--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Gates, Susa Young collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 11 published: 1905-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Susa Young Gates, "A Mother’s Letters to Her Missionary Son—VII," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 11 (September 1905): 817–822.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0811unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0811unse start_page: 817 end_page: 822 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0811unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Mother’s Letters to Her Missionary Son—VII letters I my mind, in the long weeks which have written you in have passed. I have kept all your dear letters under my pillow, and worn them threadbare with much handling. I can never tell you the happiness I find in reading your quotations from the scriptures, and in noting the little preachments which my dear boy Daniel gives to his younger brothers, and even to his older yet more frolicsome sisters; this all is a dear delight to your mother's heart. I can see that you are gradually absorbing the very spirit of your mission, and when you tell me that you are out late and early tracting and holding cottage meetings, I am transported with joy over your work. If you never have the pleasure of converting one soul, you will still have labored with sufficient zeal to get the foundations of your own future salvation. In and through all of your letters, however, I can read the genuine sorrow which you feel because your former sweetheart Mattie has chosen to provide herself with another lover. You know how highly I have valued Mattie, as a girl. She is pretty, she is bright, and superior in every way, but I have learned, through her jesting remarks to one of your sisters, some things which greatly surprise me. That a young girl should permit some 818 IMPROVEMENT ERA. innocent familiarity to the young man whom she is expecting to marry, shortly, is not in my eyes a cause for great censure; but when a girl permits young men whom she never expects to marry to caress her, and to put their arms about her, there is something radically wrong in the girl herself, or in the training which she has had. I can talk to you quite plainly, on this subject, for men, from the days of Adam to the present day, have always been quite aware of what familiarity between the sexes means to them, and what it leads to. Girls, like their Mother Eve, are always deceived, — and always found, as the Bible pats it, in transgression; that is, they are deceived as to the real meaning of their action and emotions, they commit sin with their eyes shut, as a rule ; unless a girl is taught wisely by her mother, or unwisely through wicked theatres, wicked novels, and wicked associates, she is in a state of ignorance, therefore innocence. When a girl has not properly been taught, I say, she goes blindly forward into familiarity with the opposite sex; drifting farther and farther until, perhaps, her own ruin is accomplished. A young man knows quite well what a kiss from a girl means to him. But I charge you to believe that the majority of girls are utterly ignorant of that natural and, to a man, apparent fact. I do not want you to think that Mattie's confessed freedom with boys marks her as either silly or vicious. It is foolishness, true, but it is not as it would be in your case, or in the case of any well taught young man. It is a sinful thing for you, a foolish thing for her; so much for that. And now, let me speak of another side of this question, there is certainly a belongingness between men and women in this life and the life to come. President John Taylor, in the days of the Prophet, taught this principle, and the prophets and apostles, since then, have accepted and taught this doctrine. The Prophet Joseph Smith saw in a vision the women who were to be his wives. And President Taylor tells us in his Letter to a Lady, that we made our covenants with each other as to marriage and parentage before we came to this earth. That being true, you are under an eternal covenant to become the husband of the young woman who will be your true mate, and, surely, you do not want any other, no matter how lovely or desirable she may be. There are some women, as there are men, who possess great magnetism, a quality which par- A MOTHER'S LETTERS TO HER MISSIONARY SON. 819 takes of both physical and spiritual traits; such people are mag- nets, and draw to themselves the admiration and, perhaps, esteem of those with whom they come in contact. If such persons use that magnetic attraction willfully and maliciously, they become a danger and a menace to society. But it is obvious that they could not marry all the people who are thus attracted to them. You want the girl that belongs to you, and no other. This matter of sex attraction is natural and innocent, and as necessary as any appetite of the human being. You eat that the component parts of your body may be consistently renewed with material to keep your organism and life in good condition. You drink for the same purpose; sleep is required to carry on the pro- cess of repairing the waste tissues of the body. If you did not have a strong appetite and an insatiable desire for food, you would not bother to eat; who, as a man, would take the trouble to procure food, and what women of the household would take the pains to prepare food, if all did not get ravenously hungry? If you did not get sleepy, would you. ever go to bed? In just the same way, mortal men and women have been pro- vided with tastes and appetites to meet, mingle and marry, and then reproduce the species. God has made the two strongest im- pulses or laws in the human soul to be self-preservation and the reproduction of life; therefore, you have a natural hunger for food, a craving for sleep, and likewise a desire to mingle and associate with the opposite sex. But you must not gormandize your food, or you will disease your body, and finally destroy it. You must eat lawful things at lawful times, and in lawful quantities; so, too, you must meet your girl friends at lawful places, under lawful con- ditions, and must guard your actions so as to keep time to the laws of your own being. I have said all this that I might prepare the way for speaking to you, in relation to your behavior towards the women in your branch. It is perfectly natural that your attention should be at- tracted to the good young women who are converts, in the town wherein you labor, and in fact that you should naturally be at- tracted to all women whether good or bad. I think I detect