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Life Sketches of Ellen G. White
Action gives power. Entire harmony pervades the universe of God.
All the heavenly beings are in constant activity; and the Lord Jesus,
in His life work, has given an example for every one. He went about
“doing good.” God has established the law of obedient action. Silent
but ceaseless, the objects of His creation do their appointed work. The
ocean is in constant motion. The springing grass, which today is and
tomorrow is cast into the oven, does its errand, clothing the fields
with beauty. The leaves are stirred to motion, and yet no hand is seen
to touch them. The sun, moon, and stars are useful and glorious in
fulfilling their mission.
At all times the machinery of the body continues its work. Day
by day the heart throbs, doing its regular, appointed task, unceasingly
forcing its crimson current to all parts of the body. Action, action, is
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seen pervading the whole living machinery. And man, his mind and
body created in God’s similitude, must be active in order to fill his
appointed place. He is not to be idle. Idleness is sin.
A Severe Trial
In the midst of my experiences in meeting fanaticism, I was sub-
jected to a severe trial. If the Spirit of God rested upon any one in
meeting, and he glorified God by praising Him, some raised the cry of
mesmerism; and if it pleased the Lord to give me a vision in meeting,
some would say that it was the effect of excitement and mesmerism.
Grieved and desponding, I often went alone to some retired place
to pour out my soul before Him who invites the weary and heavy-laden
to come and find rest. As my faith claimed the promises, Jesus would
seem very near. The sweet light of heaven would shine around me, and
I would seem to be encircled by the arms of my Saviour, and would
there be taken off in vision. But when I would relate what God had
revealed to me alone, where no earthly influence could affect me, I
was grieved and astonished to hear some intimate that those who lived
nearest to God were most liable to be deceived by Satan.
Some would have had me believe that there was no Holy Spirit,
and that all the exercises that holy men of God experienced, were only
the effect of mesmerism or the deception of Satan.
Those who had taken extreme views of certain texts of Scripture,
refraining wholly from labor, and rejecting all who would not receive