p. 35 | To the Young by A. C. Hudson

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1863

To the Young.

By A. C. Hudson

DEAR YOUTH: I would like to tell you a few things; for I am interested in all young persons, especially in young Sabbath-keepers. I know something of the thorny path you have to tread, the trials that beset your way, and the willingness of the enemy to take every advantage. We find ourselves surrounded with adverse circumstances. We feel our trials; they touch our hearts and cause the tear to flow. We recount our trials and wonder they have befallen us, and again we wonder. It is thus the enemy takes possession of our minds. He diverts our thoughts from the pure and the holy and causes them to rest upon anything else. It is his design to press darkness into our minds till it permeates our souls.

But it don't answer to let our minds run on these things and think we have a hard time. Well do I remember my school days, and my dread of writing compositions. I could make many excuses and tell the difficulties of the undertaking. But if they were put on paper they would not be received as a composition. So if we think our complaints and excuses will be received at the court of heaven in the room of heavenly meditation and holy contemplation, we shall certainly find ourselves mistaken. One has said,

"Were half the breath thus vainly spent, To heaven in supplication sent, Our cheerful songs would oftener be, Hear what the Lord has done for me."

But, do you say, "Our minds are barren; we have few words and fewer thoughts; that the words of others must be the medium of holy thoughts, and that you have no time to go and pray, that many duties rest upon you, and while your hands are busy, the enemy takes advantage of your weakness and suffering to make you complain?"

Dear children, I know what this is. There has no strange thing happened to you. There are many sufferers in the world whose lot is infinitely worse than yours. Think of the suffering in Mormon land, in heathen lands, among the slaves, yes, and in the armies and countries ravaged by war. Run your mind back over the last eighteen hundred years. But I forbear.

Our heavenly Father knows all these things and needs not that we should tell him. He wants us not to think of the sufferings of ourselves; but of the self-denial and suffering our Saviour encountered to alleviate our woes and to prepare a place of blessedness for us. He wants us to think of the occasion of all the suffering which is the transgression of the law. He wants us to think of his holy and glorious law; of the happiness it would confer upon each relation in life if each individual would live up to its precepts. He wants us to think of himself as the Creator of all the loveliness our eyes behold in the heavens, or in the earth, or in the waters; all the harmony of music, all the sweets our senses are capable of conveying to us. And the sciences wonderfully enlarge our knowledge of the beautiful. He wants us to think of the creation of them as an effort to reveal himself to our feeble vision. He wants us to think of the heavenly city, its walls, its gates, its streets, its trees, it flowers, its waters, its mansions, their inhabitants, their apparel, their society, their music, their crowns, their palms; no sickness, no sorrow, no tears, no sin, nothing but love. Yes, he wants us to think of himself, who is love and light and blessedness; of the Lamb of God, who took our sins upon himself, and died in our stead, to make us sons and daughters, kings and priests to the blessed Father.

Yes, we must think of the light of the city, for there is no need of the sun nor of the moon; for God and the Lamb are the light of it. Yes, God and the Lamb are the glory of the city. They are the source and revealers of its beauties. But what am I talking about. Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those who love him. But we may believe the glories revealed to us through the senses as darkly shadowing forth the incorruptible glories of the heavenly state, as the Jewish sacrifices and offerings and ministrations in the earthly sanctuary shadowed forth our great High Priest, and the rites of the heavenly sanctuary. But God has revealed these things to those who love him. Paul speaks of an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, contrasting it with our light afflictions which are but for a moment. He knew what those glories were; for he had been caught up into the third heavens and had seen things not be to mentioned. O, how earthly pain loses its sting and pleasure pales before the enraptured vision of God's little ones.

"Tell who will the story, Of our now distress, Oh, the future glory, Oh, the blessedness!"