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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
which should be the governing power has become the servant of
corrupt passion. The soul is held in lowest bondage. Sensuality has
quenched the desire for holiness and withered spiritual prosperity.
My soul mourns for the youth who are forming characters in
this degenerate age. I tremble for their parents also; for I have been
shown that as a general thing they do not understand their obligations
to train up their children in the way they should go. Custom and
fashion are consulted, and the children soon learn to be swayed by
these and are corrupted; while their indulgent parents are themselves
benumbed and asleep to their danger. But very few of the youth are
free from corrupt habits. They are excused from physical exercise
to a great degree for fear they will overwork. The parents bear
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burdens themselves which their children should bear. Overwork
is bad, but the result of indolence is more to be dreaded. Idleness
leads to the indulgence of corrupt habits. Industry does not weary
and exhaust one-fifth part as much as the pernicious habit of self-
abuse. If simple, well-regulated labor exhausts your children, be
assured, parents, there is something, aside from their labor, which is
enervating their systems and producing a sense of constant weariness.
Give your children physical labor, which will call into exercise the
nerves and muscles. The weariness attending such labor will lessen
their inclination to indulge in vicious habits. Idleness is a curse. It
produces licentious habits.
Many cases have been presented before me, and as I have had a
view of their inner lives, my soul has been sick and disgusted with
the rotten-heartedness of human beings who profess godliness and
talk of translation to heaven. I have frequently asked myself: Whom
can I trust? Who is free from iniquity?
My husband and I once attended a meeting where our sympathies
were enlisted for a brother who was a great sufferer with the phthisic.
He was pale and emaciated. He requested the prayers of the people
of God. He said that his family were sick and that he had lost a
child. He spoke with feeling of his bereavement. He said that he
had been waiting for some time to see Brother and Sister White. He
had believed that if they would pray for him he would be healed.
After the meeting closed, the brethren called our attention to the
case. They said that the church was assisting them; that his wife was
sick, and his child had died. The brethren had met at his house, and