The Parents' Mistake by Sylvanus Stall, D.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Dec 16, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 35, No. 20.

The Parents' Mistake.

By Sylvanus Stall, D.D.

PARENTS are apt to think that evil is easily possible to the children of other parents, but not to theirs. Others may have become defiled in thought, fall into vice, but they can not think such things of their own children.

Because they do not speak with them upon the subject of the origin of life—God's method of reproducing and perpetuating life in the world—they suppose that the child never thinks on these things and that no one else speaks to the child upon these subjects.

This is a great mistake. Your child can not come into ordinary contact with other children without being endangered upon this subject. The truth alone will prove an antiseptic to keep the mind of your child from defilement.

Be not deceived; evil thoughts and suggestions await your child everywhere. To be convinced of this fact, you have only to visit the schools, observe the walls and fences, and oftentimes even the pavements themselves, in the vicinity of the schools. The truth will render your child immune to deception and to much degrading vice, and it is the only thing that will. Socrates said, "Ignorance is vice;" and the statement is as true to-day as it was centuries ago. Innocence plus intelligence fosters virtue, and virtue supported by a strong moral sense will most successfully safeguard in the hour of temptation.—Sylvanus Stall, D.D.