The Duty of American Women to Their Country

by Catharine Esther Beecher

“By Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers; all things were created by Him and for Him, and He is before all things, and by Him all things consist. Every house is builded by some man, but He that built all things is God.”

Having thus fixed in the child’s mind that the Creator of the world is Jesus Christ, and that the terms Jesus Christ, God, Jehovah, and the Lord, are different names for the same person, then let all the Bible history in the Old Testament be read with the understanding that the being spoken of through the whole of it is Jesus Christ. If any one has doubts on this point, let him read President Edwards’s work on the History of Redemption, and let him also collate all the passages in which God appeared to the ancient patriarchs and prophets, and it will be clear that there was a Jehovah who sent, and a Jehovah who was the messenger, and that this last was Jesus Christ, and the one who always appeared to the patriarchs.

The advantage of this mode of commencing religious instructions is, that it presents to the mind of a child a Being who can be clearly conceived of, and a character which is drawn out in all those tender and endearing exhibitions that a child can understand and appreciate. It thus is rendered easy for parents to obey the words of the Saviour, who, when his mistaken disciples would have driven them afar off, said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.”

If a child is taught, from the first, to pray to Jesus Christ, all that perplexity, doubt, and difficulty which many feel in regard to Jesus Christ and the place he is to hold in their devotions will be escaped. Then, if they feel any doubts as to whether they understand correctly about the Father, and whether they are required to worship him distinctively, these doubts will easily be removed by these words of Christ.

“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father. I am in the Father, and the Father in me. The Father dwelleth in me. Believe me, I am in the Father, and the Father in me. And whatsoever ye ask in my name, that will I do; that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

The writer has seen a family of four children, the youngest four and the eldest not nine, where the mother, who pursued this course, remarked that these children seemed to be aided in overcoming faults, and strengthened in doing right, by love to the Saviour, just as true Christians are; and that if they continued their present habits of feeling and conduct, she should not know where to date the time when they became pious.

There is also a mode of practical teaching in regard to right and wrong, sin and holiness, which tends much to aid a child’s right apprehension of truth.

Let the child be taught that Jesus Christ created all his creatures for the purpose of making them good and happy; that it is not possible for any one to be perfectly good and happy, unless he has such a character as Jesus Christ, and that the nearer we come to possessing such a character, the better and happier we are. Then set forth the character and example of Christ, as a perfectly benevolent and self-denying being, living not to gratify himself, but to do good to others. Show the child that he has not such a character, that he is living to please himself, and not to do good, and that this is selfishness and sin. Set before him the misery to which selfishness leads, and the consequences of it, both here and hereafter.

Teach the child that the great business of life, to us all, is, by the aid of God’s Spirit, to change our characters, in order to become like Christ; that it is a difficult work, and one that we can never accomplish without this aid from God.

Show him that all the commands of Christ are designed to keep us from doing what will injure ourselves or injure others, and that these rules are so many and so strict, that no one ever will, in this life, perfectly obey them all.