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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
away in self-abuse. Right here in this church, corruption is teeming
on every hand. Now and then there is a sing, or some gathering for
pleasure. Every time I hear of these, I feel like clothing myself in
sackcloth. “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain
of tears!” “Spare Thy people, O Lord.” I feel distressed. I have an
agony of soul that is beyond anything that I can describe to you.
You are asleep. Would the lightning and thunder of Sinai arouse this
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church? Would they arouse you, fathers and mothers, to commence
the work of reformation in your own houses? You should be teaching
your children. You should be instructing them how to shun the vices
and corruptions of this age. Instead of this, many are studying how
to get something good to eat. You place upon your tables butter,
eggs, and meat, and your children partake of them. They are fed
with the very things that will excite their animal passions, and then
you come to meeting and ask God to bless and save your children.
How high do your prayers go? You have a work to do first. When
you have done all for your children which God has left for you to
do then you can with confidence claim the special help that God has
promised to give you.
You should study temperance in all things. You must study it
in what you eat and in what you drink. And yet you say: “It is
nobody’s business what I eat, or what I drink, or what I place upon
my table.” It is somebody’s business, unless you take your children
and shut them up, or go into the wilderness where you will not be
a burden upon others, and where your unruly, vicious children will
not corrupt the society in which they mingle.
Many who have adopted the health reform have left off every-
thing hurtful, but does it follow that because they have left off these
things they can eat just as much as they please? They sit down to
the table, and instead of considering how much they should eat, they
give themselves up to appetite and eat to great excess. And the
stomach has all it can do, or all it should do, the rest of that day, to
worry away with the burden imposed upon it. All the food that is
put into the stomach, from which the system cannot derive benefit,
is a burden to nature in her work. It hinders the living machine. The
system is clogged and cannot successfully carry on its work. The
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vital organs are unnecessarily taxed, and the brain nerve power is