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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
things generally, whereas you have been losing spiritual power and
dwarfing your religious experience.
To have fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ is to
be ennobled and elevated, and made a partaker of joys unspeakable and
full of glory. Food, clothing, station, and wealth may have their value;
but to have a connection with God and to be a partaker of His divine
nature is of priceless value. Our lives should be hid with Christ in God;
and although it “doth not yet appear what we shall be,” “when Christ,
who is our life, shall appear,” “we shall be like Him; for we shall see
Him as He is.” The princely dignity of the Christian character will
shine forth as the sun, and the beams of light from the face of Christ
will be reflected upon those who have purified themselves even as He
is pure. The privilege of becoming sons of God is cheaply purchased,
even at the sacrifice of everything we possess, be it life itself.
My dear brother, you should set your face to be a man after God’s
own heart. What others may venture to do or say that is not strictly in
accordance with the Christian standard should be no excuse for you.
You must stand before the Judge of all the earth, not to answer for
another, but for yourself. We have an individual responsibility, and no
man’s defects of character will be the least excuse for our guilt; for
Christ has given us in His character a perfect pattern, a faultless life.
The most persistent attacks of the enemy of souls are made upon
the truth we profess, and any deviation from the right reflects dishonor
upon it. Our chief danger is in having the mind diverted from Christ.
The name of Jesus has power to drive back the temptations of Satan
and lift up for us a standard against him. So long as the soul rests with
unshaken confidence in the virtue and power of the atonement, it will
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stand firm as a rock to principle, and all the powers of Satan and his
angels cannot sway it from its integrity. The truth as it is in Jesus is a
wall of fire around the soul that clings to Him. Temptations will pour
in upon us, for by them we are to be tried during our probation upon
earth. This is the proving of God, a revelation of our own hearts. There
is no sin in having temptations; but sin comes in when temptation is
yielded to.
If your aptness and skill had been as much exercised in saving
souls, and in disseminating the truth to those who are in darkness, as
it has been to get gain and to increase your earthly possessions, you
would have many stars in the crown of your rejoicing in the kingdom