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Mind, Character, and Personality Volume 1
appetites at the expense of health, and even life. God will hold them
accountable in a large degree for the physical health and moral charac-
ters thus transmitted to future generations....
Very many of this class have married and left for an inheritance to
their offspring the taints of their own physical debility and depraved
morals. The gratification of animal passions and gross sensuality have
been the marked characters of their posterity, which have descended
from generation to generation, increasing human misery to a fearful
degree and hastening the depreciation of the race.—
Healthful Living,
27, 28, 1865
(Part 2). (
Selected Messages 2:422, 423
.)
Parents Provide Child’s Life Equipment—What the parents are,
that to a great extent the children will be. The physical conditions of the
[139]
parents, their dispositions and appetites, their mental and moral tenden-
cies, are to a greater or less degree reproduced in their children.—
The
Ministry of Healing, 371
(1905).
Molding Society and Future—The nobler the aims, the higher
the mental and spiritual endowments, and the better developed the
physical powers of the parents, the better will be the life equipment
they give their children. In cultivating that which is best in themselves,
parents are exerting an influence to mold society and to uplift future
generations....
Through the indulgence of appetite and passion their energies are
wasted, and millions are ruined for this world and for the world to
come. Parents should remember that their children must encounter
these temptations. Even before the birth of the child, the preparation
should begin that will enable it to fight successfully the battle against
evil.
Especially does responsibility rest upon the mother. She, by whose
lifeblood the child is nourished and its physical frame built up, imparts
to it also mental and spiritual influences that tend to the shaping of
mind and character.—
The Ministry of Healing, 371, 372
(1905).
Parents Have Given Children Their Own Stamp of Charac-
ter—Parents have given their children their own stamp of character;
and if some traits are unduly developed in one child, and another re-
veals a different phase of character which is unlovely, who should be
as patient and forbearing and kind as the parents? Who should be
as earnest as they to cultivate in their children the precious graces of
character revealed in Christ Jesus?