Teaching Lessons of Purity.
By Ellen G. White
T is the mother's privilege to bless the world by her influence, and in doing this, she will bring joy to her own heart. She may make straight paths for the feet of her children, thru sunshine and shadow, to the glorious heights above. But it is only when she seeks in her own life to follow the teachings of Christ, that the mother can hope to form the character of her children after the divine Example. The world teems with corrupting influences. Fashion and custom exert a strong power over the young. From their infancy children should be taught lessons of purity. Mothers can not begin too early to fill the minds of their children with pure, holy thoughts. And one way of doing this is to keep everything about them clean and pure. Mothers, if you desire your children's thoughts to be pure, let their surroundings be pure. Let their sleeping-rooms be scrupulously neat and clean. Teach them habits of order and neatness. See that they have a daily bath, followed by friction until their bodies are aglow. Tell them that God does not like to see His children with unclean bodies and ragged garments. Then go farther and speak of inward purity. Let it be your constant effort to uplift and ennoble your children. Order is Heaven's first law, and the Lord desires His people to give in their homes a representation of the order and harmony which pervade the heavenly courts. Truth never places her delicate feet in the path of uncleanness and impurity. Truth does not make men and women coarse or rough or untidy. It raises all who accept it to a higher level. Under Christ's influence, a work of constant refinement goes on. We are living in the last days. Soon Christ is coming for His people, to take them to the mansions He is preparing for them. But nothing that defiles can enter those mansions. Heaven is pure and holy, and those who pass thru the gates of the city of God must be clothed with inward and outward purity. They must be without "spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing." The charge to us is, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting in the fear of God."