Testimonies for the Church, Volume 9 - Ellen G. White

drinking and reveling--stimulate every passion to
activity.
The youth are swept away by the popular
current. Those who learn to love amusement for its
own sake open the door to a flood of temptations.
They give themselves up to social gaiety and
thoughtless mirth. They are led on from one form
of dissipation to another, until they lose both the
desire and the capacity for a life of usefulness.
Their religious aspirations are chilled; their
spiritual life is darkened. All the nobler faculties of
the soul, all that link man with the spiritual world,
are debased.
Through the working of trusts and the results of
labor unions and strikes, the conditions of life in
the cities are constantly becoming more and more
difficult.
The intense passion for money getting, the
thirst for display, the luxury and extravagance--all
are forces that, with the great mass of mankind, are
turning the mind from life's true purpose. They are
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