Detached Thoughts

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 22, 1863

Detached Thoughts.

It is not every broken heart which constitutes the sacrifice of God. It depends on what has broken it—whether the experience of misfortune, or the sense of sin—the sorrow of the world, or the sorrow of God. Both break the heart, but it is a different fracture in one case from what it is in the other. God values the latter; and hearts so broken he mends and makes whole.

Some sinners repent with an unbroken heart. They are sorry, and yet go on, as did Pilate and Herod.

A sinner must come to himself, as did the prodigal, before ever he will come to Christ.

The consummation of madness is to do what, at the time of doing it, we intend to be afterward sorry for; the deliberate and intentional making of work for repentance.

When a Christian backslides, it is as if the prodigal son had re-acted his folly, and left his father's house a second time.

There is a mighty difference betwixt feeling "I have done wrong," and feeling "I have sinned against the Lord."

Some sinners lay down their burden elsewhere than at the feet of Jesus.

Ministers should aim in preaching to puncture the heart, rather than tickle the ear.

He who waits for repentance, waits for what cannot be had, so long as it is waited for. It is absurd for a man to wait for that which he has himself to do.

Human friends can weep with us when we weep, but Jesus is a friend, who, when he has wept with us, can wipe away all our tears. And when the vale

of tears terminates in the valley of the shadow of death, and other friends are compelled to retire and leave us to go alone, Jesus is the friend who can and will enter and go all the way through with us.

It is better for us that Christ should be in heaven than on earth. We need him more there than here. We want an advocate at court.

When a family party are going home, it is common for one to go before to make all ready for the rest, and to welcome them. "I go to prepare a place for you," says Christ to his disciples.

Procrastination has been called a thief—the thief of time. I wish it were no worse than a thief. It is a murderer; and that which it kills is not time merely, but the soul.

Surely the subject of religion must be the most important of all subjects, since it is presently to become, and ever after to continue to be, the only and all-absorbing subject.

The obstacle in the way of the sinner's conversion possesses all the force and invincibleness of an inability, with all the freeness and criminality of an indisposition.

In vain will sinners call upon the rocks and mountains to hide them. Nature will not interpose to screen the enemies of her God.

What strange servants some Christians are!—always at work for themselves, and never doing any thing for Him whom they call their Master! And what subjects!—ever desiring to take the reins of government into their own hands!

It is one of the worst of errors, that there is another path of safety besides that of duty.

The man who lives in vain, lives worse than in vain. He who lives to no purpose, lives to a bad purpose.

The danger of the impenitent is regularly and rapidly increasing, as his who is in the midst of a burning building, or under the power of a fatal disease.

How many indulge a hope which they dare not examine!

If the mere delay of hope—hope deferred, makes the heart sick, what will the death of hope—its final and total disappointment—despair, do to it?

The brightest blaze of intelligence is of incalculably less value than the smallest spark of charity.

The sublimest thoughts are conceived by the intellect when it is excited by pious emotion.

There are many shining lights, which are not also burning lights.

Those may hope to be saved at the eleventh hour, who, when called at that hour can plead that it is their first call: who can say, when asked why they stand idle, "Because no man hath hired us."

Some never begin to pray till God has ceased to hear.

The Christian's feeling himself weak, makes him strong.

Genuine benevolence is not stationary, but peripatetic. It goeth about doing good.

Preparation for meeting God ought to be made first, not only because it is most important, but because it may be needed first. We may want nothing so much as religion. It is the only thing that is necessary, certainly, exceedingly, indispensably and immediately.

Some things, which could not otherwise be read in the book of nature, are legible enough in it, when the lamp of revelation is held up to it.

It is easier to do a great deal of mischief, than to accomplish a little good.

No man will ever fully find out what he is by a mere survey of himself. He must explore, if he would know himself.

When a man wants nothing, he asks for everything.—Nevins.