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Selected Messages Book 2
light, and he returns with peace in his heart, and cheerful encouraging
words for his wife and children, who are waiting to joyfully welcome
his coming. As he bows with his family, at the altar of prayer, to offer
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up his grateful thanks to God, for his preserving care of himself and
loved ones through the day, angels of God hover in the room, and bear
the fervent prayers of God-fearing parents to Heaven, as sweet incense,
which are answered by returning blessings.
Parents should impress upon their children that it is sin to consult
the taste, to the injury of the stomach. They should impress upon
their minds that by violating the laws of their being, they sin against
their Maker. Children thus educated will not be difficult of restraint.
They will not be subject to irritable, changeable tempers, and will be
in a far better condition of enjoying life. Such children will the more
readily and clearly understand their moral obligations. Children who
have been taught to yield their will and wishes to their parents, will
the more easily and readily yield their wills to God, and will submit
to be controlled by the Spirit of Christ. Why so many who claim to
be Christians, have numerous trials, which keep the church burdened,
is because they have not been correctly trained in their childhood,
and were left in a great measure to form their own character. Their
wrong habits, and peculiar, unhappy dispositions, were not corrected.
They were not taught to yield their will to their parents. Their whole
religious experience is affected by their training in childhood. They
were not then controlled. They grew up undisciplined, and now, in
their religious experience, it is difficult for them to yield to that pure
discipline taught in the word of God. Parents should, then, realize the
responsibility resting upon them to educate their children in reference
to their religious experience.
Those who regard the marriage relation as one of God’s sacred
ordinances, guarded by his holy precept, will be controlled by the
dictates of reason. They will consider carefully the result of every
privilege the marriage relation grants. Such will feel that their children
are precious jewels committed to their keeping by God, to remove
from their natures the rough surface by discipline, that their lustre
may appear. They will feel under most solemn obligations to so form
their characters that they may do good in their life, bless others with
their light, and the world be better for their having lived in it, and they