If, however, on the other hand, you plainly tell a child that God knows what is best for us better than we know for ourselves, and that, while God is glad to have us come to him with all our wishes and all our troubles, we must leave it to God to decide just what he will give to us and do for us, the child is ready to accept this statement as the truth; and then his faith in God is not disturbed in the slightest degree by finding that God has decided to do differently from his request to God in prayer. On every side, children are being taught to have faith in prayer, rather than to have faith in God; and, in consequence, their faith is continually subject to shocks which would never have disturbed it if it had been trained to rest on God instead of resting on prayer.
If you tell a child that God loves good children, and that he does not love bad children, the child will believe you; and then, when he thinks he is a good child, he will be glad that there is a God who can appreciate him; but when he knows he is a bad child, he will perhaps be sorry that there is a God in the universe to be his enemy. So far as your training does its legitimate work, in this instance, the child is trained, not to have faith in God, but to have confidence in his own merits as a means of commending him to the God whom you have misrepresented to him. If, on the other hand, you tell a child that God is love, and that his love goes out unfailingly toward all, even toward those who have no love for him, and that, while God loves to have children good, he loves them tenderly while they are very bad, the child will take in that great truth gratefully; and then he is readier to have faith in God, and to want to be good because the loving God loves to have him good. And in this way a child’s faith in God may be the means of quickening and shaping his desires in the direction of well-doing.
As a means of training a child’s faith in God more intelligently and with greater definiteness, the fact of the Incarnation may be disclosed to him in all the fulness of its richest meaning. A very young child can comprehend the truth that God in his love sent his Son into this world as a little child, with the name Jesus—or Saviour; that Jesus grew up from childhood into manhood, that he loved little children, that he died for them, that he rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven, that still he loves children, that he watches over them tenderly, and that he is ready to help them in all their trials and needs, and to be their Saviour forever. With this knowledge of Jesus as God’s representative, a child can be trained to trust Jesus at all times; to feel safe in darkness and in danger because of his nearness, his love, and his power; to be sure of his sympathy, and to rest on him as a sufficient Saviour. That a child is capable of such faith as this, is not fairly a question. The only question, if question there be, is whether any one but a child can attain to such faith. One thing is as sure as the words of Jesus are true, and that is, that “whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein;” or, in other words, that a little child’s faith is a pattern for the believers of every age.
The training of a child’s faith is the most delicate and the most important duty that devolves upon one who is set to the work of child-training. More is involved in it for the child’s welfare, and more depends upon it for the child’s enjoyment and efficiency in life, than pivots on any other phase of the training of a child. He who would train a child’s faith aright has need of wisdom, and yet more has need of faith,—just such faith as that to the exercise of which he would train the child of his charge. Peculiarly has a parent need to watch lest he check or hinder unduly the loving promptings of a child’s faith; for it is our Lord himself who has said: “Whoso shall cause one of these little ones which believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.”
XV.
TRAINING CHILDREN TO SABBATH OBSERVANCE.
Every day in the week is the Lord’s day, for children; but one day in the week is peculiarly the Lord’s day, for children as well as for older persons. How to train a child to wise and faithful Sabbath observance, on the Lord’s day, is a question that puzzles many a Christian parent; and, as a rule, the more true and loving and Christ-like the parent, the greater the practical puzzle at this point. The difficulty in the case is not so much, how to secure the observance of the Sabbath by a child, as it is to decide what should be the proper observance of the Sabbath by a child.
If, indeed, it were simply a question of compelling a child to conform to certain fixed and rigid rules of Sabbath observance, any able-bodied and determined parent, with a stern face, and the help of a birch rod and a dark closet, could compass all the difficulties of the case. But while it is a question of bringing the child to enjoy the loving service of God on God’s peculiar day, it requires other qualities than sternness on the parent’s part, and other agencies than a birch rod and a dark closet, to meet the requirements of the situation. And so it is that a right apprehension of the nature of a wise and proper observance of the Sabbath is an essential prerequisite of the wise and proper training of children to such an observance.
Love must be at the basis of all acceptable service of God. Any observance of the commands of God which is slavish and reluctant, is sure to lack God’s approval. The Sabbath is a sign, or a token, of the loving covenant between God and his people. It is to be borne in mind, it is to be remembered, it is to be counted holy, accordingly. One day in seven is to be given up to loving thoughts of God, to a loving rest from one’s own work and pleasure, and to a loving part in the worship of God. On that day, above other days, the thought of God’s children should be: