A
DIFFICULTY: On this subject, however, there is a difficulty which sometimes meets us, at which it may be instructive to glance. On the one hand, we read, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it,” but on the other, it is too well known that even children who have been trained by godly parents often go astray. They make haste to abandon the narrow path as soon as they dare, and plunge into sin as if they were determined to show how boldly they can trample upon all that is sacred or constraining. How many a parent’s heart is at this moment aching, or how many have gone down in sorrow to the grave, lamenting the iniquity of those whom they had tried to train, or for whom they had watched and prayed! Ten thousand mothers have had Monica’s trials, without living to share her joy, and the homes which should have been like temples of religion, have become the abodes of woe.
Now, how is this apparent contradiction to be explained? The Scriptures say, “Train up a child in the way that he should go,” and add the assurance, “When he is old, he will not depart from it;” but, in opposition to that, we see some of the children of godly parents plunging into sin; and how do we explain the seeming contradiction?
—ITS EXPLANATION.
—ITS
EXPLANATION. We explain it just by stating the truth. The child who has gone astray never was in the right way: he refused so much as to enter it. His training was a burden and an offence. Fear might compel him to comply with a form for a season. The parent took pains; he corrected the child, perhaps through tears; he warned; he prayed; but the heart was never won to God. The iniquity which was bound up in the heart of that child resisted every appliance. Sin was still loved. It was turned like a sweet morsel under the tongue. Holiness continued to be disliked. The constraints of a Christian home were like fetters to that child; and, when his pent-up iniquity broke out at last, it was only the open display of what had always been latently ruling. In a word, he had not been trained, nay, he had resisted every attempt to train him, in the way in which he ought to go. He might be the inmate of a Christian home; but he never had a Christian heart; the truth of God was repelled; the Spirit of God was quenched; and the explanation is:—“They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us: but they went out, that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us.”
On the other hand, however, does some child receive the truth into the heart? Does sin become an offence? Is the Word of God loved? Is the salvation of God sought? Then that child is trained in the way in which he ought to go. There may yet come an eclipse of faith. Temptation may for a season prevail, and the world may appear to have regained the mastery. But if the nurture and admonition of the Lord has been welcomed into the heart, as the Spirit imparts his blessing, the effect produced will never fade utterly away. Out of the mouth of such a one God will perfect praise; and while some companion beside him is growing up in wickedness, or casting the Word of God behind his back—searing the conscience, hardening the heart, and ruining the soul—the other is growing up to the stature of a perfect man in Christ. Like a tree planted by the rivers of water, he bears his fruit in his season, and all he does shall prosper.
THE WORLD—ITS ANTIDOTE.
But further, the subject of parental training suggests a question which occasions not a little perplexity to some Christian minds. We refer to the line which separates the unquestionably worldly from the decidedly Christian, in the training of the young. There are practices on which every Christian parent must frown, and from which he must recoil, if he would not promote the ruin, by fostering the worldly-mindedness, of his children; but there are intermediate practices, regarding which he may find it more difficult to decide, and upon this point we quote the authority of one whose weighty words all who would not conspire with the world against their own children, should very gravely ponder. Dr. Chalmers says: THE WORLD—
ITS ANTIDOTE. “In the face of every hazard to the worldly interests of his offspring, will a Christian parent bring them up in the strict nurture and admonition of the Lord; and he will loudly protest against iniquity, in all its degrees and in all its modifications; and while the power of discipline remains with him, will it ever be exerted on the side of pure, faultless, undeviating obedience; and he will tolerate no exception whatever; and he will brave all that looks formidable in singularity, and all that looks menacing in separation from the custom and countenance of the world; and feeling that his main concern is to secure for himself and for his family a place in the city which hath foundations, will he spurn all the maxims and all the plausibilities of a contagious neighbourhood away from him.”[10]
FAMILY WORSHIP.
But it is more than time that we should proceed to refer to the duties of Children. Had it been our object to submit detailed directions for a Christian home, we must have spoken at length of the cardinal duty of family worship, without which, it should never be disguised for a moment, our homes cannot be Christian. FAMILY
WORSHIP. The household in which God is not worshipped is like a ship at sea without a pilot or a helm, while the tempest is rising and threatening to rage. However majestic the vessel or costly the cargo, she is at the mercy of the first rock—it may be, the very first wave. “Him that honoureth God, God will honour; but he that despiseth God shall be lightly esteemed;” and the neglect of this honour is, beyond all controversy, one cause of the degeneracy which is now so apparent in many spheres.
Or we must have told that parents, and very specially that mothers, should deal with their children from time to time, as only Christian mothers can do, regarding the state of the soul, according to the measure of the young capacity. To stimulate them to that duty, we might quote or enforce the words of a man much honoured of God: “Ah, could you see your children standing at the bar of Christ, unconverted, through an affectionate mother’s neglect of their souls, how would the scene rend your hearts with anguish!”[11]