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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4b
to a rough, careless manner of talking and acting. Such are a reproach
to the cause of God, and are miserable representatives of our faith.
According to the light which God has given me, there will yet be
a large company raised up in the East to consistently obey the truth.
Those who follow in the distracted course they have chosen, will be
left to embrace errors which will finally overthrow them. They will for
a time be stumbling-blocks to those who would receive the truth. Min-
isters who labor in word and doctrine, should be thorough workmen,
and should present the truth in its purity, yet with simplicity. They
should feed the flock with clean provender, thoroughly winnowed.
There are wandering stars professing to be ministers sent of God, who
are preaching the Sabbath from place to place, and have truth mixed up
with erroneous sentiments, and throw out a strange jumble of views to
the people. Satan has pushed them in to disgust intelligent and sensible
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unbelievers. Some of these have much to say upon the gifts, and are
often especially exercised. They give themselves up to wild, excitable
feelings, and make unintelligible sounds which they call the gift of
tongues. A certain class seem to receive it, and are charmed with the
strange manifestations which they witness. A strange spirit rules with
this class, which would bear down and run over any one who would
reprove them. God’s spirit is not in the work. His spirit does not attend
such workmen. It is another spirit. Still such preachers will have suc-
cess among a certain class. But this will increase the labor very much
of God’s servants whom he shall send, who are qualified to present
the Sabbath and gifts before the people in their proper light, whose
influence and example will be worthy of imitation. The truth should be
presented in a manner which will make it attractive to the intelligent
mind. We are not understood as a people. We are looked upon as
degraded, and are accounted as poor, weak-minded, and low. Then
how important for all those who teach, and all who believe the truth,
to be so affected by its sanctifying influence as to show unbelievers
by their consistent, elevated lives that they have been deceived in this
people. How important that the cause of truth be stripped of everything
like a false and fanatical excitement, that the truth may stand upon its
own merits, revealing its native purity and exalted character.
I saw that it was highly important for those who preach the truth to
be refined in their manners. They should shun oddities and eccentrici-
ties, and present the truth in its purity and clearness. I was referred to