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TOPIC: Murray, Andrew - Children for Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 04 Days 20-25
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TWENTIETH DAY -- The Father as Intercessor
`And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and renounced God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.' Job 1: 5.
What a beautiful picture of a man in whose heart the fear of God lives! He fears lest his children sin against God or forsake Him in their heart. He is so deeply conscious of the sin of their nature, that, even when he does not know of positive transgression, the very thought of their having been in circumstances of temptation makes him afraid. He so fully realizes his position and privilege as father, that he sends for them to sanctify them, and takes upon himself the continual offering of the needed sacrifice. Job is here another example, among Bible saints, of a servant of God in whom faith in God takes up the whole home in its intercession, and whose fear of God extends to the sin of the children too. God could hardly have said of him, `There is none like my servant Job in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil,' if this element of true piety had been wanting. The book might have been complete without it, as far as the record of Job's patience and faith is concerned, but we should have missed the so much needed lesson -- a man's entire consecration to God implies the consecration of the home life too. Let us study the lesson his example teaches.
1. A deep sense of the sinfulness and the sins of his children is one of the marks of a godly parent. It is to conquer and free from sin that God entered into the parental covenant with Abraham. It was on account of sin, and to deliver from its cause, that the blood of the lamb was sprinkled in the Passover. It was to lead from sin to the service of God, that parents were constituted the instructors of their children. In all God's dealings with us in redemption and grace, in His revelation in Christ and His Cross, He has one object -- to save us from sin, and make us partakers of His holiness. And if the parent is to be God's fellow-worker, if the authority God delegates to him is to be used aright, and the blessing promised to him is to come true, it can only be if God finds the parent in harmony with Himself, hating sin with a perfect hatred, and seeking, above everything, to keep or cast it out of his home.
And have we not all to confess how superficial our views of sin are? And how easily we often are satisfied, while, under the appearance of what is good and loving, sin may be lurking, or our children be growing up renouncing God in their hearts! And how sadly wanting we are in that deep sense of the grief and dishonor to God which our children's sin is, and which ought to be the motive that urges us most strongly to plead for its forgiveness and strive for its putting away! Let parents ask God to give them a right sense of what sin is in their children, in its curse, its dishonor to God, its power. And let us ask Him to work in us a very deep and very clear conviction that His great object in taking us into covenant as His ministers to the children, is that sin may be cast out of them. This is the one thing that He aims at, that the power of Christ's victory over sin may be seen in them, that we and they and our home may be holy to the Lord.
2. Very special watchfulness, where there is special temptation, will be the natural fruit of such fear of sin. Job knew that at a time of feasting there would be special danger, and as often as the days of feasting were past, he sent for his sons and sanctified them. What an impression these children must have received of the fear of sin in their God-fearing father, and how it would waken in them the need of watchfulness and the fear of forgetting God! Every thoughtful parent knows how there are times and places when the temptations of sin come more speedily, and more easily surprise even the well-disposed child. Such are the times, both before and after a child goes into the company and the circumstances where he may be tempted, that a praying father and mother should do what Job did when he sent for his sons and sanctified them. A Christian man, only lately converted, has told of the indelible impression made by his mother taking him into her room, just as he was in full glee to start on his first long journey from home, and praying with him that he might be kept from sin.
Let us ask God to make us very watchful and very wise in availing ourselves of opportunities. There are times when conscience in a child is especially sensitive, and a word fitly spoken will sink deep into the heart. There are times when conscience has been slighted, and when a word or prayer will help to waken it up and restore its authority. A parent who is in sympathy with God's purpose as to destroying sin, and who holds himself at God's disposal, will be guided from on high as to when and how to speak, to awaken and strengthen in the child the consciousness of sin and its danger.
3. A godly parent has power with God to intercede. Job not only sent for his children to speak -- he sanctified them, through the burnt-offerings he offered. The parent who has in baptism accepted the sign of the sprinkling of he blood for his child, who has sprinkled the blood on the doorposts of his home, has a right to plead that blood with God. His faith obtains pardon for the child. And he has a right to intercede for the grace that can save and sanctify. We have, through the whole course of God's dealings with parents, from Noah downwards, seen that God gives the parent the right and the power to appear and act in behalf of the child, and that such representative action is accepted. To lay hold of this clearly, is the very essence of parental faith; to act upon it, the secret of parental power and blessing. The whole family constitution is based upon this; all the other influence a parent is to exert depends much on his being clear on this point: I am the steward of God's grace to the child; I represent the child with God, and am heard on his behalf. This makes him confident in saying, I represent God with my child; I have God's help to give me influence and power. I have overcome the power of my child's sin in pleading with God for him; I am sure of conquering it in pleading with my child.
