Earlier text: SELLING THE BIRTHRIGHT.

SELFISHNESS AND WORLD-LOVING.

DEAR BRO. AND SISTER G: I have for some time designed to write to you. As the light which the Lord has given me came distinctly before me, some things pressed themselves forcibly upon my mind while standing before the people at ——. I had hoped that you would stay to another meeting, and that the labor there commenced could have been continued. But I am sorry to see that when our brethren attend a Conference, they do not generally feel the importance of first preparing for the meeting. Instead of consecrating themselves to God before they come, they wait till they get to the meeting to have the work done for them there. They bring home along with them, and the things that they have left behind are considered of more value and importance than a preparation of heart for His coming. Therefore nearly all leave no better than when they came. Such meetings are attended with great expense, and if those who come are not profited, there is a loss to them, and they make the labor exceedingly hard for those who feel the burden of the work upon them. Our people left that Conference too soon. We might have seen a more special work from God, had all remained and engaged in the work.

Sister G, I have a message to you. You are far56 from the kingdom. You love this world, and this love has made you cold, selfish, exacting, and penurious. The great object of interest with you is the powerful, mighty dollar. How little you know how God looks upon one in your condition. You are in a terrible deception. You are conformed to the world instead of being transformed by the renewing of your mind. Selfishness and self-love are exemplified in your life to a great degree. You have not overcome this unhappy defect in your character. If this is not remedied, you will lose Heaven, and your happiness here will be greatly marred. This has been the case already. The dark cloud which has followed you, overshadowing your life, will grow larger and blacker until your whole sky is clouded. You may turn to the right, and there will be no light, and to the left, and you cannot discover a ray.

You make trouble for yourself where there is no trouble, because you are not right. You are unconsecrated. Your complaining, penurious spirit makes you unhappy, and displeases God. During your life you have been looking out for yourself, seeking to make yourself happy. It is poor work, unprofitable business. The more you invest here, the heavier will be the loss. The less stock you take in this business of serving yourself, the greater will be the saving on your part. You are a stranger to disinterested, unselfish love, and while you see no special sin in the absence of this precious trait, you will not be diligent to cultivate it.

You loved your husband, and married him. You knew that when you married him you covenanted to become a mother to his children. But I saw a lack in you in this matter. You are sadly deficient. You do not love the children of your husband, and unless there is an entire change, a thorough reformation in you, and in your manner of government, these precious jewels are ruined. Love, manifestation of affection, is not a part of your discipline.57 Shall I tell you the truth, and become your enemy by so doing? You are too thoroughly selfish to love the children of another. I was shown that the fruit of your union would not be prospered and blessed with strength, life, and health, and God’s spirit would leave you to yourself, unless you are thoroughly proved and tested, and right up those things in which you are so deficient. As your selfishness withers and blights the young hearts around you, so will the curse of God wither and blight the pledges of your selfish love and union. And if you continue your selfish course, God will come still closer to you, and remove your idols one after another from before your face, until you shall humble your proud, selfish, unsubdued heart before him.

I saw that you would have a fearful account to render in the day of God, because of your unfulfilled trust. You are making the lives of those dear children very bitter, especially the daughter’s. Where is the affection, the loving caress, the patient forbearance? Hatred lives in your unsanctified heart more than love. Censure leaps from your lips more than praise and encouragement. Your manners, your harsh ways, your unsympathizing nature, are to that sensitive daughter like desolating hail upon a tender plant; it bends to every blast until its life is crushed out, and it lies bruised and broken.

Your administration is drying up the channel of love, hopefulness, and joy in your children. A settled sadness is expressed in the countenance of the girl, but, instead of awakening sympathy and tenderness in you, this arouses impatience and positive dislike. You can change this expression to animation and cheerfulness if you choose. “Does not God see? Does he take no knowledge?” were the words of the angel. He will visit for these things. You voluntarily took upon you this responsibility, but Satan has taken advantage of your unhappy, unlovable, and unloving disposition, your self-love, your closeness,58 your selfishness, and it now appears in all its deformity, uncorrected, unsubdued, girding you about as with iron bands. Children read the countenance of the mother, they understand whether love or dislike is there expressed. You know not the work you are doing. Does not the little sad face, the heaving sigh welling up from a pressed heart in its yearning call for love awaken pity? No, not in you. It places the child at a still greater distance from you, and increases your dislike.

