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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
friends, you are greatly mistaken. You are not the only sufferers
from a wrong course. The society you are in bears the consequences
of your wrongs, in a great degree, as well as yourselves. If you suffer
from your intemperance in eating or drinking, we that are around you
or associated with you are also affected by your infirmities. We have
to suffer on account of your wrong course. If it has an influence to
lessen your powers of mind or body, we feel it when in your society,
and are affected by it. If, instead of having a buoyancy of spirit, you
are gloomy, you cast a shadow upon the spirits of all around you.
If we are sad and depressed, and in trouble, you could, if in a right
condition of health, have a clear brain to show us the way out and
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speak a comforting word to us. But if your brain is so benumbed by
your wrong course of living that you cannot give us the right counsel,
do we not meet with a loss? Does not your influence seriously affect
us? We may have a good degree of confidence in our own judgment,
yet we want to have counselors; for “in the multitude of counselors
there is safety.” We desire that our course should look consistent to
those we love, and we wish to seek their counsel and have them able
to give it with a clear brain. But what care we for your judgment, if
your brain nerve power has been taxed to the utmost, and the vitality
withdrawn from the brain to take care of the improper food placed in
your stomachs, or of an enormous quantity of even healthful food?
What care we for the judgment of such persons? They see through a
mass of undigested food. Therefore your course of living affects us.
It is impossible for you to pursue any wrong course without causing
others to suffer.
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one
receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that
striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it
to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore
so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the
air: but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest
that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should
be a castaway.” Those who engaged in running the race to obtain
that laurel which was considered a special honor were temperate
in all things so that their muscles, their brains, and every part of
them might be in the very best condition to run. If they were not
temperate in all things they would not have that elasticity that they