Christ, for men, and for their own souls.
Deal honestly and faithfully with your children. Work bravely and
patiently. Fear no crosses, spare no time or labor, burden or suffering. The
future of your children will testify the character of your work. Fidelity to
Christ on your part can be better expressed in the symmetrical character
of your children than in any other way. They are Christ’s property, bought
with His own blood. If their influence is wholly on the side of Christ
they are His colaborers, helping others to find the path of life. If you
neglect your God-given work, your unwise course of discipline places
them among the class who scatter from Christ and strengthen the kingdom
of darkness.
I speak the things I know; I testify to you the things which I have
seen when I say there is among our youth, among educated young men
of professedly Christian parents, a grievous offense in the sight of God,
which is so common that it constitutes one of the signs of the last
days. It is so full of evil tendencies as to call for decided exposure
and denunciation. It is the sin of regarding with levity or contempt
their early vows of consecration to God. In a religious interest the Holy
Spirit moved upon them to take their stand wholly under the bloodstained
banner of Prince Immanuel. But the parents were so far from God
themselves, so busily engaged in worldly business, or so filled with doubts
and dissatisfaction in regard to their own religious experience, that they
were wholly unfitted to give them instruction. These youth, in their
inexperience, needed a wise, firm hand to point out the right way and
to bar with counsel and restraint the wrong way.
A religious life should be shown to be in marked contrast to a life of
worldliness and pleasure seeking. He who would be the disciple of Christ
must take up the cross and bear it after Jesus. Our Saviour lived not to
please Himself, neither must we. High spiritual attainments will require
entire
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consecration to God. But this instruction has not been given the youth
because it would contradict the life of the parents. Therefore the children
have been left to gain a knowledge of the Christian life as best they could.
When tempted to seek the society of worldlings and participate in worldly
amusements, the fond parents, disliking to deny them any indulgence,
have—if they have said or done anything in the matter—taken a position
so indefinite and undecided that the children have judged for themselves
that the course they desired to pursue was in keeping with the Christian
life and character.
Having once started in this way, they usually continue in it until the
worldly element prevails and they sneer at their former convictions. They
despise the simplicity manifested when their hearts were tender, and they
find excuse to elude the sacred claims of the church and of the crucified
Redeemer. This class can never become what they might have been
had not the convictions of conscience been stifled, the holiest, tenderest
affections blunted. If in after years they become followers of Christ, they
will still bear the scars which irreverence for sacred things has made upon
their souls.
Parents do not see these things. They do not foresee the result of their
course. They do not feel that their children need the tenderest culture, the
most careful discipline in the divine life. They do not look upon them as
being in a peculiar sense the property of Christ, the purchase of His blood,
the trophies of His grace, and as such, skillful instruments in God’s hands
to be used for the upbuilding of His kingdom. Satan is ever seeking to
wrest these youth from the hands of Christ, and parents do not discern
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that the great adversary is planting his hellish banners close by their sides.
They are so blinded they think it is the banner of Christ.
By ambition or indolence, skepticism or self-indulgence, Satan allures
the young from the narrow path of holiness cast up for the
