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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
to follow the directions of the word of God in this matter, and the
children have taken the reins of government into their own hands. The
consequence has been that they have generally succeeded in ruling
their parents instead of being under their authority.
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The parents are blind to the true state of their children, who have
succeeded in entirely deceiving them. But those who have lost the
control of their children are not pleased when others seek to control
them or to point out their defects for the purpose of correcting them.
The cause of God has been retarded in-----by parents’ bringing their
unruly and undisciplined children into this large church. Many are
living in constant neglect of their duty to bring up their children in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord; yet these very ones have
most to say concerning the wickedness of the youth in-----, when it is
the wrong example and evil influence of their own children that have
demoralized the young people with whom they have associated.
Such families have brought upon this church its heaviest burdens.
They come with false ideas. They seem to expect the church to be
faultless and that it will take the responsibility of making Christians
of those very children whom they, as parents, are unable to control
or keep within bounds. They throw themselves upon the church, a
terrible and crushing weight. They might be a help if they would yield
their selfishness and strive to honor God and to repair the mistakes they
made in their lives. But they do no such thing; they hold themselves
aloof, ready to criticize the lack of spirituality in the church, whose
greatest calamity is that it numbers among its members too many
like themselves—dead weights, persons whose hearts and lives are
unconsecrated, and whose course is all wrong. The institutions located
at-----have carried along too many diseased and lifeless bodies for
their own prosperity and spiritual vitality.
Criticizing Burden Bearers
The church is suffering for want of unselfish Christian workers. If
all who are, as a rule, unable to resist temptation and are too weak to
stand alone would remain away from-----, there would be a much purer
spiritual atmosphere in that place. Those who live upon the husks of
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others’ failings and deficiencies, and who gather to themselves the
unwholesome miasma of their neighbors’ neglects and shortcomings,