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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
prized. Strength cannot be purchased with gold or silver, houses or
lands. It is a great possession that you have. God requires you to
make a judicious use of the capital of strength with which He has
blessed you. You are just as much His steward as is the man who
has a capital of money. It is as wrong for you to fail to use your
strength to the best advantage as it is for a rich man to covetously
retain his riches because it is agreeable to do so. You do not make
the exertion that you should to support your family. You can and do
work if work is conveniently prepared to hand, but you do not exert
yourself to set yourself to work feeling that it is a duty to use your
time and strength to the very best advantage and in the fear of God.
You have been in a business which would at times yield you
large profits at once. After you have earned means you have not
studied to economize in reference to a time when means could not
be earned so easily, but have expended much for imaginary wants.
Had you and your wife understood it to be a duty that God enjoined
upon you to deny your taste and your desires, and make provision
for the future instead of living merely for the present, you could now
have had a competency and your family have had the comforts of
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life. You have a lesson to learn which you should not be backward
in learning. It is to make a little go the longest way.
Sister R has leaned too heavily upon her husband. She has been
all her life too dependent upon others for sympathy, thinking of
herself, making herself a center. She has been petted too much, and
has not learned to be self-reliant. She has not been the help to her
husband that she might have been in temporal or spiritual things.
She must learn to bear bodily infirmities and not dwell upon them as
she does. She must fight the battles of life for herself; an individual
responsibility rests upon her.
Sister R, your life has been a mistake. You have indulged in
reading anything and everything. Your mind has not been benefited
by so much reading. Your nerves have been excited while hurriedly
chasing through the story. If your children interrupt you while thus
employed, you speak fretfully, impatiently. You do not have self-
control, and therefore fail to hold your children with a firm, steady
hand. You move from impulse. You pet and indulge them, and
then fret and scold, and are severe. This variable manner is very