Testimonies for the Church, Volume 2 - Ellen G. White

influence, and deprive themselves of the
approbation of God and the confidence of their
brethren, their course should be shunned. Christ is
your example, and you have no excuse for taking
the course of erring men for example unless their
lives are in accordance with the life of Christ. Your
influence will be death to the cause of God if you
continue to pursue the course that you have
pursued for a few years past. Your trafficking and
trading, and gathering up from your brethren
means that you have not earned, is a great sin in the
sight of God.
Some have really deprived themselves of
means necessary for the comfort of their families,
and some of even the necessaries of life, to help
you, and you have received it. Paul writes to his
Philippian brethren: "Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus." "Look not every
man on his own things, but every man also on the
things of others." He also writes to his Corinthian
brethren: "Let no man seek his own, but every man
another's wealth." Again, he mournfully says: "For
all seek their own, not the things which are Jesus
1121