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Christian Temperance
323
Chapter after chapter has been opened to me. I can select family
after family of children in this house, every one of whom is as
corrupt as hell itself. Some of them profess to be followers of Christ,
and you, their parents, are as indifferent as though you had had a
shock of paralysis.
I have said that some of you are selfish. You have not understood
what I have meant. You have studied what food would taste best.
Taste and pleasure, instead of the glory of God, and a desire to
advance in the divine life, and to perfect holiness in the fear of
God, have ruled. You have consulted your own pleasure, your own
appetite; and while you have been doing this, Satan has been gaining
a march upon you and, as is generally the case, has frustrated your
efforts every time.
Some of you fathers have taken your children to the physician
to see what was the matter with them. I could have told you in two
minutes what was the trouble. Your children are corrupt. Satan has
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obtained control of them. He has come right in past you, while you,
who are as God to them, to guard them, were at ease, stupefied, and
asleep. God has commanded you to bring them up in the fear and
nurture of the Lord. But Satan has passed right in before you and
has woven strong bands around them. And yet you sleep on. May
Heaven pity you and your children, for every one of you needs His
pity.
Had you taken your position upon the health reform; had you
added to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge
temperance, things might have been different. But you have been
only partially aroused by the iniquity and corruption that is in your
houses. You have opened your eyes a little and then composed
yourself to sleep again. Do you think angels can come into your
dwellings? Do you think your children are susceptible of holy
influences with these things among you? I can count family after
family that are almost entirely under the control of Satan. I know
these things are true, and I want the people to arouse before it shall
be eternally too late, and the blood of souls, even the blood of the
souls of their own children, be found upon their garments.
The minds of some of these children are so weakened that they
have but one half or one third of the brilliancy of intellect that they
might have had had they been virtuous and pure. They have thrown it