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Testimonies for the Church Volume 4
I was pointed back to your life and experience when you first came
to-----. Your conduct was not consistent; your associations were not
right. Your course in visiting the beer gardens with your children
did not make a favorable impression upon others in reference to your
moral standing. These are sad chapters in your experience. You had
light and knowledge, but your inclinations and follies separated you
from God.
Many circumstances which occurred while you were living in---
--were shown me. Your strong, perverse will led you to disgrace the
truth which you professed. Your conduct before the world was not
justifiable. The punishment which your daughter received in school
for willful disobedience was exaggerated in your mind till it became so
heinous an offense as to lead you to seek the protection of the law. The
deception you there practiced, your exaggeration of the truth, was a
lesson most dangerous to morals. These things stand registered against
you in the books of heaven. You have a stubborn disposition and will
not humble your heart to confess a wrong, but will justify your course
before men without reference to how it appears in the sight of God.
Can you wonder that under such deceptive training your daughter has
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become what she is? What influence could such a course of training
have upon the youthful mind but to make her feel that no one had a
right to control her perverse will? The seed sown by your own hand
has blossomed and borne fruit which is most bitter.
Love for your soul causes me to write at the present time. I am
oppressed with the burden of responsibility which I now take upon
myself in writing out these things for you. By your own course you
are closing the gates of heaven against yourself and your children, for
neither you nor they will ever enter there with your present defective
characters. You, my sister, are playing a sad, losing game in life. Holy
angels are watching you with sadness; and evil spirits are looking on
with triumph as they see you losing, fast losing, the graces that adorn
the Christian character, while in their place Satan is implanting his
own evil traits.
You have indulged in novel and story reading until you live in
an imaginary world. The influence of such reading is injurious to
both the mind and the body; it weakens the intellect and brings a
fearful tax upon the physical strength. At times your mind is scarcely
sane because the imagination has been overexcited and diseased by