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Testimonies for the Church Volume 1
themselves, their conversation is often upon subjects which will not
refine or elevate them, or increase their love for the things of religion.
The more they are permitted to visit, the greater will be their desire to
go, and the less attractive will home seem to them.
Children, God has seen fit to entrust you to the care of your parents
for them to instruct and discipline, and thus act their part in forming
your character for heaven. And yet it rests with you to say whether
you will develop a good Christian character by making the best of
the advantages you have had from godly, faithful, praying parents.
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Notwithstanding all the anxiety and faithfulness of parents in behalf
of their children, they alone cannot save them. There is a work for
the children to do. Every child has an individual case to attend to.
Believing parents, you have a responsible work before you to guide the
footsteps of your children, even in their religious experience. When
they truly love God, they will bless and reverence you for the care
which you have manifested for them, and for your faithfulness in
restraining their desires and subduing their wills.
The prevailing influence in the world is to suffer the youth to follow
the natural turn of their own minds. And if very wild in youth, parents
say they will come right after a while, and when sixteen or eighteen
years of age, will reason for themselves, and leave off their wrong
habits, and become at last useful men and women. What a mistake! For
years they permit an enemy to sow the garden of the heart; they suffer
wrong principles to grow, and in many cases all the labor afterward
bestowed on that soil will avail nothing. Satan is an artful, persevering
workman, a deadly foe. Whenever an incautious word is spoken to the
injury of youth, whether in flattery or to cause them to look upon some
sin with less abhorrence, Satan takes advantage of it and nourishes
the evil seed that it may take root and yield a bountiful harvest. Some
parents have suffered their children to form wrong habits, the marks
of which may be seen all through life. Upon the parents lies this sin.
These children may profess to be Christians, yet without a special
work of grace upon the heart and a thorough reform in life their past
habits will be seen in all their experience, and they will exhibit just the
character which their parents allowed them to form.
The standard of piety is so low among professed Christians gen-
erally that those who wish to follow Christ in sincerity find the work
much more laborious and trying than they otherwise would. The in-