Hints on Child-training

by H. Clay Trumbull

“This is the day which the Lord hath made;

We will rejoice and be glad in it.”

How to train children to a joyous observance of the Lord’s day, to a joyous looking forward to its coming, and to a joyous looking back upon its memories, is a weightier question, with thoughtful and intelligent Christian parents, than how to conform the conduct of children to the traditional ideas of legitimate Sabbath observance. An utter disregard of the Sabbath in the training of children is a great wrong; but even a greater wrong than this is the training of children to count the Lord’s day a day of irksome constraint instead of a delight.

As a child’s occupation on other days of the week is different from the occupation of his parents, so a child’s occupation on the Lord’s day ought to be different from his parents’ occupation on that day. It would be cruel, indeed, to insist that on the Lord’s day alone a child should be forced to do the same things that his parents do, and that so that day above all others should be a day of toil and of discomfort to a child. For parent and for child alike, the Lord’s day should be a day of rest and of worship; but neither for parent nor for child is simple inaction rest; nor is hard Bible-study, or merely sitting still in church-time, worship. Rest is to be secured by a change of occupation, and worship is to be performed by turning the thoughts God-ward. How to help children to refreshing rest and to joyous worship on the Lord’s day, is the practical matter at issue.

To bring a child into habits of loving and reverent Sabbath observance is a matter of training; and that training ought to begin at a very early age of the child, and continue throughout the years of his childhood. Long before a child can know what is the distinctive idea of the Sabbath, or why it is to be observed in a manner peculiar to itself, he can be trained to perceive that one day in seven is different from the other six days, and that its standard is higher and its spirit more joyous; that its tone is quieter, and its atmosphere more reverent. And all this ought to be secured to every child in a Christian home, from the very outset of the child’s training to its close. Even a dog, or a horse, or an ox, learns to know and to prize some of the privileges and enjoyments of the Sabbath; and an infant in arms is as capable as one of the brutes of receiving an impression of truth in this realm of fact and sentiment. But in the case of the infant or of the brute everything depends upon those persons who have it in training.

A common cause of trouble in this matter is, that the training does not begin early enough. A child is permitted to go on for months, if not for years, without any direct suggestion of a difference between the Lord’s day and other days of the week; and when the first attempt is made to show him that such a difference ought to be recognized, he is already fixed in habits which stand in the way of this recognition, so that the new call on him breaks in unpleasantly upon his course of favorite infantile action. Yet it ought to be so that a child’s earliest consciousness of life is linked with the evidences of the greater light and joy and peace of the day that is above other days of the week, in his nursery experiences, and that his earliest habits are in the line of such a distinction as this. And thus it can be.

It is for the parents to make clear the distinction that marks, in the child’s mind, the Lord’s day as the day of days in the week’s history. The child may be differently dressed, or differently washed, or differently handled, on that day from any other. Some more disagreeable detail of his morning toilet, or of his day’s management, might on that day be omitted, as a means of marking the day. There may be a sweeter song sung in his hearing, or a brighter exhibit of some kind made in his sight, or a peculiar favor of some sort granted to him, which links a special joy with that day in comparison with the days on either side of it. As soon as the child is old enough to grasp a rattle or to play with a toy, there ought to be a difference between his Sabbath rattle or other toy, and his week-day delights in the same line. By one means or another he should have the Lord’s day to look back upon as his brightest memory, and to look forward to as his fondest anticipation. And in this way he can be trained to enjoy the Lord’s day, even before he can know why it is made a joy to him. A child is well started in the line of wise training when he is carried along as far as this.

When the anniversary of a child’s birthday comes around, a loving parent is likely to emphasize and illustrate to the child the parental love which should make that season a season of gladness and joy to the child. Special gifts or special favors are bestowed on the child at such a time, so that the child shall be sure to welcome each successive return of his birthday anniversary. So, again, when the Christmas anniversary has come, the Christian parent sees to it that the child has a cause of delight in the enjoyments and possessions it brings. It is not that the parents are lacking in love at other times; but it is that the child shall have fresh reminders, at these anniversary seasons, of that love which is unfailing throughout the year. So it ought to be, in the effort to make clear and prominent, on the return of each Lord’s day, the love of God which is the same at one time as at another. As the parents will treasure little gifts as loving surprises for their children on the birthday and the Christmas anniversary, so the parents ought to plan to make each new Lord’s day a better, brighter day than any other of the week; and to this end the best things for the child’s enjoyment may well be kept back until then, as a help to this uplifting of the delights of the day above the week-days’ highest level.

It is customary to keep a child’s best clothing for use on the Lord’s day. It might well, also, be customary to keep a child’s best toys, best pictures, best books, best enjoyments, for a place in the same day of days in the week’s round. This is a custom in many a well-ordered Christian home, and the advantages of it are apparent there.