You have let slip the golden opportunity of gathering a harvest of souls because it was impossible for God to work with your efforts, for your heart was not right with Him. Your spirit was not pure before Him who is the embodiment of purity and holiness. If you regard iniquity in your heart, the Lord will not hear your prayer. Our God is a jealous God. He knoweth the thoughts and the imaginations and devices of the heart. You have followed your own judgment and made a sad failure when you might have had success. There is too much at stake in these efforts, to do the work negligently or recklessly. Souls are being tested upon important, eternal truth, and what you may say or do will have an influence to balance them in deciding either for or against the truth. When you should have been in humility before God, pleading for Him to work with your efforts, feeling the weight of the cause and the value of souls, you have chosen the society of young ladies, regardless of the sacred work of God and of your office as a minister of the gospel of Christ. You were standing between the living and the dead; yet you engaged in light and frivolous conversation, in jesting and joking. (3T 238.1) MC VC

How can ministering angels be round about you, shedding light upon you and imparting strength to you? When you should be seeking to find ways and means to enlighten the minds of those in error and darkness you are pleasing yourself and are too selfish to engage in a work for which you have no inclination or love. If our position is criticized by those who are investigating, you have but little patience with them. You frequently give them a short, severe reply, as though they had no business to search closely, but must take all that is presented as truth, without investigating for themselves. In your ministerial labors you have turned many souls away from the truth by your manner of treating them. You are not always impatient and unapproachable; when you feel like it you will take time to answer questions candidly; but frequently you are uncourteous and exacting, and are pettish and irritable like a child. (3T 238.2) MC VC