Parents as Reformers
517
characters of your children, and in teaching them to strictly adhere to
the principles of temperance in eating and drinking.
Parents may have transmitted to their children tendencies to ap-
petite and passion, which will make more difficult the work of edu-
cating and training these children to be strictly temperate and to have
pure and virtuous habits. If the appetite for unhealthy food and for
stimulants and narcotics has been transmitted to them as a legacy from
their parents, what a fearfully solemn responsibility rests upon the
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parents to counteract the evil tendencies which they have given to their
children! How earnestly and diligently should the parents work to do
their duty, in faith and hope, to their unfortunate offspring!
Parents should make it their first business to understand the laws of
life and health, that nothing shall be done by them in the preparation of
food, or through any other habits, which will develop wrong tendencies
in their children. How carefully should mothers study to prepare
their tables with the most simple, healthful food, that the digestive
organs may not be weakened, the nervous forces unbalanced, and the
instruction which they should give their children counteracted by the
food placed before them. This food either weakens or strengthens the
organs of the stomach and has much to do in controlling the physical
and moral health of the children, who are God’s blood-bought property.
What a sacred trust is committed to parents to guard the physical and
moral constitutions of their children so that the nervous system may be
well balanced and the soul not be endangered! Those who indulge the
appetite of their children, and do not control their passions, will see the
terrible mistake they have made, in the tobacco-loving, liquor-drinking
slave, whose senses are benumbed and whose lips utter falsehoods and
profanity.
When parents and children meet at the final reckoning, what a
scene will be presented! Thousands of children who have been slaves
to appetite and debasing vice, whose lives are moral wrecks, will stand
face to face with the parents who made them what they are. Who
but the parents must bear this fearful responsibility? Did the Lord
make these youth corrupt? Oh, no! He made them in His image, a
little lower than the angels. Who, then, has done the fearful work of
forming the life character? Who changed their characters so that they
do not bear the impress of God, and must be forever separated from
His presence as too impure to have any place with the pure angels in a