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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
and has become a crime which now constitutes one of the signs of
the last days, even as marriages, managed as they were previous
to the Flood, were then a crime. Satan is constantly busy to hurry
inexperienced youth into a marriage alliance. But the less we glory
in the marriages which are now taking place, the better. When the
sacred nature and the claims of marriage are understood, it will even
now be approved of Heaven, and the result will be happiness to both
parties, and God will be glorified. May the Lord enable you to do
the work before you to do.
I am about to write upon this wrong, deceptive work which is
carried on under the cover of religion. The lust of the flesh has
control of men and women. The mind has been depraved through a
perversion of the thoughts and feelings, and yet the deceptive power
of Satan has so blinded their eyes that poor, deceived souls flatter
themselves that they are spiritually minded, especially consecrated,
when their religious experience is composed of lovesick sentimen-
talism more than of purity, true goodness, and humility of soul;
the mind is not drawn out of self, is not exercised and elevated by
blessing others, by doing good works. “Pure religion and undefiled
before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows
in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
True religion ennobles the mind, refines the taste, sanctifies the judg-
ment, and makes its possessor partaker of the purity and influences
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of heaven; it brings angels near, and separates more and more from
the spirit and influence of the world.
Battle Creek, Michigan.
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