Daydreaming
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unhappy thoughts and unhappy experience, gathering thorns, and
taking satisfaction in wounding yourself with them. You indulge in
a dreamy habit, which must be broken up. You leave duties undone.
Work which you ought to do to relieve others you neglect for the
pleasure of indulging your own unhappy musings. You do not know
yourself. Up to duty! Arouse yourself and take up your neglected
duty. Redeem the past by future faithfulness. Take hold of the work
before you, and, in the faithful performance of duty, you will forget
yourself and will not have time to muse and become gloomy, and feel
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disagreeable and unhappy.
You have almost everything to learn in the Christian experience.
You are not improving as fast as you might, and as you must, if you
ever obtain eternal life. You are now forming a character for heaven
or one which will debar you from heaven. You have had your mind
and thoughts so engrossed in yourself that you have not realized what
you must do in order to become a true follower of the meek and lowly
Jesus. You have neglected your home duties. You have been a cloud
and a shadow in the family, when it was your privilege to shed light
and be a blessing to the dear ones around you. You have been pettish,
fretful, and unhappy, when there was, in reality, nothing to make you
so. You have not been awake to see what you might do to lift the
burdens from your mother and to bless your parents in every way
possible. You have looked to your parents and sisters to help you to
be happy and to minister to you, to do for you, while your thoughts
have been centered upon yourself. You have not had the grace of God
in your heart, while you have deceived yourself in thinking that you
were really advanced in the knowledge of the divine will.
You have been ready to engage in conversation with those not of
our faith, when it was impossible for you to present an intelligent
reason of our faith before them. In this you do not rightly represent
the truth and do much more injury to the cause of truth than you do
good. If you should talk less in vindication of our faith and study your
Bible more and let your deportment be of that character which would
testify that the influence of the truth was good upon your heart and
life, you would do far more good than by mere talk, while you lack
faithfulness in so many things.
If you are careful to follow the example of our self-denying, self-
sacrificing Redeemer, who was ever seeking to do good and to bless