Dear parents! let us plead very earnestly that God may by His Spirit enlighten our hearts to know this our calling -- as parents to intercede and prevail for our children. We want the Holy Spirit so to shine upon God's purposes with us, that in our family life, and the intercourse with our children, the first thing shall be, not the happiness of parental love and intercourse, not the care for the providing all the good gifts they daily need; not the thought of their education for a life of prosperity and usefulness, but the yielding ourselves to God's redeeming love, to be every day the ministers of its grace and blessing. Let us live to secure God's purpose -- the deliverance from sin; let us act in the assurance that He will use us. And our family life, even though there be still the remains of sin in the home, shall evermore be lighted up with God's own presence, and with the joy of the heavenly home, of which it is the nursery and the image.
Gracious God! I humbly ask You to print deep in my heart the lessons Your holy Word was given to teach. May Job, who has taught Your saints so much of patience in the hour of trial, and of Your wondrous grace in delivering from it, be to all parents a lesson and a model of the God-fearing parent.
Teach us, we pray You, how this marks the fear of God in its full power and extent, when it trembles at the sins of the children, and intercedes for them, as its own. Oh, teach us, Lord! to fear sin as the one thing Your soul hates, and to make it our one care that the children sin not.
Teach us to realize our God-given position as intercessors, and to plead the blood for them as definitely and as believingly as for ourselves. May we know in faith that we are heard.
And teach us so in prayer to bring them with us, so to speak and pray at the right time and way, that from us they may learn both the fear of God and the confidence of faith. O God! if we are indeed Your children, may this element distinctly mark our piety and our faith, that they embrace and influence our homes as much as ourselves, that they stamp home and family life: wholly the Lord's. Amen.
TWENTY-FIRST DAY -- The True Good
`Come, ye children, hearken. unto me;
I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
What man is he that desireth life,
And loveth many days, that he may see good?
Keep thy tongue from evil,
And thy lips from speaking guile.
Depart from evil, and do good;
Seek peace, and pursue it.'
Ps. 34: 11-14.
There is a science called Ethics, which seeks to discover the laws which should regulate human conduct, and so to teach the art of living aright. In the pursuit of its object, the science seeks to find out what is the moving principle which urges men to act as they do, or, in other words, what the aim is they propose to themselves. In the discussions on this point, the word that comes up universally is, THE GOOD. Men propose to themselves some good or other as the reward of their efforts.
The students of Ethics are divided into two great schools according to the meaning they attach to the word ‘good.’ With some, it expresses the good of well-being, the possession or enjoyment of what is desirable. They maintain that happiness, our own or that of the human race, the fear of pain and the desire of pleasure, is and ought to be the motive of conduct.
Another school takes higher ground. It maintains that, though the desire of happiness is innate and legitimate, it may not be man's first or ultimate aim. Happiness will be the accompaniment and the reward of something higher. The good not of well-being but of well-doing is the only true good. The ideas of right and wrong are deeper and holier than those of pleasure and pain. To teach men to do good is their ideal.
In the words of our psalm, children are invited to come and learn what the secret of a happy life is. The call appeals to the desire for happiness: ‘Who is he that would see good?' The teacher promises to show the path to the enjoyment of true well-being. That path is, `Depart from evil, and do good.' God has so ordered our nature that well-being will follow well-doing: to do good is the sure way to see good.
But our inspired teacher goes further. He not only tells of our seeing good and doing good, but would teach us the secret of being good. This human science cannot teach. It may speak of the value of uprightness and purity in the inner motive to make conduct really good; it cannot show us what the true, the only pure and purifying motive is. The Psalmist tells us, `Come, ye children, hearken unto me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.' The fear of the Lord -- this is the beginning of all wisdom and goodness. It is doing what we do, unto the Lord, for His sake and as obedience to Him; it is our personal relation to God that makes conduct really good. To fear God -- this is being good; then follows doing good; then seeing good.
Christian parents have in this call, `Come, ye children, hearken unto Me,' words prepared for them by the Holy Spirit to use with their children. They are God's ministers to teach the children the fear of the Lord, the path to the true, the highest good. Let us try and take the lessons home to ourselves that we have to give them.
