Earlier text: LOVE FOR THE ERRING.DEAR BROTHER O: I have received your letter, and need not express to you the sadness of my heart at the very sudden turn you have recently taken. As I review your past history, I call to mind your experience in Colorado, your reflections while upon that rock where descent seemed impossible, and your subsequent partial recovery to the faith, your temptations through false and ambitious hopes to become greater away from our people than with them, your disappointment, your praiseworthy course of remaining silent, the prayers and sympathies of God's people that were ascending to Heaven in your behalf, and my constant pleadings, “Do not let him alone, but make efforts to save him. He is ensnared; he has lost his hold upon God.” I remember the last time I rode out with your wife before she died. Her burden was for you and her children. She said she trembled for the future because of her children and the skepticism of her husband. "If I should die," she said, "and he should give up the faith, and lead my children to give up the Sabbath, how terrible it would be, after he has received so great light and so many evidences! For this reason I have clung to life. He has not that deep, inwrought work in the soul that will anchor him when temptations come. O Sister White, it is622for the souls of my husband and children that I have clung to life. And I want to tell you right here that I am heartily sorry that I did not receive in a different spirit the testimony given me and my husband. I see now that the message to us was just what we needed; and had we accepted it, it would have placed us both in a better, far better, position spiritually than we have been in for some time. We were both proud in spirit, and since that time I have felt like shunning you; for I thought you had no faith or confidence in us. But during the last few months this has all disappeared, and I have felt the same confidence, the same close sympathy and love for you that I have had in my past life; but I know my husband does not feel thus, and it is of but little use for me to talk these things over with him. I am too weak to set matters before him as they are in my mind, and he is too firm in his ideas and feelings; but I wanted to tell you that I have implicit faith in the Testimonies and in your work, and have long been wishing for an opportunity to tell you this, and I shall now feel free. Will you forgive me for my feelings and words against you? I have grieved the Spirit of God, and sometimes have felt that he had forsaken me; but I do not now have these feelings, neither have I had them for some time. I never realized the danger of talking unbelief as I have for a few weeks past. I fear greatly for my husband, for he expresses unbelief; and I fear he will give up all, and become an infidel. Oh, how I wish I could help him!" Bro. O, when you told me that your wife died disbelieving the Testimonies, I did not contradict you, but I thought you did not tell me the truth. I afterward decided that you were greatly in the dark; for I have a letter which she sent me saying that she had the fullest confidence in the Testimonies, and knew them to be true in regard to you and to herself. I attended the camp-meeting in —, and you were present. You then had an experience that would have proved of lasting value to you if you had remained623humble before God as at that time. You then humbled your heart, and upon your knees asked me to forgive you for the things you had said about me and my work. You said, "You have no idea how mean I have talked about you." I assured you I would just as freely forgive you as I hoped Jesus would forgive me my sins and errors. You stated there in the presence of several that you had said many things to my injury; all of which I assured you I freely forgave you, for it was not against me. None of these things were against me; I was only a servant bearing the message God gave me. It was not I personally that you were arrayed against; it was the message that God sent to you through the humble instrument. It was Christ that you injured, not I. "I do not want you," I said, "to confess to me. Make all straight between your soul and God, and all will be right between you and me." Some expressions that were written to you, you had taken in altogether too strong a light. And after reading them carefully again, you said they did not appear to you as they had, and everything was reconciled. You stated after this interview that you felt you had never before known what conversion was, but that you had been born again, converted for the first time. You could say you loved your brethren; your heart was light and happy; you saw the sacredness of the work as you had never seen it before; and your letters expressed the deep change wrought in you by the Spirit of God. And yet I knew that you would be brought over the ground again, and tested on the very points where you had failed before. Thus the Lord did for the children of Israel; thus he has done with his people in all ages. He will prove them where they have formerly failed; he will try them, and if they fail under the trial the second time, he will bring them around to the same test again. My heart aches every time I think of you; my soul is sad indeed. Every soul is precious, because it has624been purchased by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. I sometimes think that we do not place anything like a correct value upon the purchase of the blood of Jesus—the redemption of the soul. When I consider the infinite price paid for the redemption of individual souls, I think, “What if that soul is finally lost? What if he refuses to be a learner in the school of Christ, and fails to practice meekness and lowliness, and will not wear the yoke of Christ?” This, my brother, has been your greatest failure. If you had taken less counsel of yourself, and made Jesus your counselor, you would now be strong in grace and in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. You have not yoked up with Christ; you have not been imbued with his Spirit. O, how much you need the divine mold upon your character! We have much to answer for, considering our superior advantages, and knowing that we must be judged by the light and privileges the Lord has granted us. We cannot plead that we are less favored with light than that people who have been for ages an astonishment and a reproach to the world. We cannot expect judgment to be given in our favor because, like Capernaum, we have been exalted to heaven. The Lord has wrought for his commandment-keeping people. The light that has been reflected to us from heaven was not granted to Sodom and Gomorrah, or they might have remained unto this day; and if the mighty works and knowledge and grace which have been manifested to this people, had been made known to the nations in darkness, we know not how far in advance of this people they might now be. We cannot determine how much more tolerable it would be for them in the day of Judgment than for those who have had the clear light of truth shining upon them as you have had, but through some inexplicable cause have turned from the holy commandment delivered to them. We can only point to your case with sorrow, as a beacon of warning. