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The Highway to Health, May 27
The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto
their cry.
Psalm 34:15
.
The consciousness of rightdoing is the best medicine for diseased bodies and
minds. The special blessing of God resting upon the receiver is health and strength.
One whose mind is quiet and satisfied in God is on the highway to health. To have
the consciousness that the eye of the Lord is upon us, and that His ear is open to
our prayers, is a satisfaction indeed. To know that we have a never-failing Friend
to whom we can confide all the secrets of the soul is a happiness which words can
never express. Those whose moral faculties are clouded by disease are not the
ones to rightly represent the Christian life or the beauties of holiness. They are too
often in the fire of fanaticism, or the water of cold indifference or stolid gloom.
Those who do not feel that it is a religious duty to discipline the mind to dwell
upon cheerful subjects will usually be found at one of two extremes: they will
be elated by a continual round of exciting amusements, indulging in frivolous
conversation, laughing, and joking, or they will be depressed, having great trials
and mental conflicts, which they think but few have ever experienced or can
understand.... Appropriate labor, the healthy exercise of all their powers, would
withdraw their thoughts from themselves....
If they would train their minds to dwell upon themes which have nothing to
do with self, they might yet be useful....
Despondent feelings are frequently the result of too much leisure. The hands
and mind should be occupied in useful labor, lightening the burdens of others; and
those who are thus employed will benefit themselves also....
The mind should be drawn away from self; it powers should be exercised in
devising means to make others happier and better. “Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their
affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world” (
James 1:27
).
True religion ennobles the mind, refines the taste, sanctifies the judgment,
and makes its possessor a partaker of the purity and holiness of heaven. It brings
angels near, and separates us more and more from the spirit and influence of the
world. It enters into all the acts and relations of life, and gives us the “spirit of ...
a sound mind,” and the result is happiness and peace.—
The Signs of the Times,
October 23, 1884
.
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