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INFLUENCE

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Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 22, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 36.

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INFLUENCE.

“What a talented minister the Rev. Mr. B. is,” I said to a friend one day. “His sermons are so good that I never like to miss one. I always feel that I have had a rich feast of true gospel meat whenever I listen to him, and I always go away with a stronger determination to live a better life.”
“I know he preaches excellent sermons,” my friend replied, “but I regret to say that they do not affect me as they do you. I am afraid I have a wrong feeling, but I cannot help it, and the secret is just this: A friend of mine, whose word I know is to be depended upon, once heard Mr. B. make a very uncharitable remark, a remark very unbecoming in any Christian, and much more so in a minister. It was made years ago, but I always think of it whenever I hear him preach.”
This remark of my friend set me to thinking more seriously on the subject of influence than I ever had thought before. What an utterly incomprehensible thing is unconscious influence! It is so vague, it eludes so effectually all of our efforts to touch or control it. Conscious influence you can know something about. When you try to influence a person you know what you are doing, and you usually know, too, whether you succeed or not.
And there is as much difference in their relative importance as there is in the size of a giant and a dwarf. I can count on my fingers all of the people whom I am aware of exerting an influence over, and I fear that the number of people whom I have tried very earnestly to influence would not be so large as to be unmanageable; but when I think of the hundreds with whom I have come in contact, either directly or indirectly, and that either for good or for evil they have been influenced by word or act of mine, I tremble for the result for which I am responsible.
How fruitless is the endeavor to make clean only the outside of the vessel, when the inside is full of filth which, sooner or later, will certainly be discovered. How necessary to keep our hearts clean and our thoughts pure, so that we are in no danger of being surprised into actions that would expose the wickedness we have tried to keep concealed, and eradicate the good we thought to accomplish.—Examiner and Chronicle.