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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
wanting; he will be a failure so far as this life is concerned, and will
lose the future life.
All who will with determined effort seek help from above, and
subdue and crucify self, may be successful in this world, and may gain
the future, immortal life. This world is the field of man’s labor. His
preparation for the future world depends upon the way he discharges
his duties in this world. He is designed of God to be a blessing to
society; and he cannot, if he would, live and die to himself. God has
bound us together as members of one family, and this relationship
everyone is bound to cherish. There are services due to others which
we cannot ignore and yet keep the commandments of God. To live,
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think, and act for self only is to become useless as servants of God.
High-sounding titles and great talents are not essential in order to be
good citizens or exemplary Christians.
We have in our ranks too many who are restless, talkative, self-
commending, and who take the liberty to put themselves forward,
having no reverence for age, experience, or office. The church is
suffering today for help of an opposite character—modest, quiet, God-
fearing men, who will bear disagreeable burdens when laid upon them,
not for the name, but to render service to their Master, who died for
them. Persons of this character do not think it detracts from their
dignity to rise up before the ancient and to treat gray hairs with respect.
Our churches need weeding out. Too much self-exaltation and self-
sufficiency exists among the members.
Those who fear and reverence God, He will delight to honor. Man
may be so elevated as to form the connecting link between heaven and
earth. He came from the hand of his Creator with a symmetrical char-
acter, endowed with such capacities for improvement that, combining
divine influence with human effort, he might elevate himself almost to
an angel’s sphere. Yet, when thus elevated, he will be unconscious of
his goodness and greatness.
God has given man intellectual faculties capable of the highest
cultivation. Had the Brethren B seen the natural coarseness and rough-
ness of their characters, and with assiduous care cultivated and trained
the mind, strengthening their weak points of character and overcom-
ing their glaring defects, some of them would have been accepted as
Christ’s messengers. But as they now are, God cannot accept any one
of them as His representative. They have not sufficiently realized the