An Essential Element

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

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

An Essential Element.

ONE of the essential elements in child-training is an example of uncompromising truthfulness. The price a parent pays for any departure from this rule is loss of influence over the child. The gain in dollars means a loss in life, and such accounts can never be balanced. I remember hearing some one relate a story of a patient who desired her five-year-old boy to begin school, and so he was told to give his age to the teacher as six. When riding on the train his father gave his age as three. One day a gentleman asked him his age. He said: "I am five years old at home, three on the train, and six in school." An act like this is little short of crime.

A second requisite in character-building is real sincerity. The practise and the profession must be made to square with each other. In other words, the business transactions and week-day actions in the home must correspond with the religious life on the Sabbath. Children never fail in detecting insincerity and sham. The power of your precepts will never exceed the genuineness of your practise. It is useless for a man to talk temperance to his boy and live tippling before the world. The essential thing is life, not lecturing.—Selected.

"SILENCE will end almost any quarrel."

WE are quick to spy the evil conduct of others.—Socrates.