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The Cost of Salvation, June 6
My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when
thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and
scourgeth every son whom he receiveth.
Hebrews 12:5, 6
.
Christ is our example. He was exposed to hardship. He endured suffering,
He humbled Himself to humanity. Christ bore His burdens without impa-
tience, without unbelief, without repining. He felt His trials none the less
because He was the divine Son of God. You have not a trouble, perplexity, or
difficulty which did not press with equal weight upon the Son of God; not a
sorrow to which His heart was not equally exposed. His feelings were hurt
as easily as yours. Again the life and character of Christ were faultless. His
character was composed of moral excellencies, including everything pure,
and true, and lovely, and of good report.
God has given us a perfect, faultless pattern. God designed to make of
you an able, efficient workman. The mind He designed should be purified,
elevated, ennobled. If the mind is allowed to be exercised with small things,
it will be feeble as the result of unchanging laws. God wants His servants to
enlarge the scope of their thoughts and plans of labor and bring their powers
into vigorous contact with things that are grand, elevating, ennobling. This
will give new springs to the intellectual faculties. His thoughts will take
broad scope and he will gird up his energies for the task of a broader, deeper,
grander work, swimming in deep and broad waters where there is no bottom
or shore....
God sees men’s hearts and characters when they do not see their own
state correctly. He sees that His work and cause will suffer if wrongs are
not corrected that exist in themselves unobserved and therefore uncorrected.
Christ calls us His servants, if we do what He commands us. There is to every
man assigned his particular sphere, place, and work, and God asks no more
and no less from the lowliest, as well as the greatest, than that they fulfill their
calling. We are not our own property. We have become servants of Christ by
grace. We are the purchase of the blood of the Son of God.—
Letter 16, June
6, 1875
, to Elder G. I. Butler, former president of the General Conference.
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