To begin with the lowest, ‘seeing good’: `What man is he that desireth life, and loveth many days, that he may see good?' Let parents not be afraid of promising their children that it shall be well with them if they do indeed fear God. With a Creator of infinite goodness and wisdom it cannot be otherwise: doing right and pleasing Him must bring blessing and happiness. The desire for happiness may not be the only or the first motive for a man's conduct. Experience has proved that those who make it their first object fail; while they who gave it a second place, subordinate to duty, find it. It is so in religion very specially. God commands us to be happy; He promises us joy; but always in connection with our being in the right relation to Himself and His will. So the previous verse had said (ver. 10), `They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing.' The promises that God will do us good are many. `I will surely do thee good,' He said to Jacob. To Israel He spoke: ‘Do right and good, that it may be well with thee.' The principle expressed in the prayer, `Be good to them that do good,' tells that the favor and friendship of God, His peace and presence, His guidanceand help, will come to those who do His will. Such obedience and doing good will bring a blessing even for this life too.
Let our children learn it early, that if they would see good it will be found with God. Let them learn it of us, not as a doctrine, but as a personal testimony; let us show them that the service of God makes us happy, and that the good which God bestows is our one desire and our highest joy.
The next step is doing good. Let us seek in the hearts of our little ones to link inseparably well-doing and well-being. `Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord,' The Christianity of our day has so learnt to seek only safety in religion, but pleasure and happiness in the world, that it will need a very clear testimony to fill our children with the thought that to do God's will and serve is in itself blessedness, is enjoyment. No trouble ought to be great, if we can teach them these lessons.
And now comes the teaching as to what doing good is: `Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile. Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.' Sins of the tongue, sins of disobedience, sins of temper: these are the three principal temptations children are exposed to, and against which parents have to guard them.
`Keep thy tongue from evil, and thy lips from speaking guile.' Let the Christian parent strive after a deep conviction of the power of the tongue. It reveals what is in the heart; it sets it further on fire, by encouraging the utterance of the evil there. It is the medium of intercourse and influence on others. It is the index of the presence or the want of that integrity or uprightness which is the very foundation of true character. Parents! study above everything to make your children true -- first true in words, and then true in heart and deed. A child's truthfulness and integrity may be the beginning of his walking in the truth of God. `I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth:' let this be your aim even with the little children.
`Depart from evil, and do good.' To a young child the first evil is that which his parent forbids. The parent is to him as a conscience, as a God. Train your little ones to flee from evil, to depart, to come away from everything naughty and forbidden. And to do good: keep it occupied, if possible, in what is good, as being allowed by you and pleasing to you. Stir and strengthen its young will, train it to do good; not to think and wish and feel good, but to do it. It is the will, and what it does, that makes the man.
Seek peace, and pursue it.' To quarrel is a sin that comes so easily with children. Let us train ours to respect the rights of others, to bear and to forgive when ours are affected, or to seek redress only from the parent. `Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God,' -- this is one of the words to which the education of the nursery and the home must lead them.
But we have still the highest good to speak of: we must not only seek good, and do good, but be good. Only a good tree can bring forth good fruit. And what is it to be good? What is the disposition that makes the good man or the good child? 'I will teach you the fear of the Lord.' There is none good, and no good, but God; if we seek and find Him we find all good. It is in the fear of the Lord that good conduct has its spring, that virtue has its worth. `In singleness of heart, fearing God: whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as unto the Lord;' it is the personal relation to God carried out into all our conduct that constitutes the fear of the Lord. It is not the fear of a slave, but of a child, twin sister to hope and love: `The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy.'
And how can the fear of the Lord be taught? Dear Christian parents! you know the answer: only by yourselves walking in the fear of the Lord all the day. Seek to train your children to understand the connection between seeing good, or always being blessed and happy; and doing good, or a life in which we always choose what is right; and being good, or having a heart filled with the fear and love of God. Train them to it by living it. Let them see you walk in the fear of the Lord all the day, His holy presence resting on you and brought with you into daily life. Let them see in your conduct that religion is a holy sentiment and emotion, a power in the heart which moves the will in everything to do what is good. And let the light of your eyes and the brightness of your face be the exposition and the confirmation of God's truth, `blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.'
O my God! I ask for grace to take to heart, and wisely to apply in dealing with my children the lessons of Your Word.
