[Illustration: “THE DRUMMER BOY AND HIS DOG.”]
Children are a gift from God. Children are a heritage from the Lord. It
depends largely on parents whether they become a heritage of honor and
delight or of sorrow and shame. It is not simply incumbent upon parents
that their children be well cared for, fed and clothed, properly
educated and so forth; but more than this, they are to be brought up “in
the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This being true, then, the
highest aim of rearing children is not simply that they may win success
and command respect in the world. Respect and success are greatly to be
desired and sought, but beyond them and beyond everything else is the
highest and chiefest aim of parental love and care; that their children
may honor and command the righteousness of God in the life that now is
and magnify the glory of God in the life that is to be. This is the mark
and prize of their high calling.
[Illustration]
Admitting this, then, the early conversion of children is all-important.
But if they are to be early converted, is it not wise--nay, absolutely
essential--that mothers and fathers prepare the way by restricting their
natural impulses by which they are led to desire indulgence in the gay
vanities of life? Is it not positively wrong for parents to indulge that
pernicious and destructive delusion, which some allow, of permitting
their children to have their own evil way in the hope that in due time
they will in some way see their error and turn to the right path of
their own accord? Father, you are a Christian. Mother, you are a
Christian. Now, in your home, in the management of your children, are
you doing the best you can to show what a Christian family should be?
How is it, my friends? I leave that question with you.