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Patriarchs and Prophets
a life of obedience. While Abraham required his children to respect
parental authority, his daily life testified that that authority was not
a selfish or arbitrary control, but was founded in love, and had their
welfare and happiness in view.
Fathers and mothers should feel that a duty devolves upon them
to guide the affections of the youth, that they may be placed upon
those who will be suitable companions. They should feel it a duty, by
their own teaching and example, with the assisting grace of God, to so
mold the character of the children from their earliest years that they
will be pure and noble and will be attracted to the good and true. Like
attracts like; like appreciates like. Let the love for truth and purity and
goodness be early implanted in the soul, and the youth will seek the
society of those who possess these characteristics.
Let parents seek, in their own character and in their home life, to
exemplify the love and beneficence of the heavenly Father. Let the
home be full of sunshine. This will be worth far more to your children
than lands or money. Let the home love be kept alive in their hearts,
that they may look back upon the home of their childhood as a place
of peace and happiness next to heaven. The members of the family do
not all have the same stamp of character, and there will be frequent
occasion for the exercise of patience and forbearance; but through love
and self-discipline all may be bound together in the closest union.
True love is a high and holy principle, altogether different in char-
acter from that love which is awakened by impulse and which suddenly
dies when severely tested. It is by faithfulness to duty in the parental
home that the youth are to prepare themselves for homes of their own.
Let them here practice self-denial and manifest kindness, courtesy, and
Christian sympathy. Thus love will be kept warm in the heart, and he
who goes out from such a household to stand at the head of a family
of his own will know how to promote the happiness of her whom he
has chosen as a companion for life. Marriage, instead of being the end
of love, will be only its beginning.
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