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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
her heart into what she does; therefore she moves about too much
like a machine, feeling that labor is a burden. She cannot, while she
feels thus, realize that new life and vigor which it is her privilege
to have. She lacks spirit and energy. She is too much inclined to
be lost in dullness and leaden insensibility. The heavy torpor she
feels can only be overcome by a spare diet, perfect control over her
appetite and all her passions, and by calling her
will
to aid her in
taking exercise. She wants the will to electrify the nerve power so
that she may resist indolence.
Sister P, you never can be of use in the world unless your pur-
poses are strong enough to enable you to overcome this unwilling-
ness to take care and bear burdens. As you daily exercise the forces
within you, the task will grow less difficult, until it will become
second nature for you to do duty, to be careful and diligent. You
can accustom yourself to think, when you lay less burden upon your
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stomach. This burden taxes the brain.
You should also have an aim, a purpose, in life. Where there is
no purpose, there is a disposition to indolence, but where there is
a sufficiently important object in view, all the powers of the mind
will come into spontaneous activity. In order to make life a success,
the thoughts must be steadily fixed upon the object of life, and
not left to wander off and be occupied with unimportant things,
or to be satisfied with idle musing, which is the fruit of shunning
responsibility. Castle-building depraves the mind.
Take up present duty. Do it with a will, with all the heart. You
should resolve to do something which will require an effort of the
mental as well as the physical powers. Your heart should be in your
present labor. The duty now before you is the very work which
Heaven wishes you to do. To dream of a work far off, and imagine
and plan in regard to the future, will prove unprofitable, and will
unfit you for the work, small though it may be, which Heaven now
places before you. It should not be your study to do some great
work, but to do cheerfully and well the work which you see to do
today. Talents are entrusted to your care, to be doubled. You are
responsible for their proper use or their abuse. You are not to aspire
after great things in order to do great service, but to do your little
work. Improve your talents, even though they are few, and let a
sense of your responsibility to God for their right use rest upon you.