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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 4b
Satan and his host are making most powerful efforts to sway the
minds of the children, and they must be treated with candor, Christian
tenderness, and love. This will give you a strong influence over them,
and they will feel that they can repose unlimited confidence in you.
Throw around your children charms for home, and your society. If
you do this, they will not desire so much the society of other young
associates. Satan works through young associates to influence and
corrupt the minds of each other. It is the most effectual way he can
work. Young associates have a powerful influence over one another.
Their conversation is not always choice and elevated. Evil communi-
cations will be breathed into the ear, which, if not decidedly resisted,
find a lodgment in the heart, take root, and spring up to bear fruit, and
corrupt their good manners. Because of the evils now in the world,
and the restriction necessary to be placed upon the children, parents
should have double care to bind them to their hearts, and let them see
they wish to make them happy.
Parents should not forget their childhood years, how much they
yearned for sympathy and love, and how unhappy they felt when
censured and fretfully chided. They should be young again in their
feelings. You should bring your mind down to understand the wants
of your children. With firmness, all mixed with love, require your
children to obey you. Your word should be implicitly obeyed.
Angels of God are watching the children with the deepest interest,
to see what characters they develop. If Christ dealt with us as we often
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deal with each other, and with our children, we should stumble and fall
through utter discouragement. I saw that Jesus knows our infirmities,
and himself hath felt their experience in all things but in sin, therefore
he hath proportioned a way and a path to our strength and capacity,
and, like Jacob, hath marched softly and in evenness with the children
as they were able to endure, that he might entertain us by the comfort
of his company, and be to us a perpetual guide. He does not despise,
neglect, or leave behind the children of the flock.
He has not bid us to move forward and leave them. He has not
traveled so hastily as to leave us with our children behind. Oh, no,
but he has evened the path to life, even for children. And parents are
required in his name to lead them along the narrow way. God has
proportioned a way and a path according to the strength and capacity
of children.