Preoccupy the Garden of the Heart
149
their past habits will be seen in all their experience, and they will
exhibit just the character which their parents allowed them to form
The young should not be suffered to learn good and evil indiscrimi-
nately, with the idea that at some future time the good will predominate
and the evil lose its influence. The evil will increase faster than the
good. It is possible that after many years the evil they have learned
may be eradicated; but who will venture this? Time is short. It is easier
and much safer to sow clean, good seed in the hearts of your children
than to pluck up the weeds afterward. Impressions made upon the
minds of the young are hard to efface. How important, then, that these
impressions be of the right sort, that the elastic faculties of youth be
bent in the right direction
Seed Sowing, Weeding—In the earliest years of the child’s life
the soil of the heart should be carefully prepared for the showers of
God’s grace. Then the seeds of truth are to be carefully sown and
diligently tended. And God, who rewards every effort made in His
name, will put life into the seed sown; and there will appear first the
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
Too often, because of the wicked neglect of parents, Satan sows
his seeds in the hearts of children, and a harvest of shame and sorrow
is borne. The world today is destitute of true goodness because parents
have failed to gather their children to themselves in the home. They
[202]
have not kept them from association with the careless and reckless.
Therefore the children have gone forth into the world to sow the seeds
of death
The great work of instruction, of weeding out worthless and poi-
sonous weeds, is a most important one. For if left to themselves, these
weeds will grow until they choke out the precious plants of moral
principle and truth
If a field is left uncultivated, a crop of noxious weeds is sure to
appear which will be very difficult to exterminate. Then the soil must
be worked and the weeds subdued before the precious plants can grow.
Before these valuable plants can grow, the seed must first be carefully
sown. If mothers neglect the sowing of the precious seed and then
4
Testimonies For The Church 1, 403
.
5
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 138, 139
.
6
Manuscript 49, 1901
.
7
The Review and Herald, April 14, 1885
.