96
Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
you have been. Our college would soon be demoralized. Parents do
not send their children to our college or to our offices to commence a
lovesick, sentimental life, but to be educated in the sciences or to learn
the printer’s trade. Were the rules so lax that the youth were allowed
to become bewildered and infatuated with the society of the opposite
sex as you have been for some months past, the object of their going
to Battle Creek would be lost. If you cannot put this entirely out of
your mind and go there with the spirit of a learner and with a purpose
to arouse yourself to the most earnest, humble, sincere efforts, praying
that you may have a close connection with God, it would be better for
you to remain at home.
Should you go you ought to be prepared to withstand temptation
and to hold up the hands of professors and teachers, letting your
influence be wholly on the side of discipline and order. God designs
that all who work in His cause shall be subject one to another, ready
to receive advice and instruction. They should train themselves by
the severest mental and moral discipline, that by the assisting grace
of God they may be fitted in mind and heart to train others. Fervent
prayer, humility, and earnestness must be combined with God’s help,
[110]
for human frailties and human feelings are continually striving for the
mastery. Every man must purify his soul through obedience to the
truth, and with an eye single to God’s glory he must abase self and
exalt Jesus and His grace. By thus continually advancing toward the
light he will become acquainted with God and receive His help.
Some of those who attend the college do not properly improve
their time. Full of the buoyancy of youth, they spurn the restraint that
is brought to bear upon them. Especially do they rebel against the rules
that will not allow young gentlemen to pay their attentions to young
ladies. Full well is known the evil of such a course in this degenerate
age. In a college where so many youth are associated, imitating the
customs of the world in this respect would turn the thoughts in a
channel that would hinder them in their pursuit of knowledge and
in their interest in religious things. The infatuation on the part of
both young men and women in thus placing the affections upon each
other during school days shows a lack of good judgment. As in your
own case, blind impulse controls reason and judgment. Under this
bewitching delusion the momentous responsibility felt by every sincere