Beloved brethren in the Lord: Favor, mercy, and peace from Gad our Father, and from Jesus Christ our Lord, be multiplied to you!

      There are three things to which we most affectionately and devoutly invite the attention of all our brethren in the kingdom of the Messiah. These are, the religious training of their families--the order, worship, and discipline of the congregation--and the conversion of the world. What do you more than others, brethren, in these three great objects of Christian care and enterprise? We honor the Bible as sufficient not only to make us wise to salvation, but as divinely adapted to accomplish the man of God for every good word and work. Do we use it thus in our daily practice, and in the education of our families? Do we teach it to our children and those under our care, as we teach them the learning, the science, and business of this world; or do we rather devote our thoughts and our efforts as if we valued the acquisitions of this life as the pearl of great value, and the things of the life to come as of inferior importance? Are our families nurseries for Christ and heaven, or are they schools for training our children to live according to the flesh, according to the course of this deceitful world, the fashion of which passes away? These are questions which the word of God and conscience constrain every head of a family to propose to himself.

      Again, are the congregations walking in the admonition and consolations of the Apostles' teaching? Do they continue steadfast in the teaching, in the breaking of the loaf, in the fellowship, and prayers of the Apostles? Do the brethren meet regularly, timously, and zealously on every first day, as health and opportunity permit; or are they content to appear in the Lord's house once a month, as convenience [82] and inclination may prompt? Do they meet rather for the salve of hearing a preacher of some note, or for commemorating the Lord's death and resurrection, and keeping his holy institutions? Do they tenderly and affectionately cultivate all brotherly kindness and love, and admonish one another by their example to take heed lest there be in any one of them an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God? If any brother seems to grow cold and remiss in waiting upon the assemblies of the brethren, do the brotherhood inquire after him as an absent member of a family? Do they in all tenderness and affectionate regard, endeavor to stir him up to his duty? Or do they, in a censorious spirit, first arraign him as an evil doer, and propose to him exclusion, unless he forthwith render satin faction? Is the discipline of the congregation at one time so exact that scarce a Christian can continue in it without censure; and at another time so lax that scarce a defaulter or an evil doer can be excluded? Is every thing done decently and in order, that no stumbling-block is thrown in the way of saint or sinner? Are the congregations walking in the Holy Scriptures, growing in knowledge, and in favor with God and all the people?

      Again, what is doing for the conversion of the world? Are you brethren, to whom the Lord and your brethren have given ability and opportunity to win souls, ardently and perseveringly engaged in this work, gathering fruit to eternal life? Are you enduring hardships as good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and laboring in season and out of season in proclaiming the word; or are you seeking your own things only or chiefly, and not the things of Jesus Christ? Do you complain of the, brethren that they will not sustain you while you labor for the Lord and for an eternal crown; and cannot you trust in the Lord and look to him for reward? or do you think that because the brethren do not do their duty, that you will help the matter by not doing yours? Will two wrongs make one right? And you, brethren, of whom they complain, do you think that it is the duty of only one or two citizens in the kingdom to leave their wives, and children, and farms, and labor for the Lord; and yours to wait upon your wives, and children, and farms, without spending one day's labor, or the value of it, in a month, for the conversion of those who are living and dying in their sins? Has the Lord said that one in fifty shall labor all the year for him, and the forty-nine shall labor for themselves? Has he thus called and honored one per cent. or two per cent. of his citizens, and doomed the remainder to toil for their own appetites and passions, and leave their treasure in the earth?

[A. C.]      
1834, page 86.      

      Some men would be the janitors of Pandemonium for a living. They would invent machines for cursing, perjury, and blasphemy, if they could find a ready market for them; and would flatter themselves [83] that neither the inventor, nor the manufacturer, nor the vender, but the operator who uses them, is culpable. The exhalations of iniquity that rise from such hearts so becloud the understanding of men, that their own corrupt and corrupting interests are truth, and reason, and good sense; and the contrary of these are the only falsehoods they can appreciate. Oh! what pitchy darkness has sin thrown over the intellects of men! Many who once could have reasoned like angels, now reason as the demons of perdition. God has given over multitudes to a reprobate or undiscerning mind. The conscience, the understanding, the feelings, the affections of men, all--all are depraved by sinning. The understanding is blinded, the conscience is searched, the feelings are blunted, the affections are alienated from all beauty and loveliness by the same process of tampering with temptation, of habitually pressing upon the restraints of conscience and of moral feeling.

[A. C.]      

      As respects the rights of property, it has decreed that, as no man can justly demand what is not his own, so neither can any person keep or hold back the property of another person one moment without his consent. It has recognized, if not established, the principles upon which any thing becomes our property; and then it decides how that property shall be transferred to another. Common consent has, without any recorded conventional agreement, ordained the ways and means by which any creature of God becomes ours; and therefore there are but few controversies about these rules and reasons; but very many difficulties arise in society about the infraction or disregard of those principles, both in the pursuit of property and in the enjoyment of it.

[A. C.]      

      In all covenant transactions justice and truth go hand in hand. The one can not stand without the other. He that for value received promises to pay a stipulated sum against a given day, and fails to do it, is guilty of two sins--falsehood and injustice. There may be extenuating circumstances, it is admitted; but still the word is forfeited and the pledge unredeemed.

[A. C.]      

      I do not say that men--that Christians, are neither to borrow nor lend. We are commanded to lend; therefore it can not be a sin to borrow. Still we may borrow and lend without violating the precept of the Apostle. But he that borrows what he can not pay when it is due; and still more, he that borrows what he has not good reason to think he can pay at the time promised, must be a defaulter so far as Paul commands in the precept before us.

[A. C.]      

[MHA2 82-84]