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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
expect the blessing of God without seeking for it. If you used the
means within your reach you would experience a growth in grace
and would rise to a higher life.
It is not natural for you to love spiritual things; but you can ac-
quire that love by exercising your mind, the strength of your being, in
that direction. The power of doing is what you need. True education
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is the power of using our faculties so as to achieve beneficial results.
Why is it that religion occupies so little of our attention, while the
world has the strength of brain, bone, and muscle? It is because the
whole force of our being is bent in that direction. We have trained
ourselves to engage with earnestness and power in worldly business,
until it is easy for the mind to take that turn. This is why Christians
find a religious life so hard and a worldly life so easy. The faculties
have been trained to exert their force in that direction. In religious
life there has been an assent to the truths of God’s word, but not a
practical illustration of them in the life.
To cultivate religious thoughts and devotional feelings is not
made a part of education. These should influence and control the
entire being. The
habit
of doing right is wanting. There is spasmodic
action under favorable influences, but to think naturally and readily
upon divine things is not the ruling principle of the mind.
There is no need of being spiritual dwarfs if the mind is con-
tinually exercised in spiritual things. But merely praying for this,
and about this, will not meet the necessities of the case. You must
habituate the mind to concentration upon spiritual things. Exercise
will bring strength. Many professed Christians are in a fair way to
lose both worlds. To be half a Christian and half a worldly man
makes you about one-hundredth part a Christian and all the rest
worldly.
Spiritual living is what God requires, yet thousands are crying
out: “I don’t know what is the matter; I have no spiritual strength,
I do not enjoy the Spirit of God.” Yet the same ones will become
active and talkative, and even eloquent, when talking upon worldly
matters. Listen to such ones in meeting. About a dozen words
are spoken in hardly an audible voice. They are men and women
of the world. They have cultivated worldly propensities until their
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faculties have become strong in that direction. Yet they are as weak
as babes in regard to spiritual things, when they should be strong and