an especial danger to you from two sources; first, there would be a little proud recklessness begotten through Mattie's treatment of 820 IMPROVEMENT ERA. sympathy of your you; and, second, you are away from all the and the innocent home opportunities for min- mother and sisters, by wo- glingwith the opposite sex. You find yourself surrounded Zion as a men, both young and old, who look upon an elder from endeavor carry yourself as a gentle- secondary angel. Your to heightened as it is by the spirit of man, your natural intelligence, meeting even the poorest and the gospel, and your humility in lowest on an equal plane, give you and all Utah elders an attract- iveness which is not at all to be wondered at. The young women, both in EDgland and other parts of Europe, are immediately fasci- nated, as it were, with the clean, strong, intelligent young elders America. And oh, I want you to remember that all these from great advantages may prove the deadliest snares to your own feet, and to the innocent feet of the young girls around you. My son, my son! Come not home tainted with the breath of dishonor. Do not disgrace yourself, or those you love at home. What is death; what is disease; what is poverty, toil, or struggle? These are blessings indeed, although we sometimes call them trials, but oh, when darkened or weakened through the least taint of the'soul is sexual sin, then, indeed, your parents shall mourn, and loved ones weep. Oh, Daniel, my boy! shun this terrible temptation more than you would the plague of leprosy. And now, let me put away from me the vision of such a calamity and talk with you practically, on this matter, as has been your mother's custom. What can you do to avert this temptation? Will prayers save you altogether? They will not. For I have seen girls and boys, in this Church, go down to destruction while yet praying, daily, to be delivered from sin. You may say such prayers were not from the heart, but they were heart-felt cries from a tortured soul. Will keeping the word of wisdom save you from this sin? No, indeed. Although it does much to help, both because of the absence of stimulants in your body, and because of the power of self-control which is given through keeping that law. Will keeping the law of tithing prevent you from falling in this sin? No, indeed. More than one man who pays tithing has fallen into this sin. Will keep- ing the Sabbath day holy, or being obedient to authority, or any one principle in the Church, save you from this sin? I think not. A MOTHER'S LETTERS TO HER MISSIONARY SON. 821 No one principle is, and, perhaps, no two principles are, a com- plete safeguard against this temptation. It is a most insidious, subtle, and deadly temptation, which assails the human soul, and steals through the glance of the eye, the clasp of the hand, the flatter of a skirt, the written words upon a page, and through every sense of the human body. Music, art, poetry, all can be made deadly assailants of the soul's purity. Remember the admoni- tion of President Brigham Young, "Never try to fight the devil on his own ground." Keep on your own. It will be hard enough to resist hiro when he seeks you. Don't hunt him up. Keep away from girls in the branch, who seem inclined to be fond of you, no matter what they may say, and no matter what your own kindli. ness of heart may prompt you to do; sternly avoid all association wish susceptible women, in your branch. Be civil, be courteous always, but never permit yourself to even walk a block with such women. No man ever converted a woman to the gospel of Christ through "sparking" her. Remember that the personal at- first traction you feel, and that which they feel, is primarily only a physical hunger for a physical gratification. They are not in love with you, and you are not with them, but a far greater complica- tion will arise, and, perhaps, sin follow, if you are not very care- ful. Listen to the teachings which will be poured into your ears by the President of the mission, and his co-workers. These men have had experience, and they see your danger, far more clearly than you do. Do not think you are alone in your possible tempta- tions, for all Europe, and the whole world, is filled with men who are struggling against the very temptation which assails you. I shall not have to warn you about exercising charity for the man or woman in your branch who may have fallen a victim to this sin. You are too virtuous yourself to have any narrow conception of virtue in others, and let me add this one thought, in connection with this subject: it is the nature of this sin to produce a reck- lessness in the man who commits it, and an apathy and darkness of spiritual vision soon follow. The spirit of repentance may take hold of a man, but, alas, repentance in all such cases is too rare but with repentance is a natural feeling of discouragement which accompanies the first gleam of hope and self-control. Bitter fears, doubts and reproaches, mingle constantly with the faith which 822 IMPROVEMENT ERA. prompts a sinning soul to trust in God and to rise above sin. Dear son, be ready at once with encouragement, if you meet such a soul, and help him to get the pure heaven-born confidence which inspires still to hope, still to trust, and still to labor on. A lifted brow, a scornful glance, has sent more than one soul, who has found for a time a footing on God's sweet earth, whirling back into hell. Never confuse encouragement for the sinner with tolerance for the sin. Rebuke sin, hate it, shun it, but love the sinner, en- courage him in all things, and teach him to look upon sin as you and God would view it. If keeping no one law will prevent you from falling into this sin, what will do so? Keeping them all! Each law brings its own reward, and all of them produces a purity and a virtue of character which makes surely for Godliness. Go to God with these difficul- ties, talk to him as you would to your own father, aye, and to your own mother. Tell him in your prayers every thing that you would scarcely tell yourself. Do not think because he knows it all that you can neglect telling your side of the case to him; the request which you actually make, the explanation which you actually give, will bring an actual There is a power in an explained, answer. worded prayer, which never comes through mere wishing or desir- ing a thing. Talk it out fully, and frankly, with your Father in heaven. This was the advice given by President Brigham Young to his son, Brigham, when he went on his first mission. And now, I am very tired, and must close by telling you that with love, I am Your Mother. Salt Lake City, Utah.