Since God has specially endowed woman with large capacities for developing these powers and graces, let her look to it that they be not suffered to lie buried in a napkin, or perverted to the idolatrous worship of the goddess of fashion. The plastic and pliable temperament of woman tends towards making her an easy prey for the tempter, when he approaches her with smiles, bearing in his hands jewels of gold, braided hair, and costly apparel. She is lured the same by the giddy revel and the fashionable dance—trusting, thoughtless, happy child; ready for almost any pleasure that makes the cheek to glow and the eye to sparkle with delight!
Mothers, be patient, watchful and wise in training your daughters. Withhold from them no good thing, but teach them to shun the ways that are "the ways of hell." Fathers, be mild, but firm in training your sons into habits of sobriety, temperance and abstemiousness from all bad habits. Pray with them and for them, and if possible teach them to feel that there is something better than the life and purer than the love of this world. May God bless the young people of our land and make them the pillars of his truth, is my prayer.
Thursday, April 13. Council meeting at the Mill Creek meetinghouse. Brother Isaac Long is elected speaker, and Christian Hartman deacon. Brother Isaac Long gives promise of great power in the Word. He has a very good voice for both speaking and singing. I do not wish to attach undue weight to this most wonderful gift of God, but when the head is stored with knowledge and the heart with the love of truth, the human voice is one of the great means by which God makes known the saving virtue of his Word.
Friday, April 14. Council meeting at the old meetinghouse. Brother John Thomas is elected to the deaconship.
Sunday, April 30. Meeting at our meetinghouse. Samuel Wampler and wife baptized.
Thursday, May 11. Perform the marriage ceremony of George Wine, son of Samuel Wine, and Lydia Good, daughter of Jacob Good.
Monday, May 22. This day Brother Kline starts to the Annual Meeting. He gets to Cumberland on the twenty-third, where he meets Brother E.K. Beachley, who takes him to his home. The same evening he attends a love feast at a meetinghouse near by.
Friday, May 26. He attends a union meeting at the Middle Creek meetinghouse, in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
Saturday, May 27. He has meeting near Brother David Lichty's. I will clothe the skeleton of this discourse as best I can. Acts 10:34, 35. Text.—"Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him."
It required a miracle to convince Peter that any besides Jews were to be favored with the Gospel. But a man of his stamp of character, hard to be convinced, resolute even to drawing the sword in defense of his friend or faith, is not likely to be imposed upon by false appearances, nor deceived by unreliable promises. Just such a man Jesus needed, and just such a man Jesus chose to be foreman in his little band of disciples. But when all doubt was removed from Peter's mind, his faith became to be a part of himself. Its roots branched out into every part of his nature, and permeated his entire self. Well could Jesus say of the truth which Peter so nobly confessed, and to which he so nobly adhered in the later years of his life by a faith that bore the test of fire: "Upon this rock will I build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Such faith ever has been and ever will be the foundation on which his church stands.