May my whole intercourse with them be full of the joyful assurance that the fear of the Lord is the path to the enjoyment of all good, and that Your service is happiness. Let this be so real that all thought of there being pleasure in the world or sin may pass away.
Help me to teach them the fear of the Lord by instruction, and example, and the spirit of my life. May thoughtfulness, and truthfulness, and lovingness mark the conversation of my home, and the life of all be holy to the Lord. Day by day I would show them, through Your grace, how departing from every -- even little -- evil, and doing good, with a following after peace and holiness, is what Your fear teaches.
Give me grace, above all, to teach them that the fear of the Lord itself is the true good, the principle of all good. May we walk as children in the full light of Your countenance, only fearful of offending You, or not rendering Your Holy Majesty the reverence due to You. And let ours be the true Christian life of Your disciples of old, who, walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.
O my God, I beseech You, make me a parent such as You would have me, and let on me and my home Your blessing rest. Amen.
TWENTY-SECOND DAY -- Training
'Train up a child in the way he should go; and even when he is old, he will not depart from it.' Prov. 22: 6.
This promise is the scripture expression of the principle on which all education rests, that a child's training can decide what his after life is to be. Without this faith there could be no thought of anything like education; when this faith is elevated to a trust in God and His promises, it grows into the assurance that a parent's labor will not be in vain in the Lord.
Education has been variously defined as fully developing a child's faculties, fitting him to fulfil his destiny, developing in him all the perfection of which he is capable. Such definitions have their value for every parent who would thoroughly understand his work, and yet their application is dependent upon the further statement of what his faculties and his destiny really are, and wherein his highest perfection would consist. It is only when the real aim of education is first clearly and firmly grasped that its work can be successful. Just as, in our text, everything will depend on a correct view of what is `the way in which he should go,' only then can the training do its work in the assurance of the Divine fulfilment of the promise.
There have been so many failures in religious training, that a spirit of doubt has grown up as to whether a principle like this can be regarded as holding universally good. With such doubt we undermine God's covenant. Let us rather believe that the failure was owing to man's fault: `Let God be true, and every man a liar.' Either the parent did not make 'the way in which he should go' his one aim in the child's training, or the training in that way was not what God's Word had ordered it to be. Let us see what the Word teaches us on each of these points.
As to 'the way in which he should go,' we need be in no doubt. The names Scripture gives to this way make clear what it is. `The way of the Lord,' God calls it, when He speaks of Abraham training his children; and we often read of `walking in His ways,' ` the way of His footsteps,' `the way of His commandments.' It is called `the way of wisdom,' `the way of righteousness,' `the way of holiness,' 'the way of peace,' 'the way of life.' It is `the new and living way' opened by Christ for all who will walk in His footsteps; it is Christ Himself, the living Way, of whom Scripture says, 'Walk in Him.'
There are many religious parents, who are most anxious to see their children saved, but who do not choose this way for them; they do not decide on it distinctly as the one only way in which they are to walk. They think it too much to expect that they should walk in it from their youth, and so they do not train them to go in it. They are not prepared to regard the walking in this way as always the first thing. It is not their first aim to train wholehearted, devoted Christians. There are worldly interests that must not be sacrificed. They are not always ready themselves to walk in that way only and wholly -- ' the narrow way;' they have chosen it, but not exclusively and finally. They have their own thoughts as to the way they and the child may go. No wonder that with a great deal of apparent religion their education fails; a mistake here is often fatal. There may be no doubt or hesitancy; `the way of the Lord must be heartily accepted as alone `the way in which he should go.'
'In the way in which he should go, train up a child.' Train, a word of deep importance for every teacher and parent to understand. It is not telling, not teaching, not commanding, but something higher than all these; that without which the teaching and commanding is often more harm than good. Itis not only telling a child what to do, but showing him how to do it and seeing that it is done, taking care that the advice or the command we give is put into practice and adopted as a habit.
What is needed for such training we can understand easily if we look at the way in which a young horse is trained. How it is made to yield its will to its master's, until at last it is in perfect sympathy with him, and yields to his slightest wish! How carefully it is directed and accustomed to do the right thing until it becomes a habit, a second nature! How its own wild native tendencies, when needful, are checked and restrained! How it is encouraged and helped to the full exercise of its powers in subjection to this rule, and everything done to make it bold and spirited! With what thoughtful care I have seen a coachman watch his young horses, and sit ready,at any difficulty, to help them with voice and hand, lest they should lose their confidence or be overcome by some difficulty they had to surmount! And I have thought, Would that parents bestowed somewhat of this care on training children in the way they should go!