I saw that the father had not taken the course that a father should. God is not pleased with his position. Another has stolen the father’s heart from the blood of his blood, and bone of his bone. Bro. G, you have been very deficient in discernment. As the head of the house, you should have taken your position, and not permitted things to go as they have gone. You have seen that things were not right, and have sometimes felt anxious, but fear of displeasing your present wife and making unhappy discord in your family, has led you to remain silent when you should have spoken. You are not clear in the matter. Your children have no mother to plead for them, to shelter them from censure by her judicious words.

Your children, and all other children who have lost the one in whose breasts maternal love has flowed, have met with a loss that can never be supplied. But when one ventures to stand in the place of mother to the little stricken flock, a double care and burden rests upon her, to be even more loving if possible, more forbearing of censure and threatening than their own mother could have been, and in this way supply the loss which the little flock have sustained. You, Bro. G, have been like a man asleep. Take your children to your heart, encircle them with your sheltering arms, love them tenderly. If you fail to do this, “found wanting” will be written against you.

There is a work for you both to do. Forever cease your murmurings. Bro. G, suffer not the close, penurious, selfish spirit of your wife to control your actions. You have been drinking in the same spirit, and you have both robbed God. The plea of poverty is upon your lips, but Heaven knows it is false, yet your words will be all true, you will be poor indeed, if you continue to cherish the love of the world as you have done. “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are cursed with a curse.” Wipe off this curse as fast as possible.

Bro. G, as God’s steward, look to him. It is he to whom you are to give account of your stewardship, not to your wife. It is God’s means that you are handling. He has only lent it you a little while to prove you, to try you, to see if you will be “rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate, laying up in store for yourselves a good foundation against the time to come, that ye may lay hold on eternal life.” God will require his own with usury. May he help you to prepare for the Judgment. Let self be crucified. Let the precious graces of the Spirit live in your hearts. Turn out the world with its corrupting lust. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” If your profession is as high as heaven, and yet you are selfish and world-loving, you can have no part in the kingdom with the sanctified, the pure and holy. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” If your treasure is in Heaven, your heart will be there. You will talk of Heaven, eternal life, the immortal crown. If you lay up your treasure on earth, you will be talking of earthly things, worrying about losses and gains. “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

There is light and salvation for you if you will only feel that you must have it or perish. Jesus can save to the uttermost. But, Sister G, if God has ever spoken by me, you are terribly deceived in regard to yourself, and must have a thorough conversion, or you will never be one of that number who have come up through great tribulation, having washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

FLESH-MEATS AND STIMULANTS.

DEAR BRO. AND SISTER H: I recollected your countenances as being among several that I had seen, who need a work accomplished for them before they can be sanctified through the truth. You embraced the truth because you saw it to be truth, but it has not yet taken hold of you. You have not realized its sanctifying influence upon the life. The light has been shining upon your pathway in regard to health reform, and the duty resting upon God’s people in these last days to exercise temperance in all things. You, I saw, were among the number who would be backward to see the light, and correct your manner of eating, drinking, and working. As the light of truth is received and followed out, it will work an entire reformation in the life and character of all those who are sanctified through it.

Your business is not of a character that is friendly to an advance in the divine life, that will not hinder in the growth of grace and in the knowledge of the truth. It has a tendency to lower, to debase the man, to make him more animal in his propensities. The higher powers of the mind are overpowered by the lower. The brutish part of your nature governs the spiritual. Those who profess to be fitting for translation should not become butchers.

Your family have partaken largely of flesh-meats, and the animal propensities have been strengthened, while the intellectual have been weakened. We are61 composed of what we eat, and if we subsist largely upon the flesh of dead animals, we shall partake of their nature. You have encouraged the grosser part of your organization, while the more refined has been weakened. You have repeatedly said in defense of your indulgence of meat-eating, “However injurious it may be to others, it does not injure me, for I have used it all my life.” But you know not how well you might have been if you had abstained from the use of flesh-meats. As a family, you are far from being free from disease. You have used the fat of animals which God in his word expressly forbids: “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your dwellings, that ye eat neither fat nor blood.” “Moreover ye shall eat no manner of blood, whether it be of fowl or of beast, in any of your dwellings. Whatsoever soul it be that eateth any manner of blood, even that soul shall be cut off from his people.”

