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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
you the victory. Then you may bear a sweet testimony of freedom,
showing forth the praises of Him who has called you out of darkness
into His marvelous light. He will not misapprehend or misjudge you.
Your fellow men cannot absolve you from sin or cleanse you from
iniquity. Jesus is the only one who can give you peace. He loved you
and gave Himself for you. His great heart of love is “touched with the
feeling of our infirmities?” What sins are too great for Him to pardon?
what soul too dark and sin-oppressed for Him to save? He is gracious,
not looking for merit in us, but of His own boundless goodness healing
our backslidings and loving us freely, while we are yet sinners. He is
“slow to anger, and of great kindness;” “long-suffering to usward, not
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”
Do not seek to get wound up to a high pitch of excitement; but go
to work for others, and patiently instruct them. You will be inclined
now to conjecture that everyone has a load of evil to confess, and you
will be in danger of making this the point of attack. You will want
to bring everyone over the same ground that you have been over, and
you will feel that nothing can be done until all have gone through
the same work of confession. You will not be disposed to take up
the labor of helping others with the Spirit of God resting upon you,
your own hearts softened and subdued by the deep-wrought work of
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cleansing. You will be in great danger of marring the work of God
by exercising your own spirit. If you work for souls with humble,
trustful dependence upon God, if the radiance of His Spirit is reflected
from you in a Christlike character, if sympathy, kindness, forbearance,
and love are abiding principles in your life, you will be a blessing
to all around you. You will not criticize others or manifest a harsh,
denunciatory spirit toward them; you will not feel that their ideas must
be made to meet your standard; but the love of Jesus and the peaceable
fruits of righteousness will be revealed in you.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gen-
tleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.... And they that are
Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we
live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. Let us not be desirous
of vainglory, provoking one another, envying one another.”
The enemy will seek to intrude himself even amid your religious
exercises. Every avenue will need to be faithfully guarded lest selfish-
ness and pride become interwoven with your work. If self has really