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in preference to yourself, than you have resolved that he should not
succeed if you could help it, and with the might of your perverse will
you have set your spirit to oppose.
Your course toward Brother D was abusive. His heart was stirred
with the deepest sympathy for you. He had been your friend, but the
fact that he disconnected from you was sufficient to create in you a
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spirit of jealousy which was as cruel as the grave. And this spirit was
exercised against a blind man, one who should have had the kindest
care and the deepest sympathy from all. It was your perverse and
deceptive spirit which led others to sympathize with you rather than
with him. When he saw that the clear light of the case could not
be brought before the brethren, and was fully convinced that wrong
was triumphing over right, his spirit was so wounded that he became
desperate. It was then that he let go his hold upon God. A partial
shock of paralysis came upon him. He was nearly ruined, mentally and
physically. In the church meetings, matters of no special account were
talked over, dwelt upon, and made the most of; and wrong, cruelly
wrong impressions were made upon the minds of those present.
To thus seek to injure a man who is in full possession of all his
faculties is a great sin; but such a course toward a man who is blind,
and who should be treated in such a manner as to cause him to feel his
loss of sight as little as possible, is a sin of far greater magnitude. Had
you been a man of fine feelings, or a Christian, as you profess to be,
you could not have abused him as you did. But Brother D has a Friend
in heaven who has pleaded his cause for him and strengthened him
to grasp God’s promises anew. When Brother D was crazed with his
great grief and the treatment he had received, he acted like an insane
man. This was used against him as evidence that he had a wrong spirit.
But the all-seeing Judge weighs motives, and He will reward as the
works have been.
You, Brother A B, have been puffed up with vain conceit and
have felt yourself competent for any task. You have renounced the
Testimonies of the Spirit of God; and if you had your own way, would
cast everything in a new mold. How hard it is for you to see things in
a just light when duty leads in one direction and inclination in another.
Your ideas of the character of Christ, and of the necessary preparation
for the life to come, are narrow and perverted.
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