Te 177
(Temperance 177)
Creating Early Appetites for Liquor—Teach your children to abhor stimulants. How many are ignorantly fostering in them an appetite for these things! In Europe I have seen nurses putting the glass of wine or beer to the lips of the innocent little ones, thus cultivating in them a taste for stimulants. As they grow older, they learn to depend more and more on these things, till little by little they are overcome, drift beyond the reach of help, and at last fill a drunkard’s grave.—Counsels on Diet and Foods, 235. (Te 177.1) MC VC
The First Three Years—Let selfishness, anger and self-will have its course for the first three years of a child’s life, and it will be hard to bring it to submit to wholesome discipline. Its disposition has become soured; it delights in having its own way; parental control is distasteful. These evil tendencies grow with its growth, until in manhood supreme selfishness and a lack of self-control place him at the mercy of the evils that run riot in our land.—The Health Reformer, April, 1877. (Te 177.2) MC VC
Weighty Responsibility of Parents—How difficult it is to obtain the victory over appetite when once it is established. How important that parents bring their children up with pure tastes and unperverted appetites. Parents should ever remember that upon them rests the responsibility of training their children in such a way that they will have moral stamina to resist the evil that will surround them when they go out into the world. (Te 177.3) MC VC
Christ did not ask His Father to take the disciples out of the world, but to keep them from the evil in the world, to keep them from yielding to the temptations which they would meet on every hand. This prayer fathers and mothers should offer for their children. But shall they plead with God, and then leave their children to do as they please? God cannot keep children from evil if the parents do not co-operate with Him. Bravely and cheerfully parents should take up their work, carrying it forward with unwearying endeavor.—The Review and Herald, July 9, 1901. (Te 177.4) MC VC