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with the keeping of God’s commandments, of which the Sabbath is
especially mentioned, since it is the great memorial of God’s creative
work. Its observance is bound up with the work of restoring the moral
image of God in man. This is the ministry which God’s people are to
carry forward at this time. This ministry, rightly performed, will bring
rich blessings to the church.
As believers in Christ we need greater faith. We need to be more
fervent in prayer. Many wonder why their prayers are so lifeless, their
faith so feeble and wavering, their Christian experience so dark and
uncertain. Have we not fasted, they say, and “walked mournfully
before the Lord of hosts?” In the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah Christ
has shown how this condition of things may be changed. He says: “Is
not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness,
to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that
ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that
thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the
naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine
own flesh?”
Verses 6, 7
. This is the recipe that Christ has prescribed
for the fainthearted, doubting, trembling soul. Let the sorrowful ones,
who walk mournfully before the Lord, arise and help someone who
needs help.
Every church is in need of the controlling power of the Holy Spirit,
and now is the time to pray for it. But in all God’s work for man He
plans that man shall co-operate with Him. To this end the Lord calls
upon the church to have a higher piety, a more just sense of duty, a
clearer realization of their obligations to their Creator. He calls upon
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them to be a pure, sanctified, working people. And the Christian
help work is one means of bringing this about, for the Holy Spirit
communicates with all who are doing God’s service.
To those who have been engaged in this work I would say: Con-
tinue to work with tact and ability. Arouse your associates to work
under some name whereby they may be organized to co-operate in
harmonious action. Get the young men and women in the churches
to work. Combine medical missionary work with the proclamation
of the third angel’s message. Make regular, organized efforts to lift
the church members out of the dead level in which they have been for
years. Send out into the churches workers who will live the princi-
ples of health reform. Let those be sent who can see the necessity of