Testimonies for the Church Vol 1 - Lansing SDA Church

638 Testimonies for the Church Volume 1[696][697]strife, and censure. Do you account these as manly and noble? asan exhibition of the sterner virtues of your sex? However you mayconsider them, God looks upon them with displeasure and marks themin His book. Angels flee from the dwelling where words of discordare exchanged, where gratitude is almost a stranger to the heart, andcensure leaps like black balls to the lips, spotting the garments, defilingthe Christian character.When you married your wife, she loved you. She was extremelysensitive, yet with painstaking on your part, and fortitude on hers, herhealth need not have been what it is. But your stern coldness made youlike an iceberg, freezing up the channel of love and affection. Yourcensure and faultfinding has been like desolating hail to a sensitiveplant. It has chilled and nearly destroyed the life of the plant. Your loveof the world is eating out the good traits of your character. Your wife isof a different turn and more generous. But when she has, even in smallmatters, exercised her generous instincts, you have felt a drawback inyour feelings and have censured her. You indulge a close and grudgingspirit. You make your wife feel that she is a tax, a burden, and thatshe has no right to exercise her generosity at your expense. All thesethings are of such a discouraging nature that she feels hopeless andhelpless, and has not stamina to bear up against it, but bends to theforce of the blast. Her disease is pain of the nerves. Were her marriedlife agreeable, she would possess a good degree of health. But allthrough your married life the demon has been a guest in your familyto exult over your misery.Disappointed hopes have made you both completely wretched.You will have no reward for your suffering, for you have caused ityourselves. Your own words have been like deadly poison upon nerveand brain, upon bone and muscle. You reap that which you sow. Youdo not appreciate the feelings and sufferings of each other. God isdispleased with the hard, unfeeling, world-loving spirit you possess.Brother C, the love of money is the root of all evil. You have lovedmoney, loved the world; you have looked at the illness of your wifeas a severe, a terrible, tax, not realizing that it is your fault in a greatmeasure that she is sick. You have not the elements of a contentedspirit. You dwell upon your troubles; imaginary want and poverty farahead stare you in the face; you feel afflicted, distressed, agonized;your brain seems on fire, your spirits depressed. You do not cherish