Counsels to Walter and Laura
51
my soul would be wounded and your soul unhelped, unless I should
coincide with your ideas in regard to your marriage with Walter. This
I shall never do because I know you are pursuing a course which is not
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right, and which the Lord will not approve. If your course were right,
you would not have suffered as you have.
Your course since you left Walter has been such as has not raised
you in the estimation of anyone who has the love of God abiding in the
heart. You have ever loved to be in the society, and have encouraged
the attention, of young men. This you have done to your own injury.
Advice and counsel in this matter have not done you any good, but
created in you feelings of resentment. But will you consider how the
heavenly angels look upon the course you have persistently pursued in
having your own way, and your own will, strong, defiant, determined?
Reflections in God’s Mirror—You have kept to your own ideas
irrespective of right or righteousness. Does it pay, Laura? Can you
afford to spend the few moments of probation in the kind of life you
have chosen? Certainly had you consented to live with Walter, you
would not have been any more unhappy than you have been. You have
set up your will, but is it God’s will? But I wish you to see yourself as
God sees you. You once loved God, but you have lost your first love.
You do not love God; you do not love holy things. Your influence is
not to others a savor of life unto life, but of death unto death. In the
place of growing in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ, you are separating farther and farther from the Lord.
Spiritual Coldness and Declension—If you were pursuing a right
course, you would not reveal this spiritual declension. The Bible is
not precious to you as it once was. You read it a little out of a sense of
duty, but not because you wish to hear the voice of God in His Word.
You pray sometimes, but it is only a form. You do not take all your
troubles to God and plead with an humble heart to know His ways and
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His will. We cannot sanction your course; we have not felt that your
example was safe for anyone to follow.
In the place of widening the mark that separates you from the
world, you have been narrowing the mark until it is obliterated. Should
the Lord say today, Cut down the tree; why cumbereth it the ground?
you would have no part in the first resurrection. Your conversation is
not refined and choice; no one would suppose you to be a Christian
by your loose, reckless talk, and the company you have chosen of late