Chapter 47—Lax Discipline and its Fruitage
Faulty Training Affects Entire Religious Life—A woe rests
upon parents who have not trained their children to be God-fearing, but
have allowed them to grow to manhood and womanhood undisciplined
and uncontrolled. During their own childhood they were allowed to
manifest passion and willfulness and to act from impulse, and they
bring this same spirit into their own homes. They are defective in
temper, and passionate in government. Even in their acceptance of
Christ they have not overcome the passions that were allowed to rule
in their childish hearts. They carry the results of their early training
through their entire religious life. It is a most difficult thing to remove
the impress thus made upon the plant of the Lord; for as the twig is
bent, the tree is inclined. If such parents accept the truth, they have
a hard battle to fight. They may be transformed in character, but the
whole of their religious experience is affected by the lax discipline
exercised over them in their early lives. And their children have to
suffer because of their defective training; for they stamp their faults
upon them to the third and fourth generation
The Eli’s of Today—When parents sanction and thus perpetuate
the wrongs in their children as did Eli, God will surely bring them to
the place where they will see that they have not only ruined their own
influence, but also the influence of the youth whom they should have
restrained.... They will have bitter lessons to learn
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Oh, that the Eli’s of today, who are everywhere to be found plead-
ing excuses for the waywardness of their children, would promptly
assert their own God-given authority to restrain and correct them. Let
parents and guardians, who overlook and excuse sin in those under
their care, remember that they thus become accessory to these wrongs.
If, instead of unlimited indulgence, the chastening rod were oftener
1
The Review and Herald, October 9, 1900
.
2
Manuscript 33, 1903
.
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