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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
them to open a door for injurious influences, for others to poison their
young minds before you awake to their danger.
Satan and his host are making most powerful efforts to sway the
minds of the children, and they must be treated with candor, Christian
tenderness, and love. This will give you a strong influence over them,
and they will feel that they can repose unlimited confidence in you.
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Throw around your children the charms of home and of your society.
If you do this, they will not have so much desire for the society of
young associates. Satan works through these, leading them to influence
and corrupt the minds of one another. It is the most effectual way in
which he can work. The young have a powerful influence over one
another. Their conversation is not always choice and elevated. Evil
communications are breathed into the ear, which, if not decidedly
resisted, find a lodgment in the heart, take root, and spring up to bear
fruit and corrupt good manners. Because of the evils now in the world,
and the restriction necessary to be placed upon the children, parents
should have double care to bind them to their hearts and let them see
that they wish to make them happy.
Parents should not forget their childhood years, how much they
yearned for sympathy and love, and how unhappy they felt when
censured and fretfully chided. They should be young again in their
feelings and bring their minds down to understand the wants of their
children. Yet with firmness, mixed with love, they should require
obedience from their children. The parents’ word should be implicitly
obeyed.
Angels of God are watching the children with the deepest interest
to see what characters they develop. If Christ dealt with us as we
often deal with one another and with our children, we would stumble
and fall through utter discouragement. I saw that Jesus knows our
infirmities, and has Himself shared our experience in all things but in
sin; therefore He has prepared for us a path suited to our strength and
capacity, and, like Jacob, has marched softly and in evenness with the
children as they were able to endure, that He might entertain us by the
comfort of His company, and be to us a perpetual guide. He does not
despise, neglect, or leave behind the children of the flock. He has not
bidden us move forward and leave them. He has not traveled so hastily
as to leave us with our children behind. Oh, no; but He has evened the
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path to life, even for children. And parents are required in His name to