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” The625Lord seeth not as man seeth. His thoughts and ways are not what blind, selfish men believe they are, or wish them to be. The Lord looks on the heart, and works in and with his creatures to will and to do whatever he commands or requires of them, unless they reject his counsel, and refuse to be obedient to his commandments. The greater part of your life has been employed in presenting doctrines which, during the last part of your life, you will repudiate and condemn. Which is the genuine work? which is the false? Can we trust to your judgment? can we rely upon your interpretation of the Scriptures?—We cannot. We would be in danger of being misled. You cannot now or at any future period of your life feel that your feet are standing on solid rock. I have been unable to keep from thinking of your future. The truth to me is a living reality. I know it to be truth. The word of God is sure. “To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” Will your light go out in darkness? I am writing out more fully the volume of "Great Controversy" containing the history of the fall of Satan and the introduction of sin into our world; and I can have a more vivid sense of this great controversy between Christ, the Prince of light, and Satan, the prince of darkness, than I have ever had before. As I see the various devices of Satan to compass the ruin of erring man, and make him like himself, a transgressor of God's holy law, I would that angels of God could come to earth, and present this matter in its great importance. Then I feel so intensely for souls who are willfully departing from light and knowledge and obedience to God's holy law. As Adam and Eve believed the lie of Satan, "Ye shall be as gods," so these souls hope through disobedience to rise to greater hights, to gain some flattering position. I am so anxious, that, while others are sleeping, I spend hours in prayer that God will626work in mighty power to break the fatal deception upon human minds, and lead them in simplicity to the cross of Calvary. Then I quiet myself with the thought that all these souls are purchased by the blood of the Lord Jesus. We may have love for these souls, but Calvary testifies how God loves them. This work is not ours, but the Lord's. We are only the instruments in his hands to do his will, not our own. We look at those who are doing despite to the Spirit of grace, and tremble for them. We feel sorry, and are disappointed, that they prove untrue to God and the truth; but we feel a deeper sorrow as we think of Jesus, who has purchased them with his own blood. We would give all our possessions to save one, but find we cannot do this. We would give life itself to save one soul unto life eternal; but even this sacrifice would not do the work. The one great sacrifice has been made in the life, the mission, and the death of Jesus Christ. O that minds would contemplate the greatness of that sacrifice! Then might they be better able to comprehend the greatness of salvation. And now, Bro. O, you who have had so great light, such an abundance of evidence of Bible truth, go not onward and upward with those who will triumph with the truth at last. You now take the side of the first great rebel, to make void the law of God; and he will lead others in the same path of transgression of God's holy law, to ridicule our faith. When the Judgment shall sit, and every one shall be judged out of those things written in the books, how will your case then appear? You will look on this one and that one who would have walked in the way of God's commandments if you had not surrounded them with the atmosphere of unbelief, if you had not perverted the Scriptures by misinterpreting their meaning, and led them away from strict obedience to God's holy law. Can you then look on these countenances with pleasure? You will hear the voice of the great Judge saying, “Who hath required this at your hand?” Your present wife has had no deep religious experience in self-denial, in self-sacrifice, in communion with God, in belief of the truth. She would easily be led from obedience to God to transgression. Your children will follow where their father leads the way; and unless some special providence shall rescue them, their disobedience and transgression will be laid upon your soul. The Judge of all the earth confronts you with that holy law of whose claims you are not ignorant. Your character and the characters of your wife and of your children are judged by that holy standard of righteousness. You have led them to transgress, and their ruin the holy law of God charges upon you. Through various devices, with which Satan is fully acquainted, you have worked for time and for eternity, trying to make others believe you an honest man in leaving the light of truth. Are you so?