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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
now gain a moral excellence so that your name may be associated
with things pure and holy. You can be elevated. God has provided
for you the necessary helps. He has invited you to come to Him,
and has promised to bear your burdens and give you rest of soul.
“Learn of Me,” says the divine Teacher, “for I am meek and lowly
in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” You have long
been above this lowliness and meekness. You will have to learn
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this important lesson of the divine Teacher before you can find the
rest promised. You have thought so much of yourself, of your own
smartness, that it has led you to such affectation and vanity as to
make you almost a fool. You have a deceitful tongue, which has
indulged in misrepresentation and falsehood. Oh, my dear girl, if
you could only arouse, if your slumbering, deadened conscience
could be awakened, and you could cherish a habitual impression
of the presence of God, and keep yourself subject to the control of
an enlightened, wakeful conscience, you would be happy yourself
and a blessing to your parents, whose hearts you now wound. You
could be an instrument of righteousness to your associates. You
need a thorough conversion, and without it you are in the gall of
bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. You may imagine yourself
free when following the lead of your own wayward, pernicious mind;
but you are in the most degrading bondage. Without the principles
of religion, you may consider yourself an object of envy; but all
who are good and virtuous will regard your character with pity and
your course with abhorrence. You can become a partaker of the
divine nature if you will escape the corruption that is in the world
through lust; or by being a partaker of it, you may sink down in this
corruption and bear the impress of the satanic.
You have younger sisters whom you can bless with your in-
fluence. You can reflect a sweet, precious light in your father’s
family and make his heart glad; or you can be a dark shadow, a
cloud, a storm which shall desolate. Your passion for reading is
of such a character that if indulged it will pervert the imagination
and will prove your ruin. Unless you restrain your thoughts, your
reading, and your words, your imagination will become hopelessly
diseased. Read your Bible attentively, prayerfully, and be guided by
its teachings. This is your safety.
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