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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
an eye single to the glory of God. You have had many perplexities
and many difficulties to encounter, and if you had trusted to the True
Counselor instead of to your own judgment, you would ever have been
guided out of your perplexities in your business transactions.
You have an important work before you which you can never do
without the special help of God. You are capable of securing the
companionship of angels and of being an heir of God, a joint heir with
Jesus Christ; and for you to labor to confine the range of hope and
desire within the narrow compass of your own convenience would be a
lifelong mistake. It is a terrible mistake to live only for this world. You
look back and feel the condemnation of your own wrong course, and
seek to justify yourself by finding fault with others. Whatever course
others may pursue, or however wrong they may be, their errors will
never cover one of your mistakes; and in the day of final reckoning you
will not dare to plead this before God as a palliation for your neglect
of duty.
God proposes to accept you as His child and make you a member
of the royal family, a child of the heavenly King, upon conditions that
you come out from the world and be separate and touch not the unclean
thing. The Monarch of heaven would have you possess and enjoy all
that can ennoble, expand, and exalt your being and fit you to dwell
with Him forever, your existence measuring with the life of God. What
a prospect is the life which is to come! What charms it possesses!
How broad and deep and measureless is the love of God manifested
to man! No words can describe this love; it surpasses all thought and
imagination, but it is a reality that you may learn by experience; you
may rejoice in it with joy unspeakable and full of glory.
With such a prospect before you, how can you narrow your mind
to the compass of worldly thoughts and to the range of worldly occu-
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pations, seeking gain and yielding one point after another of present
truth. Truth, principle, and conscience are desirable for you to retain.
The favor of God is better than houses of silver and of gold. The
deepest joy of the heart comes from the deepest humiliation. Trust
and submission to God work out strength and nobleness of character.
Tears are not in every case evidences of weakness. In order for you
to build up a character which is symmetrical in the sight of a pure
and holy God you must begin at the foundation. The heart must be
broken before God, and true repentance for sin must be shown, till you