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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
and deeds. Friendly sympathy and real feelings of tender interest for
others would bring to your souls blessings that you have never yet
experienced and would bring you into close relation to our Redeemer,
whose advent to the world was for the purpose of doing good and
whose life we are to copy. What are you doing for Christ? “Strive to
enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter
in, and shall not be able.”
Love and Sympathy at Home
There are many in our world who are starving for the love and
sympathy which should be given them. Many men love their wives,
but are too selfish to manifest it. They have a false dignity and pride,
and will not show their love by words and deeds. There are many
men who never know how starved is the heart of the wife for words
of tender appreciation and affection. They bury their loved ones from
their sight and murmur at the providence of God that has deprived
them of their companions, when, could they look into the inner life of
those companions, they would see that their own course was the cause
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of their premature death. The religion of Christ will lead us to be kind
and courteous and not so tenacious of our opinions. We should die to
self and esteem others better than ourselves.
God’s word is our standard, but how far have His professed people
departed from it! Our religious faith must be not only theoretical, but
practical. Pure and undefiled religion will not allow us to trample upon
the rights of the least of God’s creatures, much less of the members
of His body and the members of our own family. God is love, and
whoso dwelleth in Him dwelleth in love. The influence of worldly
selfishness, which is carried about by some like a cloud, chilling
the very atmosphere that others breathe, causes sickness of soul and
frequently chills to death.
It will be a great cross for you to cultivate pure, unselfish love and
disinterested benevolence. To yield your opinions and ideas, to give up
your judgment, and to follow the counsel of others will be a great cross
to you. The several members of your family now have families of their
own. But the same spirit which existed to a greater or less extent in
their father’s home is carried to their own firesides and is felt by those
outside of their family circles. They lack sweet simplicity, Christlike