p. 55 | TEMPTATION

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 9, 1877

TEMPTATION

We have had a great deal to say to our young friends about temptation, because in youth a person’s susceptibilities are greater than at any other time of life. There is much to be said besides telling a person what he should avoid, or admonishing him to shun this or that. The best way to avoid a thing is to cultivate something antagonistic to it; in fact, if one does not do this, his chances of successfully carrying out his resolves are only half what they might be. If a person can acquire a relish for good, wholesome, improving society, he will be in less danger than if he simply shunned bad company; and the same may be said of a good many other things.

Among the greatest protective agencies is a taste for reading. One seldom sees a person of such taste in the ranks of the fast young men who are getting in their crop of wild oats. There is nothing much cheaper than such a taste; indeed, it is wonderful how cheap are all kinds of culture compared with the different sorts of dissipation. A young man who has his business to study, and whose livelihood and hope of advancement in the world depend altogether on his own exertions, will have brief time to devote to other things; but his time may be well filled up, and by cultivating a taste for that which is improving and elevating, in whatever department it may be, any inclination in an opposite direction is effectually destroyed.—Sel.