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Testimonies for the Church Volume 3
spend precious moments in unimportant conversation, hindering others
from doing their duty and setting them an example of recklessness
and unfaithfulness. The work of God is sacred and calls for men of
lofty integrity. Men are wanted whose sense of justice, even in the
smallest matters, will not allow them to make an entry of their time
that is not minute and correct—men who will realize that they are
handling means that belongs to God, and who would not unjustly
appropriate one cent to their own use; men who will be just as faithful
and exact, careful and diligent, in their labor, in the absence of their
employer as in his presence, proving by their faithfulness that they are
not merely men pleasers, eye-servants, but are conscientious, faithful,
true workmen, doing right, not for human praise, but because they love
and choose the right from a high sense of their obligation to God.
Parents are not thorough in the education of their children. They
do not see the necessity of molding their minds by discipline. They
give them a superficial education, manifesting greater care for the
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ornamental than for that solid education which would so develop and
direct the faculties as to bring out the energies of the soul, and cause
the powers of mind to expand and strengthen by exercise. The faculties
of the mind need cultivation, that they may be exercised to the glory of
God. Careful attention should be given to the culture of the intellect,
that the various organs of the mind may have equal strength by being
brought into exercise, each in its distinctive office. If parents allow their
children to follow the bent of their own minds, their own inclination
and pleasure, to the neglect of duty, their characters will be formed
after this pattern, and they will not be competent for any responsible
position in life. The desires and inclinations of the young should
be restrained, their weak points of character strengthened, and their
overstrong tendencies repressed.
If one faculty is suffered to remain dormant, or is turned out of its
proper course, the purpose of God is not carried out. All the faculties
should be well developed. Care should be given to each, for each
has a bearing upon the others, and all must be exercised in order that
the mind be properly balanced. If one or two organs are cultivated
and kept in continual use because it is the choice of your children to
put the strength of the mind in one direction to the neglect of other
mental powers, they will come to maturity with unbalanced minds and
inharmonious characters. They will be apt and strong in one direction,