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Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students
object to reach, a standard to gain, which includes everything good
and pure and noble and elevated. There should be continual striv-
ing and constant progress onward and upward toward perfection of
character....
Without the divine working, man can do no good thing. God
calls every man to repentance, yet man cannot even repent unless
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the Holy Spirit works upon his heart. But the Lord wants no man
to wait until he thinks he has repented before he takes steps toward
Jesus. The Saviour is continually drawing men to repentance; they
need only to submit to be drawn, and their hearts will be melted in
penitence.
To man is allotted a part in this great struggle for everlasting
life—he must respond to the working of the Holy Spirit. It will
require a struggle to break through the powers of darkness, and the
Spirit works in him to accomplish this. But man is no passive being,
to be saved in indolence. He is called upon to strain every muscle
and exercise every faculty in the struggle for immortality, yet it is
God that supplies the efficiency. No human being can be saved in
indolence. The Lord bids us, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for
many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.”
Luke 13:24
. “Wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is
the gate, and narrow the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there
be that find it.”
Matthew 7:13, 14
.
Unholy Influences at Work
I entreat the students in our schools to be sober-minded. The
frivolity of the young is not pleasing to God. Their sports and games
open the door to a flood of temptations. They are in possession of
God’s heavenly endowment in their intellectual faculties, and they
should not allow their thoughts to be cheap and low. A character
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formed in accordance with the precepts of God’s word will reveal
steadfast principles, pure, noble aspirations. The Holy Spirit co-
operates with the powers of the human mind, and high and holy
impulses are the sure result....
My soul is deeply stirred at the things that have been represented
before me. I feel an indignation of spirit that in our institutions so