Cause in Iowa
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conquer, which will be the hardest battle of all. Determined opposition
to your own ways and your wrong habits will secure for you precious
and everlasting victories. But while your strong traits of character are
cherished, while you wish to lead instead of being willing to follow,
you will make no success. Your feelings are quick, and unless you are
guarded you indulge in temper. Upon the young must rest responsibil-
ities and the discharge of important duties; are you qualifying yourself
to do your part in the fear of God?
Brother F is not fitted for his work. He has nearly everything
to learn. His character is defective. He has not been educated from
childhood to be a care-taker, a laborer, a burden bearer. He has not seen
and felt the work to be done for himself, and hence is not prepared
to appreciate the work to be done for others. He is self-sufficient.
He assumes to know more than he really does. When he becomes
thoroughly consecrated by the Spirit of God, and fully realizes the
solemnity and responsibility of the work of a minister of Christ, he will
feel himself entirely insufficient for the task. He is deficient in many
respects; and his deficiencies will be reproduced in others, giving to
the world an unfavorable impression of the character of our work and
of the ministers who are engaged in it. He must become acquainted
with the burdens and duties of practical life before he can be fitted
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to engage in the most responsible work ever given to mortal man.
All young ministers need to be learners before they become teachers.
While I would encourage young men to enter the ministry, I would
say that I am authorized of God to recommend and urge upon them a
fitness for the work in which they are to engage.
The Brethren F are not inclined to be care-takers and burden bear-
ers. Carelessness and imperfection are seen in all they undertake. They
are reckless in their conversation and deportment. The solemn, elevat-
ing, ennobling influence which should characterize every minister of
the gospel cannot be exerted in their lives until they have been trans-
formed and molded after the divine image. Selfishness exists more or
less in each of them, though in a much larger degree in some than in
others. There is a spirit of self-sufficiency and self-importance in these
young men that unfits them for the work of God. They need to severely
discipline themselves before they can be accepted of God as laborers
in His cause. There is a natural laziness that must be overcome. They
should have a faithful drilling in the temporal affairs of life. They