Training may now thus be defined: accustoming the child to do easily and willingly what is commanded. Doing, doing habitually, doing from choice -- this is what we aim at.
Doing. The parent who wishes to train not only tells or commands, but sees that the thing is done. To this end he seeks to engage the interest and affection of the child on the side of duty _ generally, as well as of the duty specially to be performed. Knowing how naturally thoughtless and fickle a child's nature is, he urges or encourages, until the thing, which involves self-denial or difficulty, is performed. He is careful not to give too many commands, or to give them hastily; he begins with commands to which submission is most easily secured, that so the thought of obedience may not too much be linked with the thought of what is displeasing or impossible. But the great thing is, whether he appeals to the motive of authority or of love, of duty or of pleasure, that he watches the child through the struggle, until the consent of the will has become deed and action.
Doing habitually is, we said, an element of training. Success in education depends more on forming habits than inculcating rules. What the child has done once or twice he must learn to do over and over again, until it becomes familiar and natural; it must feel strange to him not to do it. If the educator be content with the first acts of obedience, sloth, forgetfulness, and reluctance to effort, the evil of his nature and self-will, may soon come in and break the power of the incipient habit. The parent silently watches, and, when there is danger of a retrograde step, interposes to help and confirm the habit until its mastery is secure. Going on from a first and a second command, in which obedience has been secured, the principle is extended until the child comes to feel it quite natural that in all things he should do the parent's will. And so the habit is formed of obedience, which becomes the root of other habits.
Doing from choice. This is something higher -- the true aim of education. You may have good, obedient children, in whom there never has been much resistance to a parent's training, who render habitual and willing obedience, and yet, when left to themselves in later life, depart from the way in which they were trained to go. The training was defective; parents were content with habits without principles. The training of the young horse is not complete until he delights, full of joy and spirit, to do his work. It is the training of the will that is the aim of education. Beginning with obedience, the parent has to lead the child on to liberty; the apparent opposites have to be reconciled in practice; really to choose and will for himself what his parent wills, to find his happiness not only in the obedience to the parent's command, but in the approval of the thing commanded -- this is what the child must be formed to. And here is indeed the highest art, the real difficulty of training a child in the way he should go.
But just here the promise of Divine grace comes in. No mind has yet apprehended the wondrous interplay of God's working and our working in the matter of our salvation; and as little in the salvation of our children. But we need not to understand it to be sure of it, or to count on God's faithfulness. Where the believing parent seeks not only to form the habits of obedience, but in prayer and faith to mold and guide and strengthen the will of the child in the way of the Lord, he may count upon the workings of God's Holy Spirit to do what God alone can do. In covenant with God, as His fellow-worker and minister, he does not shrink back from this highest and holiest of tasks, the training of that mighty power, a will made after the image of God's will, and now under the power of sin. He reckons on a Divine wisdom to guide him; he counts on a Divine strength to work with him and for him; he trusts in a Divine faithfulness to make the word true and sure in all its fulness, `Train up a child in the way he should go; when he is old, he will not depart from it.'
Holy Lord God! with fear and trembling I bow before You in view of the work to which You have called me. O my God! I feel deeply that I lack wisdom; I come to You, who give liberally, and does not upbraid. Your word has said it shall be given.
Lord! give me the spirit of wisdom, that I may understand aright the wondrous nature of that immortal spirit that has been put into my charge, with its power of mind and emotion and will. Give me wisdom, that I may know the way in which the child should go, even the way of Your footsteps, and let me so walk in it that he may learn from me that, as there is no other way well pleasing to You, so there is no other way that can give us true pleasure. And give me wisdom, that I may know how to guide and influence the will, that it may give itself first to my will, and then to Yours, to choose only and always Your way. Lord! give me wisdom to train my child in the way he should go, even the way of the Lord.
And, O my God! strengthen my faith to hold fast the blessed assurance that a godly training in Your fear, and under the rule of Your spirit, cannot fail. Your promise is sure, Your power is infinite; You will bless the seed of Your servants. Amen.
TWENTY-THIRD DAY – The Child Choosing the Good
`Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good.' Isa. 7: 15.
