Dear Sister B: In the vision given me June
12 I was shown your case. You are in a sad state, not so much
because of actual disease, although you are not well, but because
of imaginary inability to labor.
Several years ago I was shown that you suffered your mind to
dwell too much upon the boys. You have frequently made them the
theme of conversation, and your mind has run in a channel not
profitable to your spiritual advancement. You have fallen into
a train of thinking which has led to evil results. You have injured
and abused your own body, and brought upon yourself an imbecile
state of mind. You have indulged in a lovesick train of thought
and feeling until you are almost ruined, soul and body. Your
indisposition to exercise is very bad for you. Useful employment
in bearing home burdens, and engaging in useful labor, would
overcome this sickly, sentimental state of feeling sooner than
any other means.
You have been sympathized with too much.
To relieve you from all responsibility has been a very great
mistake. Nearly all your thoughts are now upon yourself. You
are fretful, and your mind dwells upon sad things, and pictures
your condition as very bad, and you are even settling it in your
mind that you can never get well unless you are married. In your
present state of mind you are not fit to marry. There is no one
who would wish you in your present helpless, useless condition.
If one should fancy he loved you, he would be worthless; for
no sensible man could think for a moment of placing his affections
upon so useless an object.
The sad, gloomy state of your mind, which
leads you to weep and feel that life is not desirable, is the
result of allowing your thoughts to run in an impure channel,
upon forbidden subjects, while you indulge habits that are steadily
and surely undermining your constitution and preparing you for
premature decay. It would have been far better for you had you
never gone to -----. Your stay there injured you. You dwelt upon
your infirmities, and mingled in society which was corrupting
in its influence. Miss C was a corrupt, evil-minded
woman. Her association with you increased
the evil which was already upon you. "Evil communications
corrupt good manners." At the present time your condition
is not acceptable in the sight of God; yet you imagine that you
have no desire to live. But should you be taken at your expressed
wish, and your life cease, your case would be hopeless indeed.
You are neither prepared for this world nor the next.
You imagine that you cannot walk, or ride,
or even exercise, and you settle into a cold, dead apathy. You
are a grief and anxiety to your indulgent parents, and no comfort
to yourself. You can rally, you can work, you can shake off this
terrible indifference. Your mother needs your aid; your father
needs the comfort you can give him; your brothers need a kindly
care from their elder sister; your sisters need your instruction.
But here you sit upon the stool of indolence, dreaming of unrequited
love. For your own soul's sake, have done with this folly. Read
your Bible as you have never read it before. Engage in home duties,
and lighten the cares of your overburdened, overworked parents.
You may not be able to do a great amount at first, but every
day increase the task you set yourself. This is the surest remedy
for a diseased mind and an abused body.
If you possess earnestness and steadiness
of purpose, your mind will come back, in a degree, to dwelling
upon more healthful, pure subjects. Self-indulgence has degenerated
by degrees into such a wantonness of will as knows not how to
please itself. Instead of regulating your actions by reason and
principle, you suffer yourself to be guided by every slight and
momentary impulse. This makes you appear variable and in constant.
It is vain for others to seek to please you, for you could not
please yourself, even if all your wishes were indulged. You are
a capricious child and have become sick of yourself through very
selfishness.
This wretched state is the result of unwise
sympathy and flattery. You have had a very good mind, but it
has become unbalanced by being directed in a wrong channel. You
now amount to little else than a blank in society. This need
not be. You can do for yourself that which no one else can do
for you. You have duties to perform, but you have so long yielded
to a helpless condition that you imagine you cannot do them.
The will is at fault; you have the power, but not the will.
You are pining for love. Jesus calls for
your affections; if you will devote them to Him, He will rid
you of all this sickly, sentimental, impure love, found in the
pages of a novel. In Jesus you may love with fervor, with earnestness.
This love may increase in depth and expand without limit, and
not endanger health of body or strength of mind. You need love
to God and to your neighbor. You must awake, you must shake off
this deception which is upon you, and seek pure love.
Your only hope of this life and the better
life is to seek earnestly for the true religion of Jesus. You
have not a religious experience. You need to be converted. Your
listless, indolent, selfish sadness will then give place to cheerfulness,
which will be beneficial to body and mind. Love to God will ensure
love to your neighbor, and you will engage in the duties of life
with a deep, unselfish interest. Pure principles should underlie
your actions. Inward peace will bring even your thoughts into
a healthful channel. Devote yourself to God, or you will never
gain the better life.
You have duties to perform to your parents.
You should not be discouraged if you become weary at first. It
will not prove a lasting injury. Your parents frequently become
exceedingly weary. It will not be half so injurious to you to
become very weary in useful labor as for your mind to be dwelling
upon yourself, fostering ailments and yielding to despondency.
A faithful fulfillment of home duties, filling the position you
can occupy to the best advantage, be it ever so simple and humble,
is truly elevating. This divine influence is needed. In this
there is peace and sacred joy. It possesses healing power. It
will secretly and insensibly soothe the wounds of the soul, and
even the sufferings of the body. Peace of mind, which comes from
pure and holy motives and actions, will give free and vigorous
spring to all the organs of the body.
Inward peace and a conscience void of offense
toward God will quicken and invigorate the intellect like dew
distilled upon the tender plants. The will is then rightly directed
and controlled, and is more decided, and yet free from perverseness.
The meditations are pleasing because they are sanctified. The
serenity of mind which you may possess will bless all with whom
you associate. This peace and calmness will, in time, become
natural, and will reflect its precious rays upon all around you,
to be again reflected upon you. The more you taste this heavenly
peace and quietude of mind, the more it will increase. It is
an animated, living pleasure which does not throw all the moral
energies into a stupor, but awakens them to increased activity.
Perfect peace is an attribute of heaven which angels possess.
May God help you to become a possessor of this peace.