Heaven’s path is too narrow for rank and riches to ride in state, too narrow for the play of ambition, too steep and rugged for carriages of ease to climb. Toil, patience, self- sacrifice, reproach, poverty, hard work, enduring the contradiction of sinners against Himself, was the portion of Christ, and it must be the portion of man if he ever enters the Paradise of God. (2SM 166.1) MC VC

If your present faith is yielded so easily, it is because you never sent down the taproot in clinging faith. It has cost you too little. If it does not sustain you in trial and comfort you in affliction, it is because your faith has not been made strong by effort and pure by sacrifice. Those who are willing to suffer for Christ will experience more joy in suffering than in the fact that Christ has suffered for them, thus showing that He loved them. Those who win heaven will put forth their noblest efforts, and will labor with all long-suffering, that they may reap the fruit of toil. (2SM 166.2) MC VC

There is a hand that will open wide the gates of Paradise to those that have stood the test of temptation and kept a good conscience by giving up the world, its honors, its applause, for the love of Christ, thus confessing Him before men, and waiting with all patience for Him to confess them before His Father and holy angels. (2SM 166.3) MC VC

The Influence of Doubt VC

I do not ask an explanation of your course. Brother [C. W.] Stone wished to read your letter to me. I refused to hear it. The breath of doubt, of complaint and unbelief, is contagious; if I make my mind a channel for the filthy stream, the turbid, defiling water proceeding from Satan’s fountain, some suggestion may linger in my mind, polluting it. If his suggestions have had such power on you as to lead you to sell your birthright for a mess of pottage—the friendship of the Lord’s enemies—I want not hear anything of your doubts, and I hope you will be guarded, lest you contaminate other minds; for the very atmosphere surrounding a man who dares to make the statements you have made is as a poisonous miasma. (2SM 166.4) MC VC

I beg of you to go entirely away from those who believe the truth; for if you have chosen the world and the friends of the world, go with those of your own choice. Do not poison the minds of others and make yourself Satan’s special agent to work the ruin of souls. If you have not fully taken your stand, make haste to resist the devil before it shall be forever too late. Do not take another step into darkness, but take your position as a man of God. (2SM 166.5) MC VC

If you would secure the grand aim and purpose of life without mistake in your choice or fear of failure, you must make God first and last and best in every plan and work and thought. If you want a path that leads straight into darkness, you have only to cast the light of God behind you, live without God. When God points out your path and says, “This is your way of safety and peace,” You have only to set your face in an opposite direction from the way of the Lord and your feet will take hold on perdition. The voice of the Lamb of God is heard speaking to us, “Follow Me, and ye shall not walk in darkness.” (2SM 167.1) MC VC

A Commission From the King of Kings VC

God has chosen you for a great and solemn work. He has been seeking to discipline, to test, to prove you, to refine and ennoble you, that this sacred work may be done with a single eye to His glory which belongs wholly to God. What a thought that God chooses a man and brings him into close connection with Himself, and gives him a mission to undertake, a work to do, for Him. A weak man is made strong, a timid man is made brave, the irresolute becomes a man of firm and quick decision. What! Is it possible that man is of so much consequence as to receive a commission from the King of kings! Shall worldly ambition allure from the sacred trust, the holy commission? (2SM 167.2) MC VC

The Majesty of heaven came to our world to give to man an example of a pure and spotless life, and to sacrifice Himself to the joy of saving the perishing. Whoever follows Christ is a colaborer with Him, sharing with Him the divine work of saving souls. If you have a thought of being released from it because you see some prospect of forming an alliance with the world which shall bring yourself to greater notice, it is because you forget how great and noble it is to do anything for God, how exalted a position it is to be a colaborer with Jesus Christ, a light bearer to the world, shedding light and love upon the pathway of others. (2SM 167.3) MC VC