The Closet by Hannah Moore

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 19, 1863

The Closet.

By Hannah Moore

No Christian can be comfortable or prosperous without retirement. Popular ministers may preach, converse, or pray in public, to the edifying of others, and yet decline in their own souls for want of examination, humiliation, and secret prayer, suited immediately to their own case. Nay, the most able ministers will generally cease to be very useful if their religion is neglected, or hurried over in a formal manner. This the fervent Christian knows. He will, therefore, redeem time for retirement at the expense of many inconveniences: and the friends of popular ministers should remember this, and not too much intrude upon the regular needful hours for retirement of those persons in whose company they most delight. In prosecuting the word of God, our own inclinations must be thwarted, we must not "spend our time" with them when duty calls us another way, or when a prospect is before us of doing essential good.

WE are apt to mistake our vocation in looking out of the way for occasions to exercise great and rare virtues, and stepping over ordinary ones which lie directly in the road before us. When we read, we fancy we could be martyrs; when we come to the act, we find we cannot bear a provoking word.—Hannah Moore.