This is a children’s question. God does not wish the boy to be snubbed when he wants to know. There is a kind of curiosity which is like the scent in a hound—a Divine instinct—and must not be checked, for that is waste. If you chill your child when he comes to ask, you may break the link which binds him to you, and never be able to weld it again. There will be a time come when you will long to have the lad come to your side, but it will be too late. “When your children shall ask their fathers . . . Then ye shall let your children know” (21-22.)
Obedience to God’s Commandments will cause our
children to ask questions which will be a
blessing to their life.
This is very different to what is called “questionable conduct.” We don’t want your son to say “I cannot understand how my father makes his ledger square with the Bible;” or the girl to say, “How does mother make this love of display harmonise with the class-meeting?” No, no! this is not it; but, “What mean these stones?” As the little girl said to her sister, “What is it makes mother’s face shine so after she has been in her chamber so long?” That mother had been praying to her Father which seeth in secret, and He had rewarded her openly. If we live lives of cheerful obedience, the children will say, “What is the
Sacrament? What do you do at the Class-meeting? &c. Why cannot I go with you?”
These stones are very suggestive. There are sermons in them. Some lessons which will occur to every one; others that need to be thought over again and again. For instance, there are twelve,
A stone for each tribe.
They all came out of the bed of Jordan, and yet, there are no two alike! Judah’s is not like Napthali’s, and yet both came from the same place, and are in the same heap. We are not alike, though we be the children of the same Father. You and I are very different, yet it is “Our Father.” Yours as much as mine. John Bunyan knew this, for he makes his pilgrim band to consist of very great contrasts. Mr. Valiant for-the-truth, as well as Mr. Despondency. And they all get across the stream.
It has been a favourite dream, in all ages, to have a church of one pattern. Uniformity, that is, all of one shape. God does not make the trees which bear the same kind of fruit of one shape. You can make artificial flowers by the shipload, all one tint, but the bees won’t come round your ship when you unload it! In a town where I have preached many a time, there is a place of worship at each end. As you come from the railway station, there is one which begins the town—a Baptist Chapel, plain and convenient, but right on the street, with the busy traffic all round; while at the other end of the town there is a church with a spire that makes you look up and think it is an anthem in stone! All around are old-fashioned houses, with gardens filled with flowers, and green lawns, while beyond there is a real country lane, with May in the hedges, and the music of larks and blackbirds. What a contrast! Yet if the ark of God were
in danger, there would be brave hearts come from both places to die for the truth. No! let us have done with this wish to have all the same. It will become monotony. Go down into the Jordan and fetch your stone! Aye, aye, and one will pick the heaviest, one that will make his knees totter; and another will choose the squarest, and yet another the smoothest, but each man lays his in the heap, and it is well done!
“What mean these stones?”