64
A Solemn Appeal
mental and physical organism in the best condition to render perfect
service to God.
Let the Christian wife refrain, both in word and act, from exciting
the animal passions of her husband. Many have no strength at all to
waste in this direction. They have already, from their youth up, weak-
ened their brains, and sapped their constitutions, by the gratification
of their animal passions. Self-denial and temperance should be the
watch-word in married life; then, when children are born to parents,
they will not be so liable to have the moral and intellectual organs
weak, and the animal strong. Vice in children is almost universal. Is
there not a cause? Who have given them the stamp of character?
[179]
The mind of a man or woman does not come down in a moment
from purity and holiness, to depravity, corruption, and crime. It takes
time to transform the human to the divine, or to degrade those formed
in the image of God, to brutes, or to the satanic. By beholding, we
become changed. Man, formed in the image of his Maker, can so
educate his mind that sin which he once loathed, will become pleasant
to him. As he ceases to watch and pray, he ceases to guard the citadel,
the heart, and engages in sin and crime. The mind is debased, and it is
impossible to elevate it from corruption while it is being educated to
enslave the moral and intellectual powers, and bring them in subjection
to the grosser passions. It is constant war against the carnal mind,
aided by the refining influence of the grace of God, which will attract
it upward, and habituate it to meditate upon pure and holy things.
Many children are born with the animal passions largely in the
ascendency, while the moral and intellectual are but feebly developed.
These children need the most careful culture to bring out, strengthen
and develop the moral and intellectual, and have these take the lead.
Children are not trained for God. Their moral and religious education
is neglected. The animal passions are being constantly strengthened,
while the moral faculties are becoming enfeebled.
[180]
Some children begin to excite their animal passions in their infancy;
and, as they increase in years, the lustful passions grow with their
growth, and strengthen with their strength. Their minds are not at
rest. Girls desire the society of boys; and boys, that of the girls.
Their deportment is not reserved and modest. They are bold and
forward, taking indecent liberties. Their corrupt habits of self-abuse
have debased their minds, and tainted their souls. Vile thoughts, novel-