You have flesh, but it is not good material. You are worse off for this amount of flesh. If you should each come down to a more spare diet, which would take from you twenty-five or thirty pounds of your gross flesh, you would be much less liable to disease. The eating of flesh-meats has made a poor quality of blood and flesh. Your systems are in a state of inflammation, prepared to take on disease. You are liable to acute attacks of disease, and to sudden death, because you do not possess the strength of constitution to rally and resist disease. There will come a time when the strength and health you have flattered yourself you possessed will prove to be weakness. It is not the chief end of man to glorify his stomach. You have animal wants to be supplied; but because of this necessity shall man become all animal?

You have set for your children a table of unwholesome food, cooked in an unhealthful manner. You have placed flesh-meats before them, and what is the result? Are they refined, intellectual, obedient, conscientious,62 and religiously inclined? You know this is not the case, but entirely contrary. Your manner of living has strengthened the animal of your nature, and weakened the spiritual. You have transmitted to your children a miserable legacy; a depraved nature rendered still more depraved by your gross habits of eating and drinking. Your table has completed the work of making them what they are. The sin lies at your door. You know that they are not religiously inclined, that they will not submit to restraint, but are inclined to disobedience, and to disrespect your authority. Your eldest son especially is corrupt, partaking to a great degree of the animal. Scarcely a trace of the divine can be seen in his organization. You have brought up your children to indulge their appetite when they please and as they please. Your example has taught them that they live to eat; that the gratification of appetite is about all that is worth living for. There is a work for you to do, Bro. H. You have been like a man asleep or paralyzed. It is time that you make a mighty effort to save the younger members of your family. The influence of your eldest son is only evil over them. Correct your table. A depraved, stimulating diet is strengthening the animal passions of your children. Of all the families I am acquainted with, yours most needs to dispense with flesh-meats and grease, and learn to cook hygienically.

Sister H is a woman whose blood is corrupt. Her system is full of scrofulous humors from the eating of flesh-meats. The use of swine’s flesh in your family has imparted a bad quality of blood. Sister H needs to confine herself strictly to a diet of grains, fruits, and vegetables, cooked without flesh or grease of any kind. It will take quite a length of time of strictly healthful diet to place you in better conditions of health, where you will be rightly related to life. It is impossible for those who make free use of flesh-meats63 to have an unclouded brain and an active intellect.

We advise you to change your habits of living; but while you do this we caution you to move understandingly. I am acquainted with families who have changed from a meat diet to one that is impoverished. Their food is so poorly prepared that the stomach loathes it, and such have told me that the health reform did not agree with them; that they were decreasing in physical strength. Here is one reason why some have not been successful in their efforts to simplify their food. They have a poverty-stricken diet. Food is prepared without painstaking, and there is a continual sameness. There should not be many kinds at any one meal, but all meals should not be composed of the same kinds of food without variation. Food should be prepared with simplicity, yet with a nicety which will invite the appetite. You should keep grease out of your food. It defiles any preparation of food you may make. Eat largely of fruits and vegetables.

After they have reduced their physical strength by a reduced quantity and a poor quality of food, some conclude that their former way of living is the best. The system must be nourished. Yet we do not hesitate to say that flesh-meat is not necessary for health or strength. If used it is because a depraved appetite craves it. Its use excites the animal propensities to increased activity, and strengthens the animal passions. When the animal propensities are increased, the intellectual and moral powers are decreased. The use of the flesh of animals tends to cause a grossness of body, and benumbs the fine sensibilities of the mind.

Will the people who are preparing to become holy, pure, and refined, that they may be introduced into the society of heavenly angels, continue to take the life of God’s creatures and subsist on their flesh and enjoy it as a luxury? From what the Lord has shown me, this order of things will be changed, and God’s peculiar people will exercise temperance in all things.64 Those who subsist largely upon flesh, cannot avoid eating the meat of animals which are to a greater or less degree diseased. The process of fitting animals for market produces in them disease; and fitted in as healthful manner as they can be, they become heated and diseased by driving before they reach the market. The fluids and flesh of these diseased animals are received directly into the blood, and pass into the circulation of the human body, becoming fluids and flesh of the same. Thus humors are introduced into the system. And if the person already has impure blood, it is greatly aggravated by the eating of the flesh of these animals. The liability to take disease is increased tenfold by meat-eating. The intellectual, the moral, and the physical powers are depreciated by the habitual use of flesh-meats. Meat-eating deranges the system, beclouds the intellect, and blunts the moral sensibilities. We say to you, dear brother and sister, your safest course is to let meat alone.

