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to them. Such unwise movements of parents decide the character of
their children.
Some children by thus visiting, form attachments which prove
their ruin in the end. Parents should keep their children with them if
they can, and should watch them with the deepest solicitude.
When you let your children visit away from you at a distance, they
feel that they are old enough to take care of, and choose for themselves.
When the young are thus left to themselves, their conversation is often
upon things which will not refine or elevate them, nor increase their
love for the things of religion. The more they are permitted to visit,
the greater will be their desire to go, and the less attractive will home
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be to them.
Children, God has seen fit to entrust you to the care of your par-
ents, for them to instruct, discipline, and act their part in forming
your character for heaven. And yet it rests with you to say whether
you will develop a good Christian character by making the best of
the advantages you have had from godly, faithful, praying parents.
Notwithstanding all the anxiety and faithfulness of parents in behalf
of their children, they alone cannot save them. There is a work for the
children to do. Every child will have an individual case of his or her
own to attend to. Believing parents have a responsible work before
them, to guide the footsteps of their children, even in their religious
experience. When your children truly love God, they will bless and
reverence their parents for the care which they have manifested for
them, and their faithfulness in restraining their desires and subduing
their wills.
The prevailing influence in the world is to suffer the youth to
follow the natural turn of their minds. And if very wild in youth,
parents say they will come right after a while, and when sixteen or
eighteen years of age, reason for themselves, and leave off their wrong
habits, and become at last useful men and women. What a mistake!
They permit an enemy for years to sow the garden of the heart. Suffer
wrong principles to grow in the heart, and with all the labor afterward
bestowed on that soil, in many cases it will avail nothing. Satan is an
artful, persevering workman. He is a deadly foe. He takes advantage
of every incautious word spoken to the injury of youth, whether in
flattery, or to cause them to look upon some sin with less abhorrence.
Satan nourishes the bad seed, that it may take root and yield a bountiful