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Daughters of God
been the greatest benefit to the daughter healthwise and saved her from
sickness and been a blessing to her mother....
Another evil which threatens to destroy the usefulness of your
daughter is a love of the world, and pride of appearance. She has
cherished an affectation which is death to spirituality.
Sister Bailey, you have committed a serious error in bringing up
your children. Just as the twig is bent, the tree inclines. Your petting
and excusing their errors and disrespect of your authority have stood
directly in the way of their salvation. Children who are not trained to
be courteous and to yield to the claims of their parents will not have
a sense of their duty to God and His claims upon them for obedience
and submission....
Your children, who share your bounty and hospitality, should be
made to understand that in return they must show obedience and re-
spect for your authority. Your children will yet be without the grace
of God; they will cause you heartaches and the keenest pangs of an-
guish without one feeling of remorse. They will consider the slightest
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restraint an invasion of their rights and will despise reproof.
Your children lost the benefits of the early training they should have
had, but now you should change your discipline entirely and redeem
your neglect. Your children lack those noble, desirable qualities of
mind which right discipline and self-culture would have given them.
Your children are not courteous, neither are they respectful. You listen
to words from their lips that you should not permit under your roof.
The young who are not restrained at an early age become their own
masters and their own mistresses. They take the reins in their own
hands. They are self-important, self-conceited, and impetuous, and do
not have much taste or ambition for self-respect or to discipline their
mind by close application to anything. They will not be restrained.
They despise school discipline, for they have not been disciplined at
home....
God is not pleased with Sister Bailey’s course in the management
of her children. [She is] remiss in duty, weighed in the balance and
found wanting. This is a serious defect in a mother—to be so tender
of her children that she would allow sin upon them, allow them to
be passionate, unthankful, disobedient, heady, high-minded—and yet
excuse this and cover it from others’ eyes and even from her own eyes.
In this she is partaker of their wrongs and has been sustaining them in