Chapter 109—Publishing Personal Testimonies
In Testimony No. 13 I gave a brief sketch of our labors and trials
from December 19, 1866, to October 21, 1867. In these pages I will
notice the less painful experience of the past five months.
During this time I have written many personal testimonies. And
for many persons whom I have met in our field of labor during the
past five months I have testimonies still to write as I find time and
have strength, but just what my duty is in relation to these personal
testimonies has long been a matter of no small anxiety to me. With a
few exceptions I have sent them to the ones to whom they related and
have left these persons to dispose of them as they chose. The results
have been various:
1. Some have thankfully received the testimonies and have re-
sponded to them in a good spirit and have profited by them. These
have been willing that their brethren should see the testimonies and
have freely and fully confessed their faults.
2. Others have acknowledged that the testimonies to them were
true, but after reading them have laid them away to remain in silence,
while they have made but little change in their lives. These testimonies
related more or less to the churches to which these persons belonged,
who could also have been benefited by them. But all this was lost in
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consequence of these testimonies’ being held private.
3. Still others have rebelled against the testimonies. Some of these
have responded in a faultfinding spirit. Some have shown bitterness,
anger, and wrath, and in return for my toil and pains in writing the
testimonies they have turned upon us to injure us all they could; while
others have held me for hours in personal interviews to pour into
my ears and my aching heart their complaints, murmurings, and self-
justifications, perhaps appealing to their own sympathies with weeping,
and losing sight of their own faults and sins. The influence of these
things has been terrible upon me and has sometimes driven me nearly
to distraction. That which has followed from the conduct of these
unconsecrated, unthankful persons has cost me more suffering and has
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