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Testimonies for the Church Volume 5
persevering effort to save her soul. If you have success in this case,
there must be no halfway work. The habits of years cannot easily be
broken. She should be placed where a steady, firm, abiding influence
is constantly exercised. I would advise you to put her in the college
at-----; let her have the discipline of the boardinghouse. It is where
she ought to have been years ago. The boardinghouse is conducted
upon a plan that makes it a good home. This home may not suit the
inclinations of some, but it is because they have been educated to false
theories, to self-indulgence and self-gratification, and all their habits
and customs have been in a wrong channel. But, my dear sister, we
are nearing the end of time, and we want now, not to meet the world’s
tastes and practices, but to meet the mind of God; to see what saith
the Scriptures, and then to walk according to the light which God has
given us. Our inclinations, our customs and practices, are not to have
the preference. God’s word is our standard.
So far as your daughter’s health is concerned, right habits will
secure to her health, while wrong habits will ruin her for this life and
for the future, immortal life. There is a heaven to gain, a perdition
to shun; and when you in the fear of God have done all that you can
do on your part, then you may expect that the Lord will do His part.
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Decisive action now may save a soul from death.
Your daughter needs a strong influence to counteract that of the
society she loves. It will take just as decided efforts to cure her of this
mental disorder as it does to cure the drunkard of his craving for liquor.
You have a work to do which no other can do for you, and will you
fail to do it? Will you in the name of the Lord deal with your child
as with a soul in danger of eternal ruin? Were she a girl who loved
God, one who could exercise self-control, her peril would not be so
great. But she does not love to think of God, of her duty, or of heaven.
She persists in having her own way. She does not daily seek strength
from God, that she may resist temptation. Will you, then, place her in
connection with influences calculated to lead her thoughts away from
God, away from the truth, and from righteousness? If so, you place
her on the enemy’s battleground, with no strength to resist his power
or to over come his temptations.
If she were situated where there were heavenly and divine influ-
ences, her moral sensibilities, which are now paralyzed, might be
aroused, and her thoughts and purposes, by the blessing of God, might