Proper Education
9
because of the sins of their parents, which have lessened their vital
force. Their wrong habits of eating and dressing, and their general
dissipation, are transmitted as an inheritance to their children. Many
are born insane, deformed, blind, deaf, and a very large class deficient
in intellect. The strange absence of principle which characterizes this
generation, in disregarding the laws of life and health, is astonishing.
Ignorance prevails upon this subject, while light is shining all around
them. With the majority, their principal anxiety is, What shall I eat?
what shall I drink? and wherewithal shall I be clothed? Notwith-
standing all that is said and written in regard to how we should treat
our bodies, appetite is the great law which governs men and women
generally.
The moral powers are beclouded, because men and women will not
live in obedience to the laws of health, and make this great subject a
personal duty. Parents bequeath to their offspring their own perverted
habits; and loathsome diseases corrupt the blood, and enervate the
brain. The majority of men and women remain in ignorance of the
laws of their being, and indulge appetite and passion at the expense
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of intellect and morals, and seem willing to remain in ignorance of
the result of their violation of nature’s laws. They indulge the de-
praved appetite in the use of slow poisons, which corrupt the blood,
and undermine the nervous forces, and in consequence bring upon
themselves sickness and death. Their friends call the result of their
own course the dispensation of Providence. In this they insult Heaven.
They rebelled against the laws of nature, and suffered the punishment
of her abused laws. Suffering and mortality now prevail everywhere,
especially among the children. How great is the contrast between this
generation, and those who lived during the first two thousand years! I
inquired if this tide of woe could not be prevented, and something done
to save the youth of this generation from the ruin which threatens them.
It was shown to me that one cause of the existing deplorable state of
things is, that parents do not feel under obligation to bring up their
children to conform to physical law. Mothers love their children with
an idolatrous love, and they indulge their appetite when they know that
it will injure the health of the children, and thereby bring upon them
disease and unhappiness. This cruel kindness is carried out to a great
extent in the present generation. The desires of children are gratified
at the expense of health and happy tempers, because it is easier for the