Self-Denial | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 40.

Self-Denial.

WHAT would be thought of a military training-school in which no attention was given to drill and discipline, but where the whole effort of the authorities was to enable the students to get on enjoyably? That is not the sort of schooling which prepares a young soldier for his part in the hardships of camp and campaigning. But every family is, in a sense, a military training-school, if Paul was right when he exhorted the young disciple to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. There are Christian families, however, where the young are trained in habits of self-indulgence, rather than of self-denial, and where each is taught, in deed if not in word, to seek the easiest place in God’s host, rather than to endure hardship in the path of duty. This may prove a terrible mistake. The parent who fails to train his child in Christian self-denial, not only fails to prepare that child for the battles of life, but gives him the first impulse toward a reckless course of demoralization, and a career of uncontrolled license.—S. S. Times.