Basic HTML Version
Appeal to the Church
405
been led to inquire: Who, O Lord, shall stand when Thou appearest?
Only those who have clean hands and pure hearts shall abide the day
of His coming.
I feel impelled by the Spirit of the Lord to urge my sisters who
profess godliness to cherish modesty of deportment and a becoming
reserve, with shamefacedness and sobriety. The liberties taken in
this age of corruption should be no criterion for Christ’s followers.
These fashionable exhibitions of familiarity should not exist among
Christians fitting for immortality. If lasciviousness, pollution, adul-
tery, crime, and murder are the order of the day among those who
know not the truth, and who refuse to be controlled by the principles
of God’s word, how important that the class professing to be follow-
ers of Christ, closely allied to God and angels, should show them
a better and nobler way. How important that by their chastity and
virtue they stand in marked contrast to that class who are controlled
by brute passions.
I have inquired: When will the youthful sisters act with propri-
ety? I know there will be no decided change for the better until
parents feel the importance of greater carefulness in educating their
children correctly. Teach them to act with reserve and modesty.
Educate them for usefulness, to be helps, to minister to others rather
[460]
than to be waited upon and be ministered unto.
Satan controls the minds of the youth in general. Your daughters
are not taught self-denial and self-control. They are petted, and their
pride is fostered. They are allowed to have their own way until they
become headstrong and self-willed, and you are put to your wit’s
end to know what course to pursue to save them from ruin. Satan is
leading them on to be a proverb in the mouth of unbelievers because
of their boldness, their lack of reserve and womanly modesty. The
young boys are likewise left to have their own way. They have
scarcely entered their teens before they are by the side of little girls
of their own age, accompanying them home and making love to
them. And the parents are so completely in bondage through their
own indulgence and mistaken love for their children that they dare
not pursue a decided course to make a change and restrain their
too-fast children in this fast age.
With many young ladies the boys are the theme of conversation;
with the young men, it is the girls. “Out of the abundance of the