Training to Purity by Mrs. E. J. Hildom

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Feb 1, 1910

Training to Purity

By Mrs. E. J. Hildom

“Unto the pure all things are pure.”

All things that God has created are pure. He pronounced “everything very good.” Then if we can not consider everything of His normal creation pure, it is because of a false education. The first thing to be accomplished in teaching purity, is to replace this false education with the true. The Bible is the criterion by which to judge of truth; therefore let us study to know how it treats this subject.

We find that the Word of God thinks purely of the whole normal body. When we study the body from a scientific standpoint, we can only wonder and adore before our Creator, who has so perfectly adapted every organ of the body to the purpose for which it was designed. This thought may be a help in teaching purity, in using the body for its designed purposes. By various illustrations we may teach our children those simple necessary truths that will fortify them against impurity.

Unless mothers can think purely themselves on these subjects, it will be utterly impossible for them to help their children to purity. A little child always thinks purely on all subjects until taught otherwise. Teach the children to come to you in all matters of sex, and to talk to you freely, fully. Keep them with you as long as possible, but answer their questions in wisdom, in truth, in sincerity, in motherly love and modesty.

Teach them to care properly for their wonderful bodies, and use them to honor God, and that the perversion of the right

use will bring disease, degradation, death. They will soon learn to make these things a matter of conscience. Whatsoever they do, whether they eat or drink, they will realize their responsibility to God, to take good care of this temple which is to be the dwelling of the Holy Spirit. In this way much if not all of the friction which usually comes in between children and their elders, concerning all the habits of life, will never exist, and they will learn early in life not to guide their actions by motives of selfishness.

And this makes all the difference between the children of God and the children of the wicked one. How much easier is this education for the child, than to allow him to learn habits that will all have to be unlearned or he can never enter the kingdom of heaven. Our Saviour’s words that unless we become as little children we can not be fitted to enjoy the peace and purity of heaven, make plain our course of action as parents. Respect the child’s individuality.

We are to study him and aim to develop him into what God intended him to be, and not think we must make him all over. No two are alike. They have come into an unknown world. To enable ourselves to exercise patience, let us for a moment transplant ourselves in imagination into a country where the customs and scenery are entirely unlike anything we have ever seen. Then we can sympathize with a little child; and without sympathy we can neither understand nor help any one. A little child can learn to love Jesus as soon as it can understand language. And even when a babe in its mother’s arms, she can have such a spirit of consecration that the child’s character will be formed in the image of God.

MRS. E. J. HILDOM.