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And all this is one of God's merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the starting-point of life to believe what you tell them, and to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity be not neglected, and thrown away. Once let slip, it is gone for ever. Beware of that miserable delusion into which some have fallen, that parents can do nothing for their children, that you must
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What a responsibility
We have only to do as the servants were commanded at the marriage feast in Cana, to fill the water-pots with water, and we may safely leave it to the Lord to turn that water into wine.
Train with this thought continually before your eyes that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.
This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children. In every step you take about them, in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, "How will this affect their souls?"
Powerful
Soul love is the soul of all love. To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to, and this life the only season for happiness to do this is not true love, but cruelty.
He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, for God, rather than for man, - he is the parent that will be called wise at last.
See that they read it regularly.
Tell them of sin, its guilt, its consequences, its power, its vileness: you will find they can comprehend something of this.
Prayer is the very life-breath of true religion.
Prayer is the turning-point in a man's soul. Our ministry is unprofitable, and our labour is vain, till you are brought to your knees. Till then, we have no hope about you.
when there is little, all will be at a standstill, you will barely keep your soul alive.
To go to church is one thing, but to behave well at church is quite another. And believe me, there is no security for good behaviour like that of having them under your own eye.
Neither do I like to see what I call "a young people's corner" in a church. They often catch habits of inattention and irreverence there, which it takes years to unlearn, if ever they are unlearned at all. What I like to see is a whole family sitting together, old and young, side by side, men, women, and children, serving God according to their households.
This Was written before 1850!
Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control.
Reader, I would have you remark how often God is spoken of in the Old Testament as the God of truth. Truth seems to be especially set before us as a leading feature in the character of Him with whom we have to do.
And man, weak, sinful man, must have something to do, or else his soul will soon get into an unhealthy state.
Depend on it, there is no surer road to unhappiness than always having our own way.
Reader, be not wiser than God; train your children as He trains His.
Take care, then, what you do before a child. It is a true proverb, "Who sins before a child, sins double."
It is painful to see how much corruption and evil there is in a young child's heart, and how soon it begins to bear fruit. Violent tempers, self-will, pride, envy, sullenness, passion, idleness, selfishness, deceit, cunning, falsehood, hypocrisy, a terrible aptness to learn what is bad, a painful slowness to learn what is good, a readiness to pretend anything in order to gain their own ends, all these things, or some of them, you must be prepared to see, even in your own flesh and blood.
Three times did Elijah stretch himself upon the widow's child before it revived. Take example from him, and persevere.