The use of tea and coffee is also injurious to the system. To a certain extent, tea produces intoxication. It enters into the circulation, and gradually impairs the energy of body and mind. It stimulates, excites, and quickens the motion of the living machinery, forcing it to unnatural action, and thus gives the tea-drinker the impression that it is doing him great service, imparting to him strength. This is a mistake. Tea draws upon the strength of the nerves, and leaves them greatly weakened. When its influence is gone and the increased action caused by its use is abated, then what is the result? Languor and debility corresponding to the artificial vivacity the tea imparted. When the system is already overtaxed and needs rest, the use of tea spurs up nature by stimulation to perform unwonted, unnatural action, and thereby lessens her power to perform, and her ability to endure; and her powers give out long before Heaven designed they should. Tea is poisonous to the system. Christians should let it alone. The influence65 of coffee is in a degree the same as tea, but the effect upon the system is still worse. Its influence is exciting, and just in the degree that it elevates above par, it will exhaust and bring prostration below par. Tea and coffee drinkers carry the marks upon their faces. The skin becomes sallow, and assumes a lifeless appearance. The glow of health is not seen upon the countenance.

Tea and coffee do not nourish the system. The relief obtained from them is sudden, before the stomach has time to digest them. This shows that what the users of these stimulants call strength, is only received by exciting the nerves of the stomach, which convey the irritation to the brain, and this in turn is aroused to impart increased action to the heart, and short-lived energy to the entire system. All this is false strength, that we are the worse for having. They do not give a particle of natural strength.

The second effect of tea-drinking is headache, wakefulness, palpitation of the heart, indigestion, trembling of the nerves, with many other evils. “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” God calls for a living sacrifice, not a dead or dying one. When we realize the requirements of God, we shall see that he requires us to be temperate in all things. The end of our creation is to glorify God in our bodies and spirits which are his. How can we do this when we indulge the appetite to the injury of the physical and moral powers? God requires that we present our bodies a living sacrifice. Then the duty is enjoined on us to preserve that body in the very best condition of health, that we may comply with his requirements. “Whether, therefore, ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

You have a work to do to set your house in order.66 Cleanse yourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. You should make earnest efforts to discover your errors, and in the fear of God, relying upon his strength, put them away. Dear brother and sister, you need to reform in the matter of order. You should cultivate a love for neatness and strict cleanliness. God is a God of order. He will not sanction slack and disorderly habits in any of his people. In your dress, in your house, in all things, manifest taste and order. We are looked upon as a peculiar people. The dress reform is a striking contrast to the fashion of the world. Those who adopt this dress should manifest good taste and order and strict cleanliness in all their attire. The dress should not be adopted unless it is made right and arranged neatly. For we should seek not to disgust unbelievers by carelessness and slackness in our apparel, but should dress modestly, with reference to health and neatness, that our dress may commend itself to the judgment of candid minds.

You need clear, energetic minds, in order to appreciate the exalted character of the truth, to value the atonement, and to place the right estimate upon eternal things. If you pursue a wrong course, and indulge in wrong habits of eating, and thereby weaken the intellectual powers, you will not place that high estimate upon salvation and eternal life which will inspire you to conform your life to the life of Christ; you will not make those earnest, self-sacrificing efforts for entire conformity to the will of God, which his word requires, and which are necessary to give you a moral fitness for the finishing touch of immortality.

NEGLECT OF HEALTH REFORM.

DEAR BRO. AND SISTER I: The Lord has shown some things in regard to you which I feel it a duty to write. You were among the number who were67 presented before me as backward in health reform. Light has shone upon the pathway in which the people of God are traveling, yet all do not walk in the light and follow as fast as the providence of God marks out and opens the way before them. Until they do this, they will be in darkness. If God has spoken to his people, he designs that they shall hear and obey his voice. Last Sabbath, as I was speaking, your pale faces rose distinctly before me as I had been shown them. I saw your condition of health, and the ailments you have suffered under so long. I was shown that you have not lived healthfully. Your appetites have been unhealthy, and you have gratified the taste at the expense of the stomach. You have taken into your stomachs articles which it is impossible to convert into good blood. This has laid a heavy tax on the liver, for the reason that the digestive organs are deranged. You both have diseased livers. The health reform would be a great benefit to you both, if you would strictly carry it out. This you have failed to do. Your appetites are morbid, and because you do not relish a plain, simple diet, composed of unbolted wheat flour, vegetables and fruits prepared without spices or grease, you are continually transgressing the laws which God has established in your system. While you do this, you must suffer the penalty; for to every transgression is affixed a penalty. Yet you wonder at your continued poor health.

