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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
From the picture that has been presented before me of the cor-
ruption of men and women professing godliness, I have feared that
I should altogether lose confidence in humanity. I have seen that a
fearful stupor is upon nearly all. It is almost impossible to arouse
the very ones who should be awakened, so as to have any just sense
of the power which Satan holds over minds. They are not aware
of the corruption teeming all around them. Satan has blinded their
minds and lulled them to carnal security. The failures in our efforts
to bring others up to understand the great dangers that beset souls
have sometimes led me to fear that my ideas of the depravity of
the human heart were exaggerated. But when facts are brought to
us showing the sad deformity of one who has dared to minister in
sacred things while corrupt at heart, one whose sin-stained hands
have profaned the vessels of the Lord, I am sure that I have not
drawn the picture any too strong.
I have been bearing a very strong testimony, both in writing
and in speaking, hoping to awaken God’s people to understand that
they have fallen upon perilous times. I have felt sick at heart at
the indifference manifested by those who should understand the
workings of Satan, and who ought to be awake and guarded. I
have seen that Satan is leading the minds of even those who profess
the truth to indulge in the terrible sin of fornication. The mind of
a man or woman does not come down in a moment from purity
and holiness to depravity, corruption, and crime. It takes time to
transform the human to the divine, or to degrade those formed in
the image of God to the brutal or the satanic. By beholding we
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become changed. Though formed in the image of his Maker, man
can so educate his mind that sin which he once loathed will become
pleasant to him. As he ceases to watch and pray, he ceases to guard
the citadel, the heart, and engages in sin and crime. The mind is
debased, and it is impossible to elevate it from corruption while it
is being educated to enslave the moral and intellectual powers, and
bring them in subjection to grosser passions. Constant war against
the carnal mind must be maintained; and we must be aided by the
refining influence of the grace of God, which will attract the mind
upward and habituate it to meditate upon pure and holy things.
The body is not kept under by many professed Sabbathkeepers.
Some have embraced the Sabbath whose minds have ever been