Because of selfishness and love of the world, these men have been passing on with less and less sense of the magnitude of the work for these last days. They have not educated their minds to make a business of serving God. They have not an experience in that direction. Their property has absorbed their affections and eclipsed the magnitude of the plan of salvation. While they are improving and enlarging their worldly plans, they see no necessity for the enlargement and extension of the work of God. They invest their means in temporal but not in eternal things. Their hearts are ambitious for more means. God has made them depositaries of His law, that they might let the light so graciously given them shine forth to others. But they have so increased their cares and anxieties that they have no time to bless others with their influence, to converse with their neighbors, to pray with and for them, and to seek to bring them to the knowledge of the truth. {3T 385.2}

Som følge af egennytte og kærlighed til verden har disse mænd henlevet livet med mindre og mindre sans for storheden i værket for disse sidste dage. De har ikke oplært deres sind til at gøre tjeneste for Gud til en beskæftigelse. De har ingen erfaring i den retning. Deres ejendom har opslugt deres sind og fordunklet storheden ved frelsens plan. Medens de forbedrer og udvider deres verdslige planer, ser de ingen nødvendighed af at udvide og fremme Guds værk. De anbringer deres midler i timelige, men ikke i evige ting. Deres hjerter er begærlige efter flere midler. Gud har gjort dem til forvaltere af hans lov, for at de måtte kunne lade det lys, han så nådigt har givet den, skinne ud til andre. Men de har forøget deres bekymringer og deres omsorg i en sådan grad, at de ingen tid har til at velsigne andre med deres indflydelse, til at tale med deres naboer, til at bede med dem og for dem og til at søge at bringe dem kundskab om sandheden.