Chapter 18—Child Abuse
Dear Brother,
I have just read your letter dated April 26. May the Lord help me
to write you the very words that will be for your restoration and not
for your destruction.
I feel sorry, very sorry, for you. Sin, my brother, is sin; it is the
transgression of the law, and should I try to lessen that sin before you I
would not be doing you any good. You as a Christian receive harm to
your own soul. Your whole religious experience is cheapened, and you
cannot have faith and trust in God while you have unclean thoughts
and defiled hands. The work needs to begin at the soul, and then it will
work out in the character. Your mind and heart are polluted, else all
such actions would be loathsome. It is a great sin, especially for one
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who professes to be preaching the gospel of Christ.
I have had this class of sins presented to me as producing moral
defilement. What can the impression be upon those youth whose
bodies you degrade by your actions? How can you be a shepherd of
the sheep and lambs while corrupting their minds, and tainting and
polluting their moral sense? Would you consider this matter as lightly
as you have done should a minister of the gospel, as Elder W, do such
things to your sisters or to your children? This is a crime in the sight of
God and I cannot cover it over as a light matter. It is a Sodomitish sin.
It is tainting and polluting in all its tendencies, and an abomination in
the sight of a holy God. It is practicing iniquity.
Any youth who would submit her body to be handled by a man
is in no way fit for the kingdom of heaven. All this vile practice and
commonness is what is ruining our youth. Would you practice this
upon the body of your own child? Would you not consider it incest,
discovering her nakedness? All who do such things are leading young
women into abominable practices. I know what these things lead to.
To lewdness, lustful practices. Consider how you must dishonor and
degrade the truth. Oh, God hates all such sins. How could you do this
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