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Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students
can give noble aspirations and fashion the character after the divine
similitude. If we draw near to Him in earnest prayer, He will fill
our hearts with high and holy purposes, and with deep longings for
purity and righteousness. The dangers thickening around us demand
from those who have an experience in the things of God, a watchful
supervision. Those who walk humbly before God, distrustful of
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their own wisdom, will realize their danger and will know God’s
keeping care.
The power of a higher, purer, nobler life is our great need. The
world is watching to see what fruit is borne by professed Christians.
It has a right to look for self-denial and self-sacrifice from those
who believe advanced truth. It is watching, ready to criticize with
keenness and severity our words and acts. Everyone who acts a part
in the work of God is weighed in the scales of human discernment.
Impressions favorable or unfavorable to Bible religion are constantly
being made on the minds of all with whom we have to do.
And God and the angels are watching. God desires His people
to show by their lives the advantage of Christianity over worldliness,
to show that they are working on a high, holy plane. He longs to
see them showing that the truth they have received has made them
children of the heavenly King. He longs to make them channels
through which He can pour His boundless love and mercy.
Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of
Himself in His church. When the character of the Saviour shall be
perfectly reproduced in His people, then He will come to claim His
own. It is the privilege of every Christian, not only to look for, but
to hasten, the coming of our Lord. Were all who profess His name
bearing fruit to His glory, how quickly the whole world would be
sown with the seed of the gospel! Quickly the last great harvest
would be ripened, and Christ would come.
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