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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4b
supposed preparation, and find out your mistake too late to secure a
well-grounded hope.”
I saw that some professed Sabbath-keepers spent hours that were
worse than thrown away studying this or that fashion to decorate the
poor, mortal body. While you make yourselves appear like the world,
and as beautiful as you can, remember that the same body may in a
few days be food for worms. And while you fix it up to your taste to
please the eye, you are dying spiritually. God hates your vain, wicked
pride, and he looks upon you as a whited sepulcher; but within full of
corruption and uncleanness.
Mothers set the example of pride to their children, and while so
doing, sow seed that will spring up and bear fruit. The harvest will be
plenteous and sure. That which they sow they shall reap. There will be
no failure in the crop. I saw, parents, that it is easier for you to learn
your children a lesson of pride, than a lesson of humility. And that
Satan and his angels stand right by your side to make the act of yours,
or the word that you may speak to them, effectual, to encourage them
to dress, and in their pride to mingle with society that is not holy. O
parents, you plant a thorn in your own bosoms that you will often feel
in anguish. And when you would counteract the sad lesson you have
learned your children, you will find it a hard thing. It is impossible for
you to do it. You may deny them things that will gratify their pride,
yet that pride lives in the heart, longing to be satisfied, and nothing
can kill this pride but to have the quick and powerful Spirit of God
find the way to the heart, and work like leaven there, and remove it.
I saw that young and old neglect their Bibles. They do not make
that book their study and the rule of life, as they should, especially
the young. Most of them are ready, and find plenty of time, to read
almost any other book. But the Word that points to life, eternal life, is
not perused and daily studied. That precious, important book that is to
judge them in the last day, is scarcely studied at all. Idle stories have
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been attentively read, while the Bible has been passed by, neglected. A
day is coming, of clouds and thick darkness, when all will wish to be
thoroughly furnished by the plain, simple truths of the word of God,
that they may meekly, yet decidedly, give a reason of their hope. This
reason of their hope, I saw, they must have to strengthen their own
souls for the fierce conflict. Without this they are wanting, and cannot
have firmness and decision.