Of all the wondrous powers with which God has endowed man, his will -- the power of determining what he does, and so what he is -- is the most wonderful. This is indeed the deepest trait of the Divine image, because even as God was what He is, of Himself and not of another, so He gave man to a very large extent the power of deciding and making himself. The mind, with all its wondrous capacities, the soul, with all its wealth of feeling, man's moral and religious nature, all these have been given that he might be able to exercise aright that royal prerogative of the liberty he has from God to will himself, and so to fashion his own being and destiny for eternity.
And it is to the parent that the solemn task is entrusted of teaching the child how to use this will aright. This delicate instrument, on which in after-life the weal or woe, not only of the child, but of others, is to depend, is put into the hands of the parents to keep, to direct, to strengthen, and to train the child all unconsciously to hold and to exercise it to the glory of the God who gave it. One would imagine that parents would shrink from the task with trembling, or, if they heard how the wisdom was to be obtained to execute it aright, would count no sacrifice too great to secure it. To those who seek the wisdom from God in faith, and in His fear seek to understand and fulfil their task, success is possible, is even promised.
The problem is one of great delicacy, to combine the greatest degree and the fullest exercise of personal liberty with perfect obedience. God's Word has more than once taught in that obedience is the child's first virtue -- that in yielding it, his will is to be exercised. He is to obey, not because he understands or approves, but because the parent commands. In this he is to become the master of his own will, that he voluntarily submits it to a higher authority. Obedience from this principle will thus secure a double good: while guiding the will into right habits, it strengthens the command the child has over it. When first this has been attained, a safe foundation has been laid for the further exercise of the child's free will in the deliberate choice of what appears to him best. It is this that the parent must regard as his highest and most blessed work. `Before the child knows to refuse the evil and choose the good,' in this first stage of childhood, simple obedience is the law. As he grows out of it, it is still a parent's influence that must train the young will to exercise the power on which in after-life everything depends; he must now be trained himself to refuse the evil and choose the good.
And how is this to be done? The choice of the will depends upon the impulse and motives which prompt it to action. These impulses and motives again depend upon the objects presented to the mind, and the degree of attention with which they are regarded. In our fallen nature, the soul, dwelling in the flesh, and surrounded by the world, is far more alive to the visible and the temporal, than the unseen and the real: it is deceived by what appears pleasing or beautiful; the influence of what is present and near outweighs that of the distant, though of infinitely greater worth. It is the work of the parent to present to the child the true motives of action, and thus aid it in refusing the evil and choosing the good. The beauty of virtue, the nobility and happiness of self-denial, the pleasure that duty brings, the fear and the favor of God -- not in these words, but clothed in forms suited to a child's apprehension, the parent holds up to his view objects that awaken emotions by which the will is guided gladly to choose the good. Amid the thoughtlessness of childhood, that lives in the seen and the present, the parent acts as a conscience to the child, calling it to be true to its higher instincts and convictions, and leads to the true pleasure with which duty rewards even the young. But the training of the child aims specially at teaching it to refuse the evil and choose the good when there is no parent near to help. In conscience every man possesses a guardian and helper of inestimable value in the path of right. A wise training can do much to establish the authority of this inner rule, and to lead the child to look upon the indwelling guest, not as a spy or a reproachful enemy, but as the truest friend and best companion. Let the authority of the parent and of conscience be linked together, that even in the parent's absence the weight of his influence may be felt. If the success of all true education consists in aiding the pupil to teach himself, the aim and success of moral training must specially consist in forming the habit of ruling himself, and always listening to the inward monitor. Cultivate in the child the power of self-control, of recollection, of quiet thoughtfulness, that he may always wait to listen for the gentle inner whisper that tells him to refuse the evil and choose the good.
Conscience, however, can only tell to do the right; what the right is it cannot always teach. The mind may be wrong in its views of good and evil, and faithfulness to conscience may even lead to choose the evil and refuse the good. The inner light shines upon the path of what we think duty: it is only the light from above that shows what that duty really is. 'Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.' One of the most precious influences of a godly education is, not so much the knowledge of what the Bible contains, as the consent of the heart to take God's Word as the standard of good and evil, and the desire to let it decide in every choice. The authority of the parent, of conscience, of God's Word: here is a threefold cord that cannot be broken, binding the child to the throne and the will of God, there to know to refuse the evil and choose the good.
