Faithfulness in the Work of God
243
I saw that God’s people are in great peril; many are dwellers upon
the earth; their interest and affections are centered in the world. Their
example is not right. The world is deceived by the course pursued
by many who profess great and noble truths. Our responsibility is in
accordance with the light given, the graces and gifts bestowed. On
the workers whose talents, whose means, whose opportunities and
abilities, are greatest rests the heaviest responsibility. God calls upon
Brother A to change his course of action, to use his ability to God’s
glory instead of debasing it to sordid worldly interests. Now is his day
of trust; soon will come his day of reckoning.
Brother A was presented before me to represent a class who are
in a similar position. They have never been indifferent to the smallest
worldly advantage. By diligent business tact and successful invest-
ments, by trading, not on pounds, but on pence and farthings, they have
accumulated property. But in doing this they have educated faculties
inconsistent with the development of Christian character. Their lives
in no way represent Christ; for they love the world and its gain better
than they love God or the truth. “If any man love the world, the love
of the Father is not in him.”
All the abilities which men possess belong to God. Worldly confor-
mity and attachments are emphatically forbidden in His word. When
the power of the transforming grace of God is felt upon the heart, it
will send a man, hitherto worldly, into every pathway of beneficence.
He who has in his heart a determination to lay up treasure in the world,
will “fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful
lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of
money is the root of all evil [the foundation of all avarice and worldli-
ness]: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith,
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.”
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Each member of the church should feel under sacred obligations
to guard strictly the interests of the cause of God. The individual
members of the church are responsible for its distracted, discouraged
state, by which the most sacred truths ever committed to man are
dishonored. There is no excuse for this condition of things. Jesus has
opened to everyone a way by which wisdom, grace, and power may
be obtained. He is our example in all things, and nothing should divert
the mind from the main object in life, which is to have Christ in the
soul, melting and subduing the heart. When this is the case, every