SHALL WE BE BENEFITED? by A. S. Hutchins

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 11, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 11

SHALL WE BE BENEFITED?

By A. S. Hutchins

As believers in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, will the close, searching truths, the counsels, warnings, and reproofs of Testimony No. 29 benefit us? As a whole, each one of us may regard it as a personal testimony to us, if it is no more definite. It is Heaven-given, and should be thus recognized.

But the question of the profit to be derived from this work is not suspended upon reading it, nor upon acknowledging the genuineness of its contents, nor upon the formation of good resolutions as we read it; it hangs upon a more practical course of action than this,—it is to act in harmony with the counsel given.

Have we sins to confess? Are there wrongs in deed, word, or thought to be adjusted? These should be attended to. The record of past life may not be clean. Self and selfishness, like monsters, may have arisen, and swayed the judgment and controlled the feelings and action. God is moving us to get right; and without much watchfulness and prayer, the golden opportunity will pass, the Holy Spirit will be grieved, and we shall be left to our own darkness and hardness of heart.

A. S. HUTCHINS.