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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
designed they should. The result is, habitually cold feet and hands.
Those parents who follow fashion instead of reason will have an
account to render to God for thus robbing their children of health.
Even life itself is frequently sacrificed to the God of fashion.
Children who are clothed according to fashion cannot endure
exposure in the open air unless the weather is mild. Therefore parents
and children remain in ill-ventilated rooms, fearing the atmosphere
out of doors; and well they may, with their fashionable style of
clothing. If they would clothe themselves sensibly, and have moral
courage to take their position on the side of right, they would not
endanger health by going out summer and winter, and exercising
freely in the open air. But if left undisturbed to their own course,
many would soon complete the sacrifice of their own lives and
those of their children. And those who are compelled to have the
care of them become sufferers. The invalid who is controlled by
imagination is to be dreaded. All who live in the house with her
become enfeebled. The husband loses his nervous energy, and
becomes diseased because, a considerable part of the time, he is
robbed by his wife of the vital air of heaven. But the poor children,
who think that mother knows best what is right, are the greatest
sufferers. The mother’s wrong course has enfeebled herself, and, if
chilly, she bundles up in more wrappings, and provides the same for
the children, thinking that they also must be chilly. The doors and
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windows are closed, and the temperature of the room increased. The
children are frequently puny and weakly, and do not possess a high
degree of moral worth. Husband and children are thus shut up for the
winter, slaves to the notions of a woman controlled by imagination,
and sometimes having a set will. The members of such a family
are daily martyrs. They are sacrificing health to the caprice of an
imaginative, complaining, murmuring woman. They are deprived,
in a great measure, of air, which will invigorate them and give them
energy and vitality.
Those who do not use their limbs every day will realize a weak-
ness when they do attempt to exercise. The veins and muscles are
not in a condition to perform their work and keep all the living ma-
chinery in healthful action, each organ in the system doing its part.
The limbs will strengthen with use. Moderate exercise every day
will impart strength to the muscles, which without exercise become