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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
tend to refine and elevate those with whom they associate. But this
class are generally unconscious of the power they possess. They
exert an unconscious influence which seems to work out naturally
from a sanctified life, a renewed heart. It is the fruit that grows
naturally upon the good tree of divine planting. Self is forgotten,
merged in the life of Christ. To be rich in good works is as natural
as their breath. They live to do others good and yet are ready to say:
We are unprofitable servants.
God has assigned woman her mission; and if she, in her humble
way, yet to the best of her ability, makes a heaven of her home,
faithfully and lovingly performing her duties to her husband and
children, continually seeking to let a holy light shine from her useful,
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pure, and virtuous life to brighten all around her, she is doing the
work left her of the Master, and will hear from His divine lips the
words: Well done, good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy
of thy Lord. These women who are doing with ready willingness
what their hands find to do, with cheerfulness of spirit aiding their
husbands to bear their burdens, and training their children for God,
are missionaries in the highest sense. They are engaged in an impor-
tant branch of the great work to be done on earth to prepare mortals
for a higher life, and they will receive their reward. Children are to
be trained for heaven and fitted to shine in the courts of the Lord’s
kingdom. When parents, especially mothers, have a true sense of the
important, responsible work which God has left for them to do, they
will not be so much engaged in the business which concerns their
neighbors, with which they have nothing to do. They will not go
from house to house to engage in fashionable gossip, dwelling upon
the faults, wrongs, and inconsistencies of their neighbors. They will
feel so great a burden of care for their own children that they can
find no time to take up a reproach against their neighbor. Gossipers
and news carriers are a terrible curse to neighborhoods and churches.
Two thirds of all the church trials arise from this source.
God requires all to do with faithfulness the duties of today. This
is much neglected by the larger share of professed Christians. Es-
pecially is present duty lost sight of by the class I have mentioned,
who imagine that they are of a finer order of beings than their fellow
mortals around them. The fact that their minds turn in this channel
is proof that they are of an inferior order, narrow, conceited, and