pearls

28:6.7The Mem­ory of Mercy must show that the sav­ing credit es­tab­lished by the Sons of God has been fully and faith­fully paid out in the lov­ing min­istry of the pa­tient per­son­al­i­ties of the Third Source and Cen­ter. But when mercy is ex­hausted, when the “mem­ory” thereof tes­ti­fies to its de­ple­tion, then does jus­tice pre­vail and righ­teous­ness de­cree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who de­spise it; mercy is not a gift to be tram­pled un­der foot by the per­sis­tent rebels of time. Nev­er­the­less, though mercy is thus pre­cious and dearly be­stowed, your in­di­vid­ual draw­ing cred­its are al­ways far in ex­cess of your abil­ity to ex­haust the re­serve if you are sin­cere of pur­pose and hon­est of heart.

140:3.18“Dis­cern the truth clearly; live the righ­teous life fear­lessly; and so shall you be my apos­tles and my Fa­ther’s am­bas­sadors. You have heard it said: ‘If the blind lead the blind, they both shall fall into the pit.’ If you would guide oth­ers into the king­dom, you must your­selves walk in the clear light of liv­ing truth. In all the busi­ness of the king­dom I ex­hort you to show just judg­ment and keen wis­dom. Pre­sent not that which is holy to dogs, nei­ther cast your pearls be­fore swine, lest they tram­ple your gems un­der foot and turn to rend you.

186:2.2Be­fore the San­hedrist court Je­sus de­clined to make replies to the tes­ti­mony of per­jured wit­nesses. There was but one ques­tion which would al­ways elicit an an­swer, whether asked by friend or foe, and that was the one con­cern­ing the na­ture and di­vin­ity of his mis­sion on earth. When asked if he were the Son of God, he un­fail­ingly made re­ply. He stead­fastly re­fused to speak when in the pres­ence of the cu­ri­ous and wicked Herod. Be­fore Pi­late he spoke only when he thought that Pi­late or some other sin­cere per­son might be helped to a bet­ter knowl­edge of the truth by what he said. Je­sus had taught his apos­tles the use­less­ness of cast­ing their pearls be­fore swine, and he now dared to prac­tice what he had taught. His con­duct at this time ex­em­pli­fied the pa­tient sub­mis­sion of the hu­man na­ture cou­pled with the ma­jes­tic si­lence and solemn dig­nity of the di­vine na­ture. He was al­to­gether will­ing to dis­cuss with Pi­late any ques­tion re­lated to the po­lit­i­cal charges brought against him—any ques­tion which he rec­og­nized as be­long­ing to the gov­er­nor’s ju­ris­dic­tion.

88:1.8Saliva was a po­tent fe­tish; dev­ils could be driven out by spit­ting on a per­son. For an el­der or su­pe­rior to spit on one was the high­est com­pli­ment. Parts of the hu­man body were looked upon as po­ten­tial fe­tishes, par­tic­u­larly the hair and nails. The long-grow­ing fin­ger­nails of the chiefs were highly prized, and the trim­mings thereof were a pow­er­ful fe­tish. Be­lief in skull fe­tishes ac­counts for much of later-day head-hunt­ing. The um­bil­i­cal cord was a highly prized fe­tish; even to­day it is so re­garded in Africa. Man­kind’s first toy was a pre­served um­bil­i­cal cord. Set with pearls, as was of­ten done, it was man’s first neck­lace.