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

Professed Christians, worldly Christians, are
unacquainted with heavenly things. They will
never be brought to the gates of the New Jerusalem
to engage in exercises which have not hitherto
specially interested them. They have not trained
their minds to delight in devotion and in meditation
upon things of God and heaven. How, then, can
they engage in the services of heaven? how delight
in the spiritual, the pure, the holy in heaven, when
it was not a special delight to them upon earth? The
very atmosphere there will be purity itself. But they
are unacquainted with it all. When in the world,
pursuing their worldly vocations, they knew just
where to take hold and just what to do. The lower
order of faculties being in so constant exercise,
grew, while the higher, nobler powers of the mind,
not being strengthened by use, are incapable of
awaking at once to spiritual exercises. Spiritual
things are not discerned, because they are viewed
with world-loving eyes, which cannot estimate the
value and glory of the divine above the temporal.
The mind must be educated and disciplined to
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