Be assured that God will not work a miracle to save you from the result of your own course of action. You have not had a liberal supply of air. Bro. I has labored in his store, closely applying himself to his business, and allowing himself but a limited amount of air and exercise. His circulation is depressed. He breathes only from the top of his lungs. It is seldom that he exercises the abdominal muscles in the act of breathing. Stomach, liver, lungs, and brain are suffering for the want of deep, full inspirations68 of air, which would electrify the blood and impart to it a bright, lively color, and which alone can keep it pure and give tone and vigor to every part of the living machinery.

You, my dear brother and sister, can have a much better condition of health than you now enjoy, and can avoid very many ill turns, if you will simply exercise temperance in all things,—temperance in labor, temperance in eating and drinking. Hot drinks are debilitating to the stomach. Cheese should never be introduced into the stomach. Fine-flour bread cannot impart to the system the nourishment that you will find in the unbolted wheat bread. The common use of bolted wheat bread cannot keep the system in a healthy condition. You both have inactive livers. The use of fine flour aggravates the difficulties under which you are laboring.

There is no treatment which can relieve you of your present difficulties while you eat and drink as you do. You can do that for yourselves which the most experienced physician can never do. Regulate your diet. In order to gratify the taste, you frequently place a severe tax upon your digestive organs by receiving into the stomach food which is not the most healthful, and at times in immoderate quantities. This wearies the stomach, and unfits it for the reception of even the most healthful food. You keep your stomachs constantly debilitated, because of your wrong habits of eating. Your food is made too rich. It is not prepared in a simple, natural manner, but is totally unfitted for the stomach when you have prepared it to suit your taste. Nature is burdened, and endeavors to resist your efforts to cripple her. Chills and fevers are the result of those attempts to rid herself of the burden you lay upon her. You have to suffer the penalty of nature’s violated laws. God has established laws in your system which you cannot violate without suffering the punishment. You have consulted taste without reference to health.69 You have made some changes, but have merely taken the first steps in reform diet. God requires of us temperance in all things. “Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”

Of all the families I am acquainted with, none need the benefit of the health reform more than yours. You groan under pains and prostrations which you cannot account for, and you try to submit with as good a grace as you can, thinking affliction is your lot, and Providence has thus ordained it. If you could have your eyes opened, and could see the steps taken in your lifetime to walk right into your present condition of poor health, you would be astonished at your blindness in not seeing the real state of the case before. You have created unnatural appetites, and do not derive half that enjoyment from your food which you would if you had not used your appetites wrongfully. You have perverted nature, and have been suffering the consequences, and painful has it been.

Nature bears abuse as long as she can without resisting, then she arouses and makes a mighty effort to rid herself of the incumbrances and evil treatment she has suffered. Then come headache, chills, fevers, nervousness, paralysis, and other evils too numerous to mention. A wrong course of eating or drinking destroys health, and with it the sweetness of life. Oh, how many times have you purchased what you called a good meal at the expense of a fevered system, loss of appetite, and loss of sleep! Inability to enjoy food, a sleepless night, hours of suffering,—all for a meal in which taste was gratified! Thousands have indulged their perverted appetites, have eaten a good meal, as they called it, and as the result, have brought on a fever, or some other acute disease, and certain death. That was enjoyment purchased at immense cost. Yet many have done this, and these self-murderers have been eulogized by their friends,70 and the minister, and carried directly to Heaven at their death. What a thought! Gluttons in Heaven! No, no; such will never enter the pearly gates of the golden city of God. Such will never be exalted to the right hand of Jesus the precious Saviour, the suffering Man of Calvary, whose life was one of constant self-denial and sacrifice. There is a place appointed for all such among the unworthy, who can have no part in the better life, the immortal inheritance.

God requires all men to render their bodies to him a living sacrifice, not a dead or a dying sacrifice, a sacrifice which their own course of action is debilitating, filling with impurities and disease. God calls for a living sacrifice. The body, he tells us, is the temple of the Holy Ghost, the habitation of his Spirit, and he requires all who bear his image to take care of their bodies for the purpose of his service and his glory. “Ye are not your own,” says the inspired apostle, “ye are bought with a price,” wherefore “glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” In order to do this, add to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience. It is a duty to know how to preserve the body in the very best condition of health, and it is a sacred duty to live up to the light which God has graciously given. If we close our eyes to the light for fear we shall see our wrongs, which we are unwilling to forsake, our sins are not lessened but increased. If light is turned from in one case, it will be disregarded in another. It is just as much sin to violate the laws of our being as to break one of the ten commandments, for we cannot do either without breaking God’s law. We cannot love the Lord with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, while we are loving our appetites, our tastes, a great deal better than we love the Lord. We are daily lessening our strength to glorify God, when he requires all our strength, all our mind. By our wrong habits we are lessening our hold on life, and yet professing to be71 Christ’s followers, preparing for the finishing touch of immortality.

