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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
their salvation depends in a great degree upon the education they
receive in their childhood. This responsibility others cannot take; it
is yours, solely yours, as parents. You may bring to your aid all the
helps you can to assist in the solemn and important work; but after
you have done this, there is a power above every human agency, that
will work with you through the means which it is your privilege to
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use. God will come to your aid, and upon His power you can rely.
This power is infinite. Human agencies may not prove successful,
but God can make them fruitful by working in and through them.
You have a work to do to set your house in order. Pure, sinless
angels cannot delight to come into a dwelling where so much iniquity
is practiced. You are asleep at your post. Things of minor importance
have occupied your minds to the exclusion of more weighty matters.
It should be the first business of your life to seek the kingdom of
heaven and its righteousness; then you have the promise that all
things shall be added. Here is where you have failed in your family.
Had you been agonizing that you and yours might enter in at the
strait gate, you would have earnestly gathered every ray of light that
the Lord has permitted to shine upon your pathway, and would have
cherished and walked in it.
You have not regarded the light that the Lord has graciously
given you upon the health reform. You have felt to rise up against it.
You have seen no importance in it, no reason why you should receive
it. You have not felt willing to restrict your appetite. You could not
see the wisdom of God in giving light in regard to the restriction of
appetite. All that you could discern was the inconvenience attending
the denial of the taste. The Lord has let His light shine upon us in
these last days, that the gloom and darkness which have been gather-
ing in past generations because of sinful indulgences might in some
degree be dispelled, and that the train of evils which have resulted
because of intemperate eating and drinking might be lessened.
The Lord in wisdom designed to bring His people into a position
where they would be separate from the world in spirit and practice,
that their children might not so readily be led into idolatry and
become tainted with the prevailing corruptions of this age. It is
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God’s design that believing parents and their children should stand
forth as living representatives of Christ, candidates for everlasting
life. All who are partakers of the divine nature will escape the