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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
of your life and the faithful discharge of your daily duties. If you are
conscientiously strict to do your part, and are faithful and earnest to
see what you can and should do for those for whom you labor, you
will then better represent the truth. The best way in which you can
recommend the truth is, not by argument, not by talk, but by living
it daily, by leading a consistent, modest, humble life as a disciple of
Christ.
It is a sad thing to be discontented with our surroundings or with
the circumstances which have placed us where our duties seem humble
and unimportant. Private and humble duties are distasteful to you; you
are restless, uneasy, and dissatisfied. All this springs from selfishness.
You think more of yourself than others think of you. You love yourself
better than you love your parents, sisters, and brother, and better than
you love God. You desire more congenial labor, for which you think
you will be better fitted. You are not willing to work and wait in the
humble sphere of action where God has placed you, until He proves
and tests you, and you demonstrate your ability and fitness for a higher
position. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” The
spirit of meekness is not a spirit of discontent, but it is directly the
opposite.
Those professed Christians who are constantly whining and com-
plaining, and who seem to think happiness and a cheerful countenance
a sin, have not the genuine article of religion. Those who look upon
nature’s beautiful scenery as they would upon a dead picture, who
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choose to look upon dead leaves rather than to gather the beautiful
living flowers, who take a mournful pleasure in all that is melancholy
in the language spoken to them by the natural world, who see no
beauty in valleys clothed with living green and grand mountain heights
clothed with verdure, who close their senses to the joyful voice which
speaks to them in nature and which is sweet and musical to the listen-
ing ear—these are not in Christ. They are not walking in the light, but
are gathering to themselves darkness and gloom, when they could just
as well have brightness and the blessing of the Sun of Righteousness
arising in their hearts with healing in His beams.
My young sister, you are living an imaginary life. You can not
detect or realize a blessing in anything. You imagine troubles and tri-
als which do not exist; you exaggerate little annoyances into grievous
trials. This is not the meekness which Christ blessed. It is an unsanc-