obtain an education without sacrificing physical and mental health.
The patriarchs from Adam to Noah, with but few exceptions, lived nearly a thousand years. Since
the days of Noah, the length of life has been tapering. Those suffering with disease were brought
to Christ for him to heal, from every town, city, and village; for they were afflicted with all manner
of diseases. And disease has been steadily on the increase through successive generations since that
period. Because of the continued violation of the laws of life, mortality has increased to a fearful
extent.
Disease has been transmitted from parents to children from generation to generation. Infants in
their cradle are miserably afflicted because of the sins of their parents, which have lessened their
vital force. Their wrong habits of eating and dressing, and their general dissipation, are transmitted
as an inheritance to their children. Many are born insane, deformed, blind, deaf, and a very large
class deficient in intellect. The strange absence of principle which characterizes this generation, in
disregarding the laws of life and health, is astonishing. Ignorance prevails upon this subject, while
light is shining all around them. With the majority, their principal anxiety is, What shall I eat? what
shall I drink? and wherewithal shall I be clothed? Notwithstanding all that is said and written in regard
to how we should treat our bodies, appetite is the great law which governs men and women generally.
The moral powers are beclouded, because men and women will not live in obedience to the laws
of health, and make this great subject a personal duty. Parents bequeath to their offspring their own
perverted habits; and loathsome diseases corrupt the blood, and enervate the brain. The majority of
men and women remain in ignorance of the laws of
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their being, and indulge appetite and passion at the expense of intellect and morals, and seem willing
to remain in ignorance of the result of their violation of nature’s laws. They indulge the depraved
appetite in the use of slow poisons, which corrupt the blood, and undermine the nervous forces, and in
consequence bring upon themselves sickness and death. Their friends call the result of their own course
the dispensation of Providence. In this they insult Heaven. They rebelled against the laws of nature,
and suffered the punishment of her abused laws. Suffering and mortality now prevail everywhere,
especially among the children. How great is the contrast between this generation, and those who lived
during the first two thousand years! I inquired if this tide of woe could not be prevented, and something
done to save the youth of this generation from the ruin which threatens them. It was shown to me that
one cause of the existing deplorable state of things is, that parents do not feel under obligation to bring
up their children to conform to physical law. Mothers love their children with an idolatrous love, and
they indulge their appetite when they know that it will injure the health of the children, and thereby
bring upon them disease and unhappiness. This cruel kindness is carried out to a great extent in the
present generation. The desires of children are gratified at the expense of health and happy tempers,
because it is easier for the mother, for the time being, to gratify them than to withhold that for which
her children clamor.
Had the system of education generations back been conducted upon altogether a different plan, the
youth of this generation would not now be so depraved and worthless. The managers and teachers
of schools should have been those who understood physiology, and who had an interest, not only to
educate youth in the sciences, but to teach them
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how to preserve health, in order to use their knowledge to the best account after they had obtained it.
There should have been in connection with the schools, establishments for various branches of labor,
that the students might have employment, and necessary exercise out of school hours.
The students’ employment and amusements should have been regulated with reference to physical
law, and adapted to preserve to them the healthy tone of all the powers of the body and mind. Then
their education in practical business could have been obtained, while their literary progress was being
secured. Students at school should have had their moral sensibilities aroused to see and feel that society
had claims upon them, and that they should so live in obedience to natural law that they could, by their
existence and influence, by precept and example, be an advantage and blessing to society. It should be
impressed upon youth that all have an influence that is constantly telling upon society, to improve and
elevate, or to lower and debase it. The first study of youth should be to know themselves, and how to
keep their bodies in health.
Many parents have kept their children at school nearly the year round. These children have gone
through the routine of study mechanically, and they have not retained that which they learned. Many
of these constant students seem almost destitute of intellectual life. The monotony of continual study
wearies the mind, and they have but little interest in their lessons, and to many, the application to books
becomes painful. They had not an inward love of thought, and ambition to acquire knowledge. They
did not encourage in themselves reflection, and investigation of objects and things.
Children are in great need of proper education, in order that their lives should be of use in the
world. But any effort that exalts intellectual culture above
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moral training is misdirected. Instructing, cultivating, polishing, and refining youth and children
should be the main burden with both parents and teachers. Close reasoners and logical thinkers are
few, for the reason that false influences have checked the development of the intellect. The supposition
of parents and teachers that continual study would strengthen the intellect has proved erroneous; for it
has had in many cases the opposite effect.
In the early education of children, many parents and teachers fail to understand that the greatest
attention needs to be given to the physical constitution, that a healthy condition of body and brain
may be secured. It has been the custom to encourage children to attend school when they are mere
babies, needing a mother’s care. Children of a delicate age are frequently crowded into ill-ventilated
school-rooms, to sit upon poorly-constructed benches; and the young and tender frames have, through
sitting in wrong positions, become deformed.
The disposition and habits of youth will be very likely to be manifested in the matured man. You
may bend a young tree to almost any form that you may choose, and if you let it remain and grow
as you have bent it, it will be a deformed tree, and will ever tell of the injury and abuse received at
your hand. You may, after years of growth, try to straighten the tree, but all your efforts will prove
unavailing. It will ever be a crooked tree. This is the case with the minds of youth. They should be
carefully and tenderly trained in childhood. They may be trained in the right direction or the wrong,
and they will in their future life pursue the course in which they were directed in youth. The habits
formed in youth will grow with their growth and strengthen with their strength; and they will generally
be the same in after life, only continuing to grow stronger.