We need hardly repeat again how such an education is not to take the place of Divine grace, but to be its servant; both in preparing the way for God's Spirit, by forming a strong and intelligent will to be afterwards used in God's service, and in following up the work of grace, by guiding it in the path where all God's perfect will is to be accepted as the rule of conduct. Such a training, that the child may know to refuse the evil and choose the good, is of unspeakable value. When once the eyes of the parent are opened to the meaning of the words, he will see how in every step of life, in every action, there are two motives contending for mastery, and the choosing between the evil and the good is the solemn life-work being carried on all the day. He will recognize the responsibility entrusted to him of awakening, guiding, strengthening that young will, on which such infinite issues depend, and feel that if he can do this one thing well, he has done his highest work.To know to refuse the evil and choose the good will be to choose Christ and holiness and eternal life.
Dear parents, God's highest gift to man in creation was his will, that he might choose the will of his God. Your highest work is to take charge of that will in your child, and be God's minister in leading it back to His service. Pray earnestly for light on this holy trust committed to you. Study carefully the wondrous character of this remains of the Divine image. See in it the power to which the gospel comes to make it free to choose God and His service, Christ and His love. Realize your own incompetency aright to influence a will in which the powers of light and darkness are wrestling for supremacy. And cast yourself on the covenant for the leading of the Holy Spirit in your work, for the renewal of the Holy Spirit in your child, that it may be your and his joy to see his will given up to choose the good, to choose God.
O Lord my God! how holy is the work You have committed to a parent. Open my eyes, I do pray You, to see its responsibility. May the traces of the Divine image to be seen in the child's power of willing, and so making himself, stand out clear to me. May the tremendous issues for time and eternity depending upon the right use of his will be ever before me. May I feel aright the danger from the corruption of sin within and temptation from without. May I realize the wonderful power entrusted to me, by Your giving the child's will, into my power. And may a due sense of my own impotence, and Your Almighty Power working in me, combine to keep me humble and yet hopeful, conscious of my weakness, but confident in You. O God! teach me to form and train the will of my child to refuse the evil and choose the good.
Lord! make me very gentle and patient under a sense of my own wilfulness. And very watchful, because of the sleepless vigilance of the enemy, and the hourly danger of my child. Ever faithful to fulfil my commission well. And very full of trust, because You are my Help and my Father.
O my God! do it for Jesus' sake. Amen.
TWENTY-FOURTH DAY -- God's Spirit in our Children
`I will pour My Spirit upon thy seed, and My blessing on thy offspring. One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord.' Isa. 44: 3, 5.
Even as in the prophecy of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, quoted by Joel on the day of Pentecost, express mention is made of the sons and daughters, so here too the blessing of an outpoured Spirit is made to the seed and offspring of God's people. The root principle of the covenant, promising grace to the fathers for the children, to the children for the fathers' sake and through the fathers, is to be the mark of the dispensation of the Spirit too. The promise is accompanied by the very distinct statement of what would be the fruit of the Spirit's corning on the offspring. Not resting content with a religion inherited from the fathers, the children would openly profess their personal faith in the words: I am the Lord's. Through the power of the Holy Spirit the religion of parental training would become the religion of a personal profession. Let us seek to grasp the two thoughts -- the personal acknowledgment of the Lord as the fruit of the Spirit's work, and the sure promise of the Spirit to do that work.
Among all earnest parents there is the desire that, as their children grow up, they may be found coming forward to make personal confession of the faith in which they have been educated. If we enter fully into the mind of God, it will be one of the great aims of parental training to rear our children for such a profession. And yet there are many Christian parents who would hesitate to admit this. To some the dangers attending a distinctly religious education, of cultivating a formal and traditional faith, appears so great, that they leave their children to themselves; they would never think of asking them whether they can say, I am the Lord's, or encouraging them to do so. They do not believe in the conversion of children: they are so impressible, and so much the creatures of their surroundings, that such a profession is not to be counted on, and ought rather to be avoided. Others are themselves, though living in the fear of God, still so much in the dark on what they consider the intricate question of assurance of faith, that if they themselves have no liberty to say, I am the Lord's, it is no wonder they never think of helping their children to say it. It is, as they think, only the advanced believer who dare speak thus; in them it would be presumption and pride. With others still, though they admit in theory the duty of making such a confession, and the possibility of a child making it too, yet the heart is so cold and worldly, that the warm, loving confession of Jesus as their Lord is never heard from their lips. Family worship and religious profession testify to anything but the living, loving attachment to a personal Savior. Their children would never learn from them to say, I am the Lord's.
