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Testimonies to Ministers and Gospel Workers
When a man will plead and urge to have his mind and his judgment
to be supreme in any one of our institutions, you can have no greater
evidence that that man does not know himself and is not qualified to
manage. He will make mistakes and injure rather than restore. He
does not know what responsibilities are involved in his relation to
God or to his fellowmen.
“Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner
of persons ought ye to be? Those who walk humbly with God will
not be striving to obtain greater responsibilities, but will consider
that they have a special work to do, and will be faithful to their duty.
In our institutions, great good can be done in educating by precept
and example, in economy in all lines. If you, my brother, had learned
in the school of Christ to be meek and lowly in heart, you would
always stand on vantage ground. You have not an evenly balanced
character. You cannot safely put confidence in your own judgment
in all things. Man’s way is to devise and scheme; God implants a
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principle. Man is striving to make duty soft and accommodating to
his own natural character; but life is a battlefield; life is a race which
he has to run if he is victor....
Excuses are Valueless
The question for us to consider is, Have we the attributes of
Christ? Excuses are valueless. All circumstances, all appetites
and passions, are to be servants to the God-fearing man, not rulers
over him. The Christian is not to be enslaved by any hereditary
or cultivated habits or tendency. He is to rule the animal passions,
rather than to be held in the bondage of habit.
We are not to be the servants of circumstances, but to control
circumstances by an inwrought principle learned of the greatest
Teacher the world ever knew. The solemn position in which we
stand today toward the world, the solemn responsibilities and duties
enjoined upon us by our Lord, are not to be ignored until our will
and our circumstances are adjusted. The principle of self-denial
and self-sacrifice, as revealed in the example of Christ, of John the
Baptist, of Daniel and the three worthies, is to pass like a plowshare
through hereditary and cultivated habits through all circumstances
and surroundings.