Chapter 149—Wrong Forms of Courtship
[From a personal testimony.]
The lack of firmness and self-denial in your character is a serious
drawback in obtaining a genuine religious experience that will not be
sliding sand. Firmness and integrity of purpose should be cultivated.
These qualities are positively necessary to a successful Christian life.
If you have integrity of soul you will not be swayed from the right. No
motive will be sufficient to move you from the straight line of duty;
you will be loyal and true to God. The pleadings of affection and love,
the yearnings of friendship, will not move you to turn aside from truth
and duty; you will not sacrifice duty to inclination.
If you, my brother, are allured to unite your life-interest with a
young, inexperienced girl, who is really deficient in education in the
common, practical, daily duties of life, you make a mistake; but this
deficiency is small compared with her ignorance in regard to her duty
to God. She has not been destitute of light; she has had religious
privileges, and yet she has not felt her wretched sinfulness without
Christ.
Influence on Religious Experience
If, in your infatuation, you can repeatedly turn from the prayer-
meeting, where God meets with His people, in order to enjoy the
society of one who has no love for God, and who sees no attractions
in the religious life, how can you expect God to prosper such a union?
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Be not in haste. Early marriages should not be encouraged. If
either young women or young men have no respect for the claims
of God, if they fail to heed the claims which bind them to religion,
there will be danger that they will not properly regard the claims of the
husband or of the wife. The habit of frequently being in the society
of the one of your choice, and that, too, at the sacrifice of religious
privileges and of your hours of prayer, is dangerous; you sustain a loss
that you cannot afford.
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