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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
a most fearful responsibility which they assume in pretending to teach
others the way.
You have engaged in labor in places where you were not competent
to do justice to the work which you undertook. You did not labor
judiciously. You sought to make up for your lack of real knowledge
by censuring other denominations, running down others, and making
hard and bitter criticisms upon their course and condition. Had your
heart been all aglow with the spirit of truth, had you been sanctified
to God and walking in the light as Christ is in the light, you would
have moved in wisdom and would have had enough ways and means
at your command to maintain an interest without going out of your
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way and aside from your specific work to rail out against others who
profess to be Christians.
Unbelievers have been disgusted; they think that Seventh-day Ad-
ventists have been fairly represented by you, and they decide that it
is enough and that they want no more of such doctrines. Our faith is
unpopular at best and is in wide contrast to the faith and practices of
other denominations. In order to reach those who are in the darkness
of error and false theories, we must approach them with the utmost
caution and with the greatest wisdom, agreeing with them on every
point that we can conscientiously.
All consideration should be shown for those in error and all just
credit given them for honesty. We should come as near the people
as possible, and then the light and truth which we have may benefit
them. But Brother E, like many of our ministers, commences a warfare
at once against the errors that others cherish; he thus raises their
combativeness and their set wills, and this holds them encased in an
armor of selfish prejudice which no amount of evidence can remove.
Who but yourself will be responsible for the souls that you have
turned away from the truth by your unsanctified labors? Who can
break down the walls of prejudice which your injudicious labor has
built up? I know of no greater sin against God than for men to engage
in the ministry who labor in self and not in Christ. They are looked up
to as the representatives of Christ, when they do not represent His spirit
in any of their labors. They do not see or realize the dangers attending
the efforts made by unconsecrated, unconverted men. They move on
like blind men, deficient in almost everything and yet self-confident