Seite 190 - Christian Education (1894)

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186
Christian Education
her drink wine or strong drink,” was the angel’s instruction for the
wife of Manoah, “nor eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her
let her observe.” [
Judges 13:14
.] The child will be affected for good or
for evil by the habits of the mother. She must herself be controlled by
principle, and must practice temperance and self-denial, if she would
seek the welfare of her child. Unwise advisers will urge upon the
mother the necessity of gratifying every wish and impulse; but such
teaching is false and mischievous. The mother is by the command
of God himself placed under the most solemn obligation to exercise
self-control.
[233]
And fathers as well as mothers are involved in this responsibility.
Both parents transmit their own characteristics, mental and physical,
their dispositions and appetites, to their child. As the result of parental
intemperance, children often lack physical strength and mental and
moral power. Liquor-drinkers and tobacco-users may, and do, transmit
their insatiable craving, their inflamed blood and irritable nerves, to
their children. The licentious often bequeath their unholy desires, and
even loathsome diseases, as a legacy to their offspring. And as the
children have less power to resist temptation than had the parents,
the tendency is for each generation to fall lower and lower. To a
great degree, parents are responsible, not only for the violent passions
and perverted appetites of their children, but for the infirmities of the
thousands born deaf, blind, diseased, or idiotic.
The inquiry of every father and mother should be, “What shall
we do unto the child that shall be born unto us?” [
Judges 13:8
.] The
effect of pre-natal influences has been by many lightly regarded; but
the instruction sent from heaven to those Hebrew parents, and twice
repeated in the most explicit and solemn manner, shows how this
matter is looked upon by our Creator.
And it was not enough that the promised child should receive
a good legacy from the parents. This must be followed by careful
training, and the formation of right habits. God directed that the future
judge and deliverer of Israel should be trained to strict temperance
from infancy. He was to be a Nazarite from his birth, thus being
placed under a perpetual prohibition against the use of wine or strong
drink. The lessons of temperance, self-denial, and self-control, are to
be taught to children even from babyhood.—
Patriarchs and Prophets,
561, 562
.
[234]