Spalding and Magan's Unpublished Manuscript Testimonies - Ellen G. White

carefully balanced. Affliction and adversity may
cause much inconvenience and may bring great
depression; but it is prosperity that is dangerous to
spiritual life. Unless the human subject is in
constant submission to the will of God, unless he is
sanctified by the truth and has the faith that works
by love and purifies the soul, prosperity will surely
arouse the natural inclination to presumption.
Often prayers are solicited for the believing
souls in adversity and sickness. But those who are
suffering reverses are represented by the bush,
which, though burning, was not consumed. As
Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro in the land
of Midian, "The angel of the Lord appeared unto
him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush,
and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with
fire, and the bush was not consumed." Moses
draws near to see a strange thing. The fire in the
bush does not consume the bush. He learns that the
Lord is in the midst of the bush. So it is in life. It is
not deprivation and affliction that is to be most
dreaded; for the Lord is in it all, helping and
sustaining. Our prayers need most to be offered for
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