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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
You will try to frame some excuse for your course, but every thing will
seem to evade you. You will stand guilty and condemned. You may
feel angry with me because I have thus put the case, but so it is, and so
it will be with every transgressor of God’s holy law.
Keep ever before you this truth: “Wherever I am, whatever I do,
Thou, God, seest me.” It is not possible for the least item of our
conduct to escape the observation of the One who says: “I know thy
works.” The depths of every heart are open to the inspection of God.
Every action, every purpose, every word, is as distinctly marked as
though there were only one individual in the whole universe and all the
watchfulness and scrutiny of God were employed on his deportment.
Shall we then break even one precept of His law and teach others to
do so, by evasions, by assertions, by falsehoods, in the very sight of
the Lawgiver? Shall we brave the sentence in the very face of the
Judge? In this there is a hardihood which seems to surpass the worst
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human presumption. I know, my brother, whom I expect to meet in
the day of judgment, that you will have no words of excuse for your
late defection.
Oh, that I could present before you, and before others of my
brethren, the necessity of an ever-abiding sense of God’s presence,
which would put such restraint on your life that your moral and re-
ligious standing before the people would be far different. We must
reach a higher standard. Every soul, in going out and coming in, in
all business transactions, at all times and in all places, should act with
the consciousness that he is moving under the inspection of God and
heavenly angels, and that the Being who will judge every man’s work
for eternity accompanies him at every step, observing all his actions
and scrutinizing all his motives. A consciousness of the presence of
God and the peril of violating His precepts would take possession
of his entire being. What a change would be seen in man, what a
change in society, what evils would be left undone! There would be
exclamations from all ranks and among all ages: I cannot do this great
wickedness, and sin against God.”
Who shall enter in through the gates into the city? Blessed are they
that do His commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life,
and may enter in through the gates into the city.” You know what these
commandments are as well as I do. I love your soul and the soul of
your wife and the souls of your innocent children, and this is why I