—No, no. It is a deception, a terrible deception. What can you answer to God in that day? You will then have a terrible dread and fear of your Creator. You will try to frame some excuse for your course, but everything will seem to evade you. You will stand guilty and condemned. You may feel angry with me because I have thus put the case, but so it is, and so it will be with every transgressor of God's holy law. Keep ever before you this truth: "Wherever I am, whatever I do, thou, God, seest me." It is not possible for the least item of our conduct to escape the observation of the One who says, "I know thy works." The depths of every heart are open to the inspection of God. Every action, every purpose, every word, is as distinctly marked as though there were only one individual in the whole universe, and all the watchfulness and scrutiny of God were employed on his deportment. Shall we then break even one precept of his law, and teach others to do so, by evasions, by assertions, by falsehoods, in the very sight of the Lawgiver? Shall we brave the sentence in the very face of the Judge? In this there is a628hardihood which seems to surpass the worst human presumption. I know, my brother, whom I expect to meet in the day of Judgment, that you will have no words of excuse for your late defection. O that I could present before you, and before others of my brethren, the necessity of an ever-abiding sense of God's presence, which would put such restraint on your life that your moral and religious standing before the people would be far different. We must reach a higher standard. Every soul, in going out and coming in, in all business transactions, at all times and in all places, should act with the consciousness that he is moving under the inspection of God and heavenly angels, and that the Being who will judge every man's work for eternity, accompanies him at every step, observing all his actions and scrutinizing all his motives. A consciousness of the presence of God, and the peril of violating his precepts, would take possession of his entire being. What a change would be seen in man, what a change in society, what evils would be left undone! There would be exclamations from all ranks and among all ages, “I cannot do this great wickedness, and sin against God.” Who shall enter in through the gates into the city? “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” You know what these commandments are as well as I do. I love your soul, and the soul of your wife, and the souls of your innocent children; and this is why I now address you. Consider carefully the way your feet are tending. I have more to say, but not now. Will you please to answer me, and return to me the letter containing the dream, as I requested. Yours with much sorrow and pity and love. DEAR BROTHER P: I see by your letter that you are in a state of unbelief, questioning whether there is hope in your case. As Christ’s ambassador I would say to you, “Hope thou in God.” He “so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Now cannot you take courage from this gracious promise? Satan may tell you many times that you are a sinner; but you can answer, “True, I am a sinner; but ‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’” Said Jesus, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” And again, “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” Will you not believe these precious words? Will you not receive them into your heart? “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Is not this promise broad and deep and full? Can you ask more? Will you not allow the Lord right here to erect a standard for you against the enemy? Satan is ready to steal away the blessed assurances of God. He desires to take every glimmer of hope and every ray of light from the soul; but you must not permit him to do this. Exercise faith; fight the good fight of faith; wrestle with these doubts; become acquainted with the promises. “When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousnesses shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it. Again, when I say unto630the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right, . . . he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins that he hath committed shall be mentioned unto him; he hath done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.” “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” When Satan comes in to tempt you to give up all hope, point him to these words. Pray with David, “Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions; according to thy mercy remember thou me for thy goodness’ sake, O Lord. Good and upright is the Lord; therefore will he teach sinners in the way. The meek will he guide in judgment; and the meek will he teach his way.” “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land; but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” Here are the promises, plain and definite, rich and full; but they are all upon conditions. If you comply with the conditions, can you not trust the Lord to fulfill his word? Let these blessed promises, set in the framework of faith, be placed in memory’s halls. Not one of them will fail. All that God hath spoken, he will do. “He is faithful that promised.” The work which you have to do on your part, is plainly set before you: "Wash you, make you clean;631put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." "If the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die." The Lord declares: "The children of thy people say, The way of the Lord is not equal." "Hear now, O house of Israel: Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?" "Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die? saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways, and live?" "Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways, saith the Lord God. Repent, and turn yourselves from all your transgressions; so iniquity shall not be your ruin. Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new spirit; for why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God; wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye." Here the Lord has plainly revealed his will concerning the salvation of the sinner. And the attitude which many assume in expressing doubts and unbelief as to whether the Lord will save them, is a reflection upon the character of God. Those who complain of his severity, are virtually saying, "The way of the Lord is not equal." But he distinctly throws back the imputation upon the sinner: "‘Are not your ways unequal?’ Can I pardon your transgressions when you do not repent, and turn from your sins?" The character of God is fully vindicated in the words of Scripture I have placed before you. The Lord will receive the sinner when he repents and forsakes his sins so that God can work with his efforts in seeking perfection of character. The promises are not yea and nay, but if man complies with the conditions, they are, in Christ, "yea, and in him Amen, unto the glory of God by us." The whole632purpose of God in giving his Son for the sins of the world, is that man may be saved, not in transgression and unrighteousness, but in forsaking sin, washing his robes of character, and making them white in the blood of the Lamb. He proposes to remove from man the offensive thing that he hates; but man must co-operate with God in the work. Sin must be given up, hated, and the righteousness of Christ must be accepted by faith. Thus will the divine co-operate with the human. We should beware that we do not give place to doubt and unbelief, and in our attitude of despair complain of God, and misrepresent him to the world. This is placing ourselves on Satan’s side of the question. “Poor souls,” he says, “I pity you, mourning under sin; but God has no pity. You long for some ray of hope; but God leaves you to perish, and finds satisfaction in your misery.” This is a terrible deception. Do not give ear to the tempter, but say, “Jesus has died that I might live. He loves me, and wills not that I should perish. I have a compassionate heavenly Father; and although I have abused his love, though the blessings he has graciously given me have been squandered, I will arise, and go to my Father, and say, ‘I have sinned, and am no longer worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants.’” The parable tells you how the wanderer will be received. “When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” Thus the Bible represents God’s willingness to receive the repentant, returning sinner. But even this parable, tender and touching as it is, comes short of expressing the infinite compassion of the heavenly Father. The Lord declares by the prophet, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." While the sinner is yet far from his Father's house, wasting his substance in a strange country, the Father's heart is yearning over him; and every long633ing awakened in the soul to return to God is but the tender pleading of his Spirit, wooing, entreating, drawing the wanderer to his Father's heart of love. With the rich promises of the Bible before you, can you still give place to doubt? Can you believe that when the poor sinner longs to return, longs to forsake his sins, the Lord sternly withholds him from coming to his feet in repentance? Away with such thoughts! Nothing can be more dishonoring to God than these ideas. Nothing can hurt your own soul more than to entertain such thoughts of our heavenly Father. Our whole spiritual life will catch a tone of hopelessness from such conceptions of God. They discourage all effort to seek God or to serve him. We must not think of God only as a judge ready to pronounce sentence against us. He hates sin; but from love to sinners he gave himself, in the person of Christ, that all who would, might be saved, and have eternal blessedness in the kingdom of glory. The Lord himself declares his character, that Satan has malignantly set in a false light. He has revealed himself as, “The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.” What stronger or more tender language could have been employed than he has chosen, in which to express his love toward us? He declares, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Yea, they may forget; yet will I not forget thee.” In the plan of redemption, "mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other." The all-wise, all-powerful God, he who dwells in light unapproachable, is full of love, of goodness. Therefore give glory to God, ye that are doubting and trembling; for Jesus lives to make intercession for us. Give God the glory for the gift of his dear Son, and that he has not died for us in vain. Brother P, you ask if you have committed the sin which has no forgiveness in this life or in the life to come. I answer, I do not see the slightest evidence that this is the case. What constitutes the sin against the Holy Ghost?—It is willfully attributing to Satan the work of the Holy Spirit. For example, suppose that one is a witness of the special work of the Spirit of God. He has convincing evidence that the work is in harmony with the Scriptures, and the Spirit witnesses with his spirit that it is of God. Afterward, however, he falls under temptation; pride, self-sufficiency, or some other evil trait, controls him; and rejecting all the evidence of its divine character, he declares that that which he had before acknowledged to be the power of the Holy Spirit was the power of Satan. It is through the medium of his Spirit that God works upon the human heart; and when men willfully reject the Spirit, and declare it to be from Satan, they cut off the channel by which God can communicate with them. By denying the evidence which God has been pleased to give them, they shut out the light which had been shining in their hearts, and as the result they are left in darkness. Thus the words of Christ are verified, “If the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” For a time, persons who have committed this sin may appear to be children of God; but when circumstances arise to develop character, and show what manner of spirit they are of, it will be found that they are on the enemy’s ground, standing under his black banner. My brother, the Spirit invites you to-day. Come with your whole heart to Jesus. Repent of your sins, make confession to God, forsake all iniquity, and you may appropriate to yourself all his promises. "Look unto me, and be ye saved," is his gracious invitation. The day will come when the awful denunciation of God's wrath will be uttered against all who have persisted in their disloyalty to him. This will be when God must speak and do terrible things in righteousness635against the transgressors of his law. But you need not be among those who will come under the wrath of God. It is now the day of his salvation. The light from the cross of Calvary is now shining forth in clear, bright rays, revealing Jesus, our sacrifice for sin. As you read the promises which I have set before you, remember they are the expression of unutterable love and pity. The great heart of infinite Love is drawn toward the sinner with boundless compassion. "We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins." Yes, only believe that God is your helper. He wants to restore his moral image in man. As you draw nigh to him with confession and repentance, he will draw nigh to you with mercy and forgiveness. We owe the Lord everything. He is the author of our salvation. As you work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, "it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure."