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Moral Powers to be Tested, September 14
Our sons in their youth will be like well-nurtured plants, and our daughters
will be like pillars carved to adorn a palace.
Psalm 144:12
, NIV.
The disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be manifested in mature
manhood. You may bend a young tree into almost any shape that you choose, and if
it remains and grows as you have bent it, it will be a deformed tree and will ever tell
of the injury and abuse received at your hand. You may, after years of growth, try to
straighten the tree, but all your efforts will prove unavailing. It will ever be a crooked
tree. This is the case with the minds of youth. They should be carefully and tenderly
trained in childhood. They may be trained in the right direction or in the wrong,
and in their future lives they will pursue the course in which they were directed in
youth. The habits formed in youth will grow with the growth and strengthen with
the strength, and will generally be the same in afterlife, only continually growing
stronger.
We are living in an age when almost everything is superficial. There is but little
stability and firmness of character, because the training and education of children
from their cradle is superficial. Their characters are built upon sliding sand. Self-
denial and self-control have not been molded into their characters. They have been
petted and indulged until they are spoiled for practical life. The love of pleasure
controls minds, and children are flattered and indulged to their ruin. Children should
be so trained and educated that they will expect temptations and calculate to meet
difficulties and dangers. They should be taught to have control over themselves and
to nobly overcome difficulties; and if they do not willfully rush into danger and
needlessly place themselves in the way of temptation; if they shun evil influences and
vicious society, and then are unavoidably compelled to be in dangerous company,
they will have strength of character to stand for the right and preserve principle, and
will come forth in the strength of God with their morals untainted. If youth who
have been properly educated make God their trust, their moral powers will stand the
most powerful test....
If parents could be aroused to a sense of the fearful responsibility which rests
upon them in the work of educating their children, more of their time would be
devoted to prayer and less to needless display. They would reflect and study and
pray earnestly to God for wisdom and divine aid to so train their children that they
may develop characters that God will approve. Their anxiety would not be to know
how they can educate their children so that they will be praised and honored of the
world, but how they can educate them to form beautiful characters that God can
approve (
Testimonies for the Church 3:143-145
).
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