Warnings and Admonitions
493
dependence will drive you to prayer, and your sense of duty summon
you to effort. Prayer and effort, effort and prayer, will be the business
of your life. You must pray as though the efficiency and praise were all
due to God, and labor as though duty were all your own. If you want
power you may have it; it is waiting your draft upon it. Only believe
[539]
in God, take Him at His word, act by faith, and blessings will come.
In this matter, genius, logic, and eloquence will not avail. Those
who have a humble, trusting, contrite heart, God accepts, and hears
their prayer; and when God helps, all obstacles will be overcome.
How many men of great natural abilities and high scholarships have
failed when placed in positions of responsibility, while those of feebler
intellect, with less favorable surroundings, have been wonderfully
successful. The secret was: The former trusted to themselves, while
the latter united with Him who is wonderful in counsel and mighty in
working to accomplish what He will.
Their work being always urgent, it is difficult for some to secure
time for meditation and prayer; but this they should not fail to do. The
blessing of heaven, obtained by daily supplication, will be as the bread
of life to the soul and will cause them to increase in moral and spiritual
strength, like a tree planted by the river of waters, whose leaf will be
always green and whose fruit will appear in due time.
Some have made a serious mistake in neglecting to attend the
public worship of God. The privileges of divine service will be as
beneficial to them as to others, and are fully as essential. They may
be unable to avail themselves of these privileges as often as do many
others. Physicians will frequently be called upon the Sabbath to visit
the sick and may be obliged to make it a day of exhausting labor. Such
labor to relieve the suffering was pronounced by our Saviour a work
of mercy and no violation of the Sabbath. But those who regularly
devote their Sabbaths to writing or labor, making no special change,
harm their own souls, give to others an example that is not worthy of
imitation, and do not honor God.
Some have failed to see the real importance, not only of attending
religious meetings, but also of bearing testimony for Christ and the
truth. If these brethren do not obtain spiritual strength by the faithful
performance of every Christian duty, thus coming into a closer and
[540]
more sacred relation to their Redeemer, they will become weak in