Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 1 (1844 - 1868)

Lt 13, 1863

Jones, Charles

Battle Creek, Michigan

June 21, 1863

Previously unpublished.

Dear Brother [Charles] Jones:

In the last vision given me at Otsego I was shown some things relating to the church at Monterey. I saw that you had many things, Brother Charles, to discourage you and destroy your usefulness. Your wife is not that help to you she should be. She lacks ambition, lacks energy. From her youth her attention has been called to herself. Her mother has petted her, humored every ache, every poor feeling, every imaginary complaint, until Sister Sarah was ailing most of the time, and she fell into a whining, complaining habit, always sick, always ailing. Selfishly she has lived, almost wholly for herself. Herself was her first thought. 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 1

I saw that she had made efforts to arouse and overcome this whining and complaining, but falls back soon in the same old track, is sick and almost helpless, when, if she would put on a little ambition and energy, she would forget her poor feelings. She nurses her miserable feelings too much, talks and thinks about them too much. Her sickness might often be resisted if she had energy and will. She needs something to call her out to forget herself and be interested in, for others’ good. 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 2

I saw that it was wrong for Brother Charles, with his poor health, to have so many in his family. I saw that it was all a mistake. Sister Sarah can do (if she will only feel as God would have her) all the little work for her husband and herself. An increase of family makes an increase of work and an increase of burden for Brother Charles. I saw that Brother Charles should live by himself. It is not his duty to live with his wife’s parents. They should be alone, and Brother Charles be free to do his duty as an elder of the church. He has too many now to provide for. He and his wife should live by themselves, and they will be far happier. Sister Howard and her daughter should not live together; they hurt one another. Their living together hurts Charles, for he is affected with the influence around him, and his usefulness is injured. Sister Howard and Sarah are too much alike to live together. 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 3

Sometimes Sister Sarah is sick, but often she can, with exercising and by doing her own work, save herself from sickness. The power of the will has much to do to resist sickness. Had she taken less medicine, and [shown] more ambition and energy, she would have been far better off than now. Medicine has done her more injury than disease. 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 4

Nearly all females are not well, are not really healthy, but if all should yield to their poor feeling and give up their ambition, lose their power of endurance, what a helpless, useless class of mortals there would be on the earth. Sister Sarah, smooth that clouded brow, look cheerful, talk cheerful, let the tones of your voice be cheerful. When in company don’t make yourself the theme of conversation, your poor feelings and bad feelings. Rise above them. It is wrong for you to feel the most of the time that you need Charles’ sympathy. He needs your sympathy tenfold more than you need his. You are not sound and healthy but you have no wearing cares and heavy labor to perform, and you sin against your husband and tax him heavily by increasing your family. He has several to provide for when he should have only two. 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 5

You are forming a connecting link with the world. You have one in your family who is of the world. She listens, gets what she can to carry to the world in regard to the church. Brother Charles is an elder in the church. He should be free, but Satan is determined to destroy him by fastening to him helpless clogs. I saw that where the elders devote their time to the good of the church and have to spend hours in wearing labor visiting different families to counsel, reprove [the remainder is missing.] 1LtMs, Lt 13, 1863, par. 6