Prenatal Influences
113
Mothers do not half appreciate their privileges and possibilities.
They do not seem to understand that they can be in the highest sense
missionaries, laborers together with God in aiding their children to
build up a symmetrical character. This is the great burden of the work
[140]
given them of God. The mother is God’s agent to Christianize her
family.—
The Review and Herald, September 15, 1891
.
The Responsibility of Parents for Prenatal Influence—The first
great object to be attained in the training of children is soundness of
constitution which will prepare the way in a great measure for mental
and moral training. Physical and moral health are closely united. What
an enormous weight of responsibility rests upon parents when we con-
sider that the course pursued by them before the birth of their children
has very much to do with the development of their character after
their birth.—
Healthful Living, 32
, 1865 (Part 2). (
Selected Messages
2:426
.)
What to Do About It—Parents may have transmitted to their
children tendencies.... which will make more difficult the work of
educating and training these children to be strictly temperate and to
have pure and virtuous habits. If the appetite for unhealthy food and
for stimulants and narcotics has been transmitted to them as a legacy
from their parents, what a fearfully solemn responsibility rests upon
the parents to counteract the evil tendencies which they have given to
their children! How earnestly and diligently should the parents work
to do their duty, in faith and hope, to their unfortunate offspring!—
Testimonies for the Church 3:567, 568
(1875).
A Day of Reckoning for Parents—When parents and children
meet at the final reckoning, what a scene will be presented! Thousands
of children who have been slaves to appetite and debasing vice, whose
lives are moral wrecks, will stand face-to-face with the parents who
made them what they are. Who but the parents must bear this fearful
responsibility? Did the Lord make these youth corrupt? Oh, no! Who,
then, has done this fearful work? Were not the sins of the parents
transmitted to the children in perverted appetites and passions? And
[141]
was not the work completed by those who neglected to train them
according to the pattern which God has given? Just as surely as they
exist, all these parents will pass in review before God.—
Christian
Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 76, 77, 1890
. (
Fundamentals of
Christian Education, 140, 141
.)