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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
and health, is astonishing. Ignorance prevails upon this subject, while
light is shining all around them. With the majority, their principal
anxiety is, What shall I eat? what shall I drink? and wherewithal shall
I be clothed? Notwithstanding all that is said and written in regard
to how we should treat our bodies, appetite is the great law which
governs men and women generally.
The moral powers are weakened because men and women will not
live in obedience to the laws of health and make this great subject a
personal duty. Parents bequeath to their offspring their own perverted
habits, and loathsome diseases corrupt the blood and enervate the brain.
The majority of men and women remain in ignorance of the laws of
their being, and indulge appetite and passion at the expense of intellect
and morals, and seem willing to remain in ignorance of the result of
their violation of nature’s laws. They indulge the depraved appetite
in the use of slow poisons which corrupt the blood and undermine the
nervous forces, and in consequence bring upon themselves sickness
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and death. Their friends call the result of this course the dispensation
of Providence. In this they insult Heaven. They rebelled against the
laws of nature and suffered the punishment for thus abusing her laws.
Suffering and mortality now prevail everywhere, especially among
children. How great is the contrast between this generation and those
who lived during the first two thousand years!
Importance of Home Training
I inquired if this tide of woe could not be prevented and something
be done to save the youth of this generation from the ruin which
threatens them. I was shown that one great cause of the existing
deplorable state of things is that parents do not feel under obligation
to bring up their children to conform to physical law. Mothers love
their children with an idolatrous love and indulge their appetite when
they know that it will injure their health and thereby bring upon them
disease and unhappiness. This cruel kindness is manifested to a great
extent in the present generation. The desires of children are gratified
at the expense of health and happy tempers because it is easier for the
mother, for the time being, to gratify them than to withhold that for
which they clamor.