Religion in the Daily Life
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pitying love of God exercised in your behalf, should you not be more
kind, forbearing, patient, and forgiving to your children? Your harsh-
ness and severity is weaning their hearts from you. You cannot give
them lessons in regard to patience, forbearance, long-suffering, and
gentleness, when you are overbearing and manifest temper in dealing
with them. They have the stamp of character which their parents have
given them; and if you wish to counsel and direct them, and turn them
from following any wrong course, the object cannot be gained by
harshness and that which looks to them like tyranny. When in the
fear of God you can advise and counsel them with all the solicitude
and tender love which a father should manifest toward an erring child,
then you will have demonstrated to them that there is power in the
truth to transform those who receive it. When your children do not
act according to your ideas, instead of manifesting sorrow for their
wrongs, and earnestly pleading with and praying for them, you fly into
a passion and pursue a course that will do them no good, but will only
wean their affections and finally separate them from you.
Your youngest son is perverse; he does not do right. His heart is
in rebellion against God and the truth. He is affected by influences
which only make him coarse, rough, and uncourteous. He is a trial to
you, and, unless converted, he will be a great tax upon your patience.
But harshness and overbearing severity will not reform him. You must
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seek to do what you can for him in the spirit of Christ, not in your own
spirit, not under the influence of passion. You must control yourself in
the management of your children. You must remember that Justice has
a twin sister, Mercy. When you would exercise justice, show mercy,
tenderness, and love, and you will not labor in vain.
Your son has a perverse will, and he needs the most judicious
discipline. Consider what have been your children’s surroundings,
how unfavorable to the formation of good characters. They need
pity and love. The youngest is now in the most critical period of his
life. The intellect is now taking shape; the affections are receiving
their impress. The whole future career of this young man is being
determined by the course he now pursues. He is entering upon the
path which leads to virtue, or that which leads to vice. I appeal to the
young man to fill his mind with images of truth and purity. It will be no
advantage to him to indulge in sin. He may flatter himself that it is very
pleasant to sin and to have his own way; but it is a fearful way after all.