Chapter 67—Enticing Sights and Sounds
Evil Sights and Sounds All About Us—There is reason for deep
solicitude on your part for your children, who have temptations to
encounter at every advance step. It is impossible for them to avoid
contact with evil associates.... They will see sights, hear sounds, and
be subjected to influences which are demoralizing and which, unless
they are thoroughly guarded, will imperceptibly but surely corrupt the
heart and deform the character
All Need a Bulwark Against Temptation—In Christian homes a
bulwark should be built against temptation. Satan is using every means
to make crime and degrading vice popular. We cannot walk the streets
of our cities without encountering flaring notices of crime presented
in some novel or to be acted at some theater. The mind is educated to
familiarity with sin. The course pursued by the base and vile is kept
before the people in the periodicals of the day, and everything that can
arouse passion is brought before them in exciting stories
Some fathers and mothers are so indifferent, so careless, that they
think it makes no difference whether their children attend a church
school or a public school. “We are in the world,” they say, “and we
cannot get out of it.” But, parents, we can get a good way out of the
world, if we choose to do so. We can avoid seeing many of the evils
that are multiplying so fast in these last days. We can avoid hearing
about much of the wickedness and crime that exist
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Sow Lawlessness, Reap a Harvest of Crime—Many of the pop-
ular publications of the day are filled with sensational stories that are
educating the youth in wickedness and leading them in the path to
perdition. Mere children in years are old in a knowledge of crime.
They are incited to evil by the tales they read. In imagination they act
over the deeds portrayed, until their ambition is aroused to see what
they can do in committing crime and evading punishment.
1
Pacific Health Journal, June, 1890
.
2
Bible Echo, October 15, 1894, par.4
.
3
Notebook Leaflets from the Elmshaven Library, Education, Volume 1 (1845)
.
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