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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
into your possession fast enough to satisfy your thirst for gain, and
you have frequently made the poor man’s burdens heavier by taking
advantage of his necessity to increase your property. Look carefully,
Brother S. You are making fearful losses for earthly gain. You are
losing manly integrity and heavenly virtue, in the hour of temptation.
Is this gain or loss? Are you richer or poorer for all such increase? To
you it is a fearful loss, for it takes just so much from the treasure you
might have been accumulating in heaven.
Every opportunity to help a brother in need, or to aid the cause of
God in the spread of the truth, is a pearl that you can send beforehand
and deposit in the bank of heaven for safekeeping. God is testing and
proving you. He has been giving His blessings to you with a lavish
hand and is now watching to see what use you are making of them, to
see if you will help those who need help and if you will feel the worth
of souls and do what you can with the means that He has entrusted to
you. Every such opportunity improved adds to your heavenly treasure.
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But love of self has led you to prefer earthly possessions even at the
sacrifice of the heavenly. You choose the treasures that moth and rust
corrupt rather than those which are as enduring as eternity. It is your
privilege to exercise tender compassion and to bless others; but your
eyes are so blinded by the God of this world that you cannot discern
this precious gem—the blessing to be received by doing good, by
being rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate,
laying up for yourself a good foundation against the time to come,
that you may lay hold on eternal life. You are imperiling your soul
by neglecting to avail yourself of precious opportunities to secure
the heavenly treasure. Are you really richer for your penuriousness,
for your close managing? God is proving you, and it is for you to
determine whether you will come out gold or valueless dross. Should
your probation close tonight, how would your life record stand? Not
a dollar of what you have gained could you take with you. The curse
of every unjust act would attend you. Your sharpness in trade, when
viewed in the mirror that God will present before you, will not lead to
self-congratulation. Covetousness is idolatry.
Your only hope is to humble your heart before God. “For what
shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” I entreat
of you: Do not close your eyes to your danger. Do not be blind to