624
Counsels on Health
Resent Undue Familiarity
The slightest insinuations, from whatever source they may come,
inviting you to indulge in sin or to allow the least unwarrantable liberty
with your persons, should be resented as the worst of insults to your
dignified womanhood. The kiss upon your cheek, at an improper
time and place, should lead you to repel the emissary of Satan with
disgust. If it is from one in high places, who is dealing in sacred
things, the sin is of tenfold greater magnitude and should lead a God-
fearing woman or youth to recoil with horror, not only from the sin he
would have you commit, but from the hypocrisy and villainy of one
whom the people respect and honor as God’s servant. He is handling
sacred things, yet hiding his baseness of heart under a ministerial
cloak. Be afraid of anything like this familiarity. Be sure that the
least approach to it is evidence of a lascivious mind and a lustful
eye. If the least encouragement is given in this direction, if any of
the liberties mentioned are tolerated, no better evidence can be given
that your mind is not pure and chaste as it should be, and that sin and
crime have charms for you. You lower the standard of your dignified,
virtuous womanhood and give unmistakable evidence that a low, brutal,
common passion and lust has been suffered to remain alive in your
heart and has never been crucified.
As I have been shown the dangers of those who profess better
things, and the sins that exist among them,—a class who are not
suspected of being in any danger from these polluting sins,—I have
been led to inquire, Who, O Lord, shall stand when Thou appearest?
[613]
Only those who have clean hands and pure hearts shall abide the day
of His coming.
Modesty and Reserve
I feel impelled by the Spirit of the Lord to urge my sisters who
profess godliness to cherish modesty of deportment and a becoming
reserve, with shamefacedness and sobriety. The liberties taken in
this age of corruption should be no criterion for Christ’s followers.
These fashionable exhibitions of familiarity should not exist among
Christians fitting for immortality. If lasciviousness, pollution, adultery,
crime, and murder are the order of the day among those who know not