How Shall Our Youth Be Trained?
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I am instructed to warn parents whose children have not firmness
of principle or a clear Christian experience not to send them away from
home to distant places, to be absent for many months and perhaps for
years, and, it may be, to have sown in their minds the seeds of unbelief
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and infidelity. It is safer, and far better, to send such youth to the
schools and sanitariums nearest their homes. Let the youth who are
forming character be kept away from places where they would have to
mingle with a great company of unbelievers, and where the forces of
the enemy are strongly entrenched.
Let a decided effort be made by the managers of our large sani-
tariums to employ older persons as helpers in these institutions. In
the visions of the night I was in a large assembly, where this matter
was up for consideration. To those who were planning to send their
undisciplined children to Battle Creek, One of authority said:
“Dare you make this experiment? The salvation of your children
is worth more than the education they will receive in this place, where
they are constantly exposed to the influence of unbelievers. Many who
come to this institution are unconverted. They are filled with pride and
have not through faith a connection with God. Many of the young men
and women who wait on these worldlings have had but little Christian
experience, and they easily become entangled in the snares that are
laid for their feet.”
“What can be done to remedy this evil?” someone present asked.
The Speaker answered: “Since you have placed yourselves into this
position of peril, let Christian men and women of mature years and
established character be brought into the institution to exert a counter-
influence for the right. The carrying out of such a plan would increase
the running expenses of the sanitarium, but it may be an effective
means of guarding the fort and of shielding the youth in the institution
from the contaminating influences to which they are now exposed.
“Parents, guardians, place your children in training schools where
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the influences are similar to those of a rightly conducted home school;
schools in which the teachers will carry them forward from point to
point and in which the spiritual atmosphere is a savor of life unto life.”
The words of warning and instruction that I have written in regard
to the sending of our youth to Battle Creek to receive a training for
service in the Lord’s cause are not idle words. Some God-fearing
youth will stand the test, but it is not safe for us to leave even the most