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Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
because selfishness prevails to a large extent among us. Some are
envious of others, fearing that they will be more highly esteemed
than themselves.
Cultivated intellects are now needed in every part of the work
of God; for novices cannot do the work acceptably in unfolding the
hidden treasure to enrich souls. God has devised that schools shall
be an instrumentality for developing workers for Jesus Christ of
whom He will not be ashamed, and this object must ever be kept in
view. The height man may reach by proper culture has not hitherto
been realized. We have among us more than an average of men of
ability. If their capabilities were brought into use, we should have
twenty ministers where we now have one. Physicians, too, would be
educated to battle with disease.
Cities and towns are steeped in sin, yet there are Lots in every
Sodom. The poison of sin is at work at the heart of society. God
calls for reformers to stand in defense of the laws He has established
to govern the physical system, and to maintain an elevated standard
in the training of the mind and the culture of the heart.
Heart Culture
There is danger of pharisaical exactitude, burdening minds with
worldly forms and customs which will, in many cases become all-
important, making a world of an atom and an atom of a world. The
grace of Christ with its purifying, ennobling influence will do more
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for us than all the worldly education upon etiquette that is made so
essential. To many the externals are the sum total of religion, and
yet it will be evidenced that the heart has not that genuine courtesy
which alone is of value with God. If they are spoken to about their
faults, they have so little Christian politeness that the sacred position
of the minister whom God has sent with His message of warning is
lost sight of in their effort to criticize his attitude, his gestures, and
the formation of his sentences. They think themselves paragons of
wisdom, but they pay no heed to the words of God from the courts
of heaven. To all such God says that they will have to become fools
in order to know the true wisdom of Christ.
I was shown that our college was designed of God to accomplish
the great and good work of saving souls. It is only when brought