The Duties of Parents: Parenting Your Children God's Way

by J.C. Ryle

But the spirit that dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so much, will outlive them all, and whether they live in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you. This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children. In every step you take for them – in every plan, scheme, and arrangement that concerns them – do not leave out that mighty question, “How will this affect their souls?” 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, is not true love, but cruelty. It is treating him like some beast of the earth, which has but one world to enjoy and nothing after death. It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he should learn about from his very infancy – that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul. A true Christian must be no slave to fashion if he wants to train his child for heaven. He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world. He must not teach and instruct his children in certain ways merely because it is the usual way. He must not allow them to read books of a questionable sort merely because everybody else reads them or let them form habits of a doubtful tendency merely because they are the habits of the day. He must train with an eye on his children’s souls. He must not be ashamed to hear his training called narrow-minded and strange. Wha...