Chapter 64—Worldly Influences
Dear Sister G,
My heart is drawn out in love and sympathy for you. The present
state of things in your family is the sure result of following out your
mistaken ideas, and the end is not yet. You have not seen the danger of
associating so freely with your relatives. They have had a far greater
influence over you and yours than you have had over them. Their being
your relatives makes them no less a hindrance to your spiritual welfare
and no less transgressors of God’s holy law. Their course is fully as
offensive to God as that of any others who refuse light and truth, and
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will not listen to any evidence in its favor. Injurious impressions have
been made upon your mind and have influenced your course of action.
God has made every provision to bring salvation within our reach,
but He will not thrust it upon us against our will. He has laid down
conditions in His word, and we should diligently, interestedly, with
heart and mind, set about the task of learning these conditions, lest we
make some mistake and fail to secure our title to the mansions above.
We cannot serve God and the world at the same time. We must
not center our affections on worldly relatives, who have no desire to
learn the truth. We may seek in every way, while associated with them,
to let our light shine; but our words, our deportment, our customs
and practices, should not in any sense be molded by their ideas and
customs. We are to show forth the truth in all our intercourse with
them. If we cannot do this, the less association we have with them,
the better it will be for our spirituality. If we place ourselves among
associates whose influence has a tendency to make us forgetful of the
high claims the Lord has upon us we invite temptation and become
too weak in moral power to resist it. We come to partake of the spirit
and cherish the ideas of our associates and to place sacred and eternal
things lower than the ideas of our friends. We are, in short, leavened
just as the enemy of all righteousness designed we should be.
The young, if brought under this influence, are more easily affected
by it than those who are older. Everything leaves its impress upon
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