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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
cause of God has paid you, whether you had much or little to show
for your labor. You have not earned the means you have received.
Your wife has been petted by her parents and by her husband
until she is of but very little use. You have both seen others burdened
with care and have not lifted the burdens with them. Your wife has
lain as a helpless weight upon families, greatly to her own injury
and to theirs, when, in point of health, she was better able to do
than some who were bearing her burdens and yours. Yet she did
not think of this. Neither of you could see the facts in the case and
feel for others. Some from whom you have received help in care
for yourselves and your child were not able, financially, to do what
they did; but they thought they were ministering to self-sacrificing
servants of Christ; therefore they denied themselves and endured
inconvenience and trouble, to bear burdens that you were better able
to bear for yourselves than they were to bear them for you.
Your wife has been reluctant to take up her life burdens. She
wants a higher calling, and neglects the duties of today. Neither of
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you obeys the commandment of God: Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Self and selfishness shut out the needs of your neighbors from you.
Your small, mercenary spirit is contagious. Your example has done
more to encourage love of the world, and a close, penurious spirit,
than anything else which has occurred in Wisconsin and Illinois.
Had you done nothing but attend to your temporal interests, the cause
of God in these two states would have been in a far better condition
than it is in today. The success you have had does not come up to
the injury you have done. The cause of God is prostrated. Your
sensitiveness and jealousy have been an example for others. We met
this spirit in Illinois and in Wisconsin. The state of the churches in--
---and vicinity has been deplorable. The lack of love and union, the
surmising, jealousy, and stubbornness, apparent in these churches,
have been shaped very much by your traits of character. The position
which you occupied after the fanaticism at-----, standing back upon
your dignity, splitting hairs, dividing the matter with the fanatical and
with those whom God had sent with a special message, stood directly
in the way of others’ seeing and correcting their wrongs. Your course
at that time, in failing to take hold and work on the right side to
correct that blasting fanaticism, gave shape to the discouraging state
of things which has grown out of that dark reign of fanaticism.