Love of the World
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less striving for things difficult to obtain wherewith to beautify our
homes, while that which God values above jewels, the meek and quiet
spirit, is not cherished. The grace of simplicity, meekness, and true
affection would make a paradise of the humblest home. It is better
to endure cheerfully every inconvenience than to part with peace and
contentment.
You greatly need to humble your hearts before God as you see the
sad condition of your children, without God and without hope in the
world. They do not appreciate and reverence sacred things because
common, worldly affairs have been placed on a level with eternal
interests. There are youth among you whose service God will accept if
they will yield their hearts to Him and connect with Him, as did Daniel
and his fellows. But few have a true idea of the peril surrounding
the youth of today. It requires a great amount of moral courage, and
a constant resistance of temptation, to reach a noble manhood. A
character unsullied before God is rare. Many who have not the fear of
God before them, and whose feet are in the broad road to death, are
waiting to be the companions of your children. I wish I could make
the youth see and feel their danger, especially the danger of making
unhappy marriages.
A little time spent in sowing your wild oats, dear young friends,
will produce a crop that will embitter your whole life; an hour of
thoughtlessness, once yielding to temptation, may turn the whole
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current of your life in the wrong direction. You can have but one
youth; make that useful. When once you have passed over the ground
you can never return to rectify your mistakes. He who refuses to
connect with God, and puts himself in the way of temptation, will
surely fall. God is testing every youth. Many have excused their
carelessness and irreverence because of the wrong example given them
by more experienced professors. But this should not deter any from
rightdoing. In the day of final accounts you will plead no such excuses
as you plead now. You will be justly condemned because you knew
the way but did not choose to walk in it.
Satan, that archdeceiver, transforms himself into an angel of light
and comes to the youth with his specious temptations and succeeds in
winning them, step by step, from the path of duty. He is described as
an accuser, a deceiver, a liar, a tormentor, and a murderer. “He that
committeth sin is of the devil.” Every transgression brings the soul into