(Editor’s note:This article was first published 75 years ago. How much more are the truths and exhortations needed today!)
Nothing perhaps presses itself more upon the Christian mind than the subject of the children of Christian parents. We are living in "perilous times," and many Christians do not realize this enough. Apostasy in a multitude of forms is advancing with rapid strides under cover of Christianity, making it more necessary than ever that our children be well instructed in the Word of God. Nothing is so effective for this as the home, where the Christian father daily gathers his household for reading the Word and infusing it into their minds and lives. They may afterward depart from it in practice; yet the Word will abide in them and compel them, sooner or later, to yield to the hand of God.
The Sunday school is a blessed adjunct to this. Other witnesses there will add their testimony to that of the home; and we know the power of "two or three witnesses." Then there are the various meetings of the people of God, where the Scriptures are in constant use; how we should value all these means of instruction and have our children with us! If we think we can do without these helps we will surely find ourselves and our children the losers.
We are also living in days of great pride, when not only are men not subject to God any more, but are not even subject to rulers nor to parents. Thus we need to be all the more careful to instill obedience in our children’s minds_not tyrannize them, nor provoke them, but see to it that they obey, and obey cheerfully. Obedience is the very first principle, and at the root of all godliness. Many think that because we "are not under law, but under grace," to command and to govern are unworthy of a Christian. It is all wrong. Grace in nowise destroys government, whether government in the assembly or in the family. An assembly without godly government is a ruin, and so also a family. We have seen many a time a row of children sit quietly by their mother through a long meeting without a move from one of them. They were no less active than others when free, but they were under government, and knew where and when to be quiet and reverent. Will this be the exception! or will it be the rule! Beloved fathers and mothers, this will depend on how well we fulfill our responsibilities as such.
How encouraging it is to find in various places that many of the young recruits in the assemblies are from godly families, and from the Sunday schools! May the Lord increase still the labor and the fruit of both!
(In Help and Food, Vol. 29.)