The common everyday duties were too little for Peter. He must do the miraculous; he would walk on the water; he would volunteer for martyrdom! In his mean denial and wicked blasphemy he had been taught how few sacrifices he could make—how little he could brave for Christ's sake. Now, instead of a mission to mighty deeds, his Saviour only said, "Feed my lambs; feed my sheep." His pride and ambition humbled, he must take the lowly place of the shepherd, watching and feeding the sheep and lambs of the fold.

O Christian men and women! so heroic in fancy! so self-sacrificing in impulse! are you feeding the sheep? are you taking the tender lambs in your arms? Are there not within a few miles of your dwelling, scattered and wandering over the hills, many stray sheep, many neglected lambs? So, in the spring and early summer is the time for such to be clothed, and urged to come to church and Sabbath-school. They cannot come through the inclemencies of winter, and later in the summer may not think it worth their trouble to begin for so short a time. Some help in the way of garments may be necessary as a center for their efforts; then encourage them to help themselves to the rest, if this is possible.

Still, when all this is done, there will remain many who, through ill-health, or with young children, or from other causes, cannot come to church. They receive no religious teaching, except, perhaps, from a chance tract, or the rare visit of a minister, yet "it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should perish."

Here is missionary work for you, Christian sisters. Go to such as a Christian friend. Think what burdens they must bear! You find life sometimes pressing hard upon you, surrounded as you are with comforts and sustained by faith. Think what it must be to those who, crushed by poverty and affliction, are without pleasure in this life, or even hope in that which is to come!

Talk with them: pray with them. Let them see that you feel that life consists not in the abundance of the things that one possesses; that you too find this world unsatisfactory, and that you seek a "better country"—"a heavenly."

You will find backslidden and discouraged Christians, whom you may help to reclaim or encourage. What would have been your own Christian character if you had had no more helps than they?

You will find unhappy wives with worthless husbands, neglected and abused children, desolate widows, and still more desolate women who can look back on no tender memories of husband or child. They are people whose years pass in a dreary monotony, and whose only change is for the worse. Show them sympathy if you cannot bring them joy. Tell them of the precious sympathy, of the tenderness of his invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

God grant us all the love of souls, and patient continuance in well-doing, that, like our Master, we may go about doing good—feeling that we are sent to seek and to save that which was lost.—From the country.