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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
Parents do not generally suspect that their children understand
anything about this vice. In very many cases the parents are the
real sinners. They have abused their marriage privileges, and by
indulgence have strengthened their animal passions. And as these
have strengthened, the moral and intellectual faculties have become
weak. The spiritual has been overborne by the brutish. Children are
born with the animal propensities largely developed, the parents’
own stamp of character having been given to them. The unnatural
action of the sensitive organs produces irritation. They are easily
excited, and momentary relief is experienced in exercising them. But
the evil constantly increases. The drain upon the system is sensibly
felt. The brain force is weakened, and memory becomes deficient.
Children born to these parents will almost invariably take naturally
to the disgusting habits of secret vice. The marriage covenant is
sacred, but what an amount of lust and crime it covers! Those who
feel at liberty, because married, to degrade their bodies by beastly
indulgence of the animal passions, will have their degraded course
perpetuated in their children. The sins of the parents will be visited
upon their children because the parents have given them the stamp
of their own lustful propensities.
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Those who have become fully established in this soul-and-body-
destroying vice can seldom rest until their burden of secret evil is
imparted to those with whom they associate. Curiosity is at once
aroused, and the knowledge of vice is passed from youth to youth,
from child to child, until there is scarcely one to be found ignorant
of the practice of this degrading sin.
Your children have practiced self-abuse until the draft upon the
brain has been so great, especially in the case of your eldest son, that
their minds have been seriously injured. The brilliancy of youthful
intellect is dimmed. The moral and intellectual powers have become
weakened, while the baser part of their nature has been gaining the
ascendancy. For this reason your son turns with loathing from re-
ligious things. He has been losing his power of self-restraint, and
has less and less reverence for sacred things, and less respect for
anything of a spiritual character. You have charged this to your sur-
roundings, but you have not known the real cause. Your son can be
said to bear the impress of the satanic instead of the divine. He loves