Moral Maladies
183
to jealousy, disposed to look upon the dark side, and when you are
laboring for their good, imagine that you are their enemy, that you
needlessly reprove and restrain them.—
A Solemn Appeal, 50
.
Moral Effects
949. And have you inquired, Where will all this end? as you have
looked upon your children from a moral point of view? Have you
not noticed the increase of disobedience in your children, and their
manifestations of ingratitude and impatience under restraint? Have
you not been alarmed at their disregard of parental authority, which
has bowed down the heart of their parents with grief, and prematurely
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sprinkled their heads with gray hair? Have you not witnessed the lack
of that noble frankness in your children which they once possessed,
and which you admired in them? Some children even express in
their countenances a hardened look of depravity. Have you not felt
distressed and anxious as you have seen the strong desire in your
children to be with the other sex, and their overpowering disposition
to form attachments when quite young? ... Mothers, the great cause of
these physical, mental, and moral evils is secret vice, which inflames
the passions, fevers the imagination, and leads to fornication and
adultery. This vice is laying waste the constitution of very many, and
preparing them for diseases of almost every description.—
A Solemn
Appeal, 53
.
950. Upon their very countenances is imprinted the sin of Sodom.
A continuance of these sins will bring the sure and terrible results.
They will suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy. They will
receive the sentence, “He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and
he which is filthy, let him be filthy still.”—
Unpublished Testimonies,
January 11, 1897
.
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