My brother and sister, you have a work to do which no one can do for you. Awake from your lethargy, and Christ shall give you life. Change your course of living, your eating, your drinking, and your working. While you pursue the course you have been following for years, you cannot clearly discern sacred and eternal things. Your sensibilities are blunted, and your intellect beclouded. You have not been growing in grace and in the knowledge of the truth as was your privilege. You have not been increasing in spirituality, but growing more and more darkened. You have made too much haste to acquire property, and have been in danger of overreaching, looking out for your own interest and not regarding the interest of others as you would like to have them regard yours. You have encouraged selfishness in yourselves which must be overcome. Closely examine your own hearts, and in your lives imitate the unerring Pattern, and all will be well with you. Preserve a clear conscience before God. In all you do glorify his name. Divest yourselves of selfishness and selfish love.

“Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” The customs and practices of men are not to be your criterion. However trying may be your circumstances, never allow yourselves to overreach. Satan is at hand to tempt you to do this, and he will not let you rest in this matter. It is possible for a merchant to be a Christian and preserve his integrity before God. But in order to do this, constant watchfulness is necessary, and earnest supplication before God to be kept from the evil tendency of this degenerate age to advantage self at others’ disadvantage. You are in a hard place to advance in the divine life. You have a principle,72 but you do not hang all your weight upon God. You trust too much in your own feeble strength. You have great need of divine aid, of a power not to be found in yourself. There is One to whom you can go for counsel, whose wisdom is infinite. He has invited you to come to him, for he will supply your need. If by faith you cast all your care upon him who marks the falling of a sparrow, you will not trust in vain. If you will rest upon his sure promises, and maintain your integrity, angels of God will be round about you. Maintain good works in faith before God; then will your steps be ordered by the Lord, and his prospering hand will not be removed from you.

If you should be left to mark out your own course, you would make poor work of the matter, and would speedily make shipwreck of faith. Take all your cares and burdens to the Burden-bearer. But suffer not a blot to tarnish your Christian character. Never, never for the sake of gain stamp your life record in Heaven, which is viewed by all the angelic host, and by your self-denying Redeemer, with avarice, penuriousness, selfishness, or false dealing. Such a course might bring you profit so far as this world views the matter, but viewed in the light of Heaven, it would prove an immense, an irreparable loss. “The Lord seeth not as man seeth.” In trusting in God continually there is safety, there will not be a constant fear of future evil. This borrowed care and anxiety will cease. We have a heavenly Father who careth for his children, and will and does make his grace sufficient in every time of need. When we take into our own hands the management of things that concern us, and depend upon our own wisdom for success, we may well have anxiety and anticipate danger and loss, for it will most certainly come upon us.

Full and entire consecration to God is required of us. While the Redeemer of sinful mortals was laboring and suffering for us, he denied himself, and73 his whole life was one continued scene of toil and privation. Had he chosen to do so, he could have passed his days on earth in ease and plenty, and appropriated to himself all the pleasures and enjoyments of this life. But he did not; he considered not his own convenience. He lived not to gratify himself, but to do good and to save others from suffering, to help those who most needed help. He endured to the end. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and he hath borne the iniquity of us all. The bitter cup was apportioned to us to drink. Our sins mingled it. But our dear Saviour took the cup from our lips and drank it himself, and in its stead he presents to us a cup of mercy, blessing, and salvation. Oh, what an immense sacrifice was this for the fallen race! What love, what wondrous and matchless love! After all this manifestation of suffering to show his love, shall we shrink from the small trials we have to bear? Can we love Christ, and refuse to lift the cross? Can we love to be with him in glory, and not follow him even from the judgment-hall to Calvary? If Christ be in us the hope of glory, we shall walk even as he walked; we shall imitate his life of sacrifice to bless others; we shall drink of the cup, and be baptized with the baptism; we shall welcome a life of devotion, trial, and self-denial, for Christ’s sake. Heaven will be cheap enough whatever sacrifice we may make to obtain it.

Continue reading: LOVE FOR THE ERRING.