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Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students
human suffering,—have so long prevailed that men and women look
upon the present state of sickness, suffering, debility, and premature
death as the appointed lot of humanity....
The strange absence of principle which characterizes this gen-
eration, and which is shown in their disregard of the laws of life
and health, is astonishing.... With the majority the principal anxiety
is, What shall I eat? what shall I drink? and wherewithal shall I
be clothed? ... The moral powers are weakened because men and
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women will not live in obedience to the laws of health and make this
great subject a personal duty.... The majority ... remain in ignorance
of the laws of their being, and indulge appetite and passion at the
expense of intellect and morals; and they 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 cor-
rupt the blood and undermine the nervous force, and in consequence
bring upon themselves sickness and death....
Importance of Home Training
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. Thus mothers are sowing the seed that will
spring up and bear fruit.
The children are not educated to deny their appetites and restrict
their desires, and they become selfish, exacting, disobedient, un-
thankful, unholy. Mothers who are doing this work will reap with
bitterness the fruit of the seed they have sown. They have sinned
against Heaven and against their children, and God will hold them
accountable.
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Had education for generations back been conducted upon an
altogether different plan, the youth of this generation would not now