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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
but are of a heavenly nature, you could yet be of use. But much of
your life has been wasted in dreaming of doing some great work in
the future, while the present duty, small though it may appear to you,
has been neglected. You have been unfaithful. The Lord will not
commit to your trust any larger work until the work now before you
has been seen and performed with a ready, cheerful will. Unless the
heart is put into the work, it will drag heavily, whatever that work
may be. The Lord tests our ability by first giving us small duties to
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perform. If we turn from these with dissatisfaction and murmuring,
no more will be entrusted to us until we cheerfully take hold of these
small duties and do them well; then greater responsibilities will be
committed to us.
You have been entrusted with talents not to be squandered, but
to be put out to the exchangers, that at the Master’s coming He may
receive His own with usury. God has not distributed these talents
indiscriminately. He has dispensed these sacred trusts according to
the known capacity of His servants. “To every man his work.” He
gives impartially, and expects a corresponding return. If all do their
duty according to the measure of their responsibility, the amount
entrusted to them, be it large or small, will be doubled. Their fidelity
is tested and proved, and their faithfulness is positive evidence of
their wise stewardship, and of their worthiness to be entrusted with
the true riches, even the gift of everlasting life.
At the conference in New York, October, 1868, I was shown
many who are now doing nothing, who might be accomplishing
good. There was presented before me a class who are conscious
that they possess generous impulses, devotional feelings, and a love
of doing good; yet at the same time they are doing nothing. They
possess a self-complacent feeling, flattering themselves that if they
had an opportunity, or were circumstanced more favorably, they
could and would do a great and good work; but they are waiting the
opportunity. They despise the narrow mind of the poor niggard who
grudges the small pittance to the needy. They see that he lives for
self, that he will not be called from himself to do good to others, to
bless them with the talents of influence and of means which have
been committed to him to use, not to abuse, nor to permit to rust,
or lie buried in the earth. Those who give themselves up to their
stinginess and selfishness are accountable for their niggardly acts and