Labor Conducive to Health
91
should be taught to labor. Industry is the greatest blessing that men,
women, and children can have.
You have erred in the education of your children. You have been
too indulgent. You have favored them and excused them from labor,
until to some of them, it is positively distasteful. Inactivity, a lack of
well-regulated employment, has injured them greatly. Temptations are
on every side, ready to ruin the youth for this world and the next. The
path of obedience is the only path of safety.
You have been blind to the power that the enemy had over your
children. Household labor, even to weariness, would not have hurt
them one-fiftieth part as much as indolent habits have done. They
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would have escaped many dangers had they been instructed at an
earlier period to occupy their time with useful labor. They would not
have contracted such a restless disposition, such a desire for change
and to go into society. They would have escaped many temptations to
vanity and to engage in unprofitable amusements, light reading, idle
talking, and nonsense. Their time would have passed more to their
satisfaction and without so great temptation to seek the society of the
opposite sex and to excuse themselves in an evil way. Vanity and
affectation, uselessness and positive sin, have been the result of this
indolence. The parents, and especially you, the father, have flattered
and indulged them to their great injury.
Self-Conceit and Selfishness
Dear brother, you have made a sad mistake in standing before
the patients in the parlor, as you have frequently done, and exalting
yourself and wife. Your own children have learned lessons from these
remarks that have given shape to their characters. You will now find
it not an easy matter to correct the impressions that have been made.
They have been proud and self-conceited. They have thought that as
your children they were superior to children in general. You have
felt anxious lest the people should not give you the respect due your
position as a physician of the Health Institute. This has shown a vein of
weakness in you which has hindered your spiritual advancement. It has
also led to a jealousy of others, fearing that they would supplant you
or not place the right estimate upon your position and value. You have
also exalted your wife, placing her before the patients as a superior