REVIEW YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE, see if in your own salvation you only accepted an “invitation” and availed yourself of it to secure your acceptance with God, or were you awakened to a sensibility of your guilty, lost and helpless condition by the irresistible and almighty power of God? Was it left optional with you to decide whether you would live or die, when by the arrows of the Almighty you were arrested and arraigned before the bar of Eternal Justice? Why did you there cry, “Lord, save, I perish”? — Why did you not say, “Lord, I will accept Thy invitation”?

- Gilbert Beebe, Editor of The Signs of the Times, from 1832 until his death in 1881 — The above is his Editorial for March 1, 1863.