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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
souls, find a location where their miserable traits of character will
not be so conspicuous. The more isolated such ones are, the better
for the cause of God. I appeal to the people of God, wherever they
may be found: Awake to your duty. Take it to heart that we are really
living amid the perils of the last days.
I hope that the case of N. Fuller will awaken you, fathers and
mothers, to see the necessity of thorough work in your houses,
among yourselves and your children, that not one of you may be so
deluded by Satan as to regard sin as this poor, much-to-be-pitied man
has done. Those who have participated with him in crime would
never have been left to be deceived and ruined had they possessed a
high sense of virtue and purity, and cherished a constant and lively
horror of sin and iniquity. While living under and proclaiming the
most solemn message ever borne to mortals, presenting the law of
God as a test of character and as the seal of the living God, they are
transgressing its holy precepts. The consciences of those who do
this have become seared and terribly hardened. They have resisted
the influences of the Spirit of God until they can use sacred truth
as a cloak to hide the deformity of their corrupted souls. This man
has been terribly deluded by Satan. He has been serving vicious
passions while professing to be consecrated to the work of God,
ministering in sacred things. He has considered himself in health
while there was no soundness in him.
I have felt deeply as I have seen the powerful influence of animal
passions in controlling men and women of no ordinary intelligence
and ability. They would be capable of engaging in a good work,
of exerting a powerful influence, were they not enslaved by base
passions. My confidence in humanity has been terribly shaken. I
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have been shown that persons of apparently good deportment, not
taking unwarrantable liberties with the other sex, were guilty of
practicing secret vice nearly every day of their lives. They have
not refrained from this terrible sin even while most solemn meet-
ings have been in session. They have listened to the most solemn,
impressive discourses upon the judgment, which seemed to bring
them before the tribunal of God, causing them to fear and quake;
yet hardly an hour would elapse before they would be engaged in
their favorite, bewitching sin, polluting their own bodies. They were
such slaves to this awful crime that they seemed devoid of power to