26
Christ’s Object Lessons
Many parents seek to promote the happiness of their children by
gratifying their love of amusement. They allow them to engage in
sports, and to attend parties of pleasure, and provide them with money
to use freely in display and self-gratification. The more the desire for
pleasure is indulged, the stronger it becomes. The interest of these
youth is more and more absorbed in amusement, until they come to
look upon it as the great object of life. They form habits of idleness
and self-indulgence that make it almost impossible for them ever to
become steadfast Christians.
Even the church, which should be the pillar and ground of the truth,
is found encouraging the selfish love of pleasure. When money is to be
raised for religious purposes, to what means do many churches resort?
To bazaars, suppers, fancy fairs, even to lotteries, and like devices.
Often the place set apart for God’s worship is desecrated by feasting
and drinking, buying, selling, and merrymaking. Respect for the house
of God and reverence for His worship are lessened in the minds of
the youth. The barriers of self-restraint are weakened. Selfishness,
appetite, the love of display, are appealed to, and they strengthen as
they are indulged.
The pursuit of pleasure and amusement centers in the cities. Many
parents who choose a city home for their children, thinking to give
them greater advantages, meet with disappointment, and too late repent
their terrible mistake. The cities of today are fast becoming like
Sodom and Gomorrah. The many holidays encourage idleness. The
exciting sports—theatergoing, horse racing, gambling, liquor-drinking,
and reveling—stimulate every passion to intense activity. The youth
are swept away by the popular current. Those who learn to love
amusement for its own sake open the door to a flood of temptations.
[55]
They give themselves up to social gaiety and thoughtless mirth, and
their intercourse with pleasure lovers has an intoxicating effect upon
the mind. They are led on from one form of dissipation to another,
until they lose both the desire and the capacity for a life of usefulness.
Their religious aspirations are chilled; their spiritual life is darkened.
All the nobler faculties of the soul, all that link man with the spiritual
world, are debased.
It is true that some may see their folly and repent. God may pardon
them. But they have wounded their own souls, and brought upon
themselves a lifelong peril. The power of discernment, which ought