And yet we see it here promised so distinctly that the Spirit's working, a living spiritual religion, will manifest itself thus. The experience of these last years has proved to many, who formerly were in doubt, that a distinct profession of Jesus as a Savior is as sure a fruit of the Spirit's presence among the children as among older people, and that it can be quite as trustworthy too. A little reflection, too, will convince us that nothing can be more natural than that this should be the fruit of God's blessing on the labors of believing parents. Do we not tell them from their youth that God is Love, and that He gave Jesus to be a Savior? Do we not tell them that they belong to God, not only in right of creation and redemption, but in virtue of our having given them to Him in baptism, and His having accepted them? And why should it appear strange if the child believes what we say, and speaks it out, I am the Lord's? We tell them that Jesus receives sinners who confess their sins and give themselves to Him to be cleansed. This truly is what we ought to hope for as the fruit of our instruction, that when he feels his sins the child goes and confesses them to the blessed children's Friend, and believes that He does not cast him out, but accepts and pardons. Oh, let us be very careful of casting suspicion on the childlike, I am the Lord's! We teach the children what it means to speak thus: that it implies a giving ourselves to be His property, to do His will, and to acknowledge Him as Lord and Master. And if their young hearts are touched, and consent, oh! let us beware of refusing or doubting their profession, or of reproaching them when they fail; let us remember the promised fruit of the Spirit's working among the children is this: I am the Lord's.
And are we then to think that there is no danger at all connected with it? And are we to rest content with the momentary impressions which speak the words without inquiring farther? By no means. As with those who have come to years, so with children: impressions may be temporary and profession superficial. We have been warning against the disposition that doubts the reality of all children's conversion and profession: God's Word teaches us what it is that will give them sincerity and reality. Let us consider well the second lesson our prophecy teaches: it is the Spirit's working that will make the `I am the Lord's' Spirit and truth.
And in what way is the outpouring of the Spirit, that is to have this blessed result, to be given? Blessed be God! the promise was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The Spirit dwells in the Church of Christ, in the hearts and the homes of His believing disciples. There may now still at times come special outpourings of the Spirit in revival movements of wider or smaller extent, when the young come forward in numbers to confess their Lord. But for this we have not to wait. In promising the Spirit to the offspring of His people, God would have us expect that parental instruction, that a consecrated home life, that His ordinances of family religion, are to be the means the Spirit is to use and bless for leading the children to Christ. The Spirit ever works in the Word; to the child the parent is the God-ordained minister of the Word. The blessing of the new dispensation is this, that the parent may count on the Holy Spirit for his children too, from their youth up, and that all his teaching and training, his word and work, though it be in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling, may be in demonstration of the Spirit and of power.
But then everything depends upon the parent himself as a minister of the Spirit. He must live and walk, he must be led and sanctified, by the Spirit, he must speak and pray in the Spirit, and he must in faith claim and accept the promise of the Spirit for his child. It is possible, we said, that a child's profession, I am the Lord's, may be of no value. This depends greatly on the parents and those who surround it; he takes the meaning of the words very much from them. If to them it be the language of a joyous faith and consecration, the child unconsciously catches the meaning from the spirit in which he sees them lived out. If they watch over his weakness, and continually speak words of help and encouragement, even the little child can, amid childlike stumblings and failures, prove the reality of the change of which this profession was the token.
Dear parents! let God's thoughts for your children enter your hearts and rule there. These two thoughts especially: God's Spirit and my children belong to each other: I may in faith claim the Spirit's dwelling and working in them. And my child may know and say that he is the Lord's: the fruit of the Spirit is the faith of the heart and the confession of the lips, Jesus is mine. Let this promise be your strength as you deal with God, your strength as you deal with your child: They that wait on the Lord shall not be ashamed.
O Lord God! we draw near to You to claim the fulfilment of this promise on behalf of our beloved children. Lord! may they from their very youth have Your Spirit poured out upon them, that even in the simplicity of childhood they may say, I am the Lord's.
O Lord! be pleased to this end to fill us Your servants with Your Holy Spirit. May all our home life and our parental influence be a channel through which the Spirit reaches each child. God! help us so to live that the life that breathes around him may be life in the Spirit.
Especially we ask You, gracious Lord! to give us great singleness of aim in training our children for You alone. Oh! that the indwelling of the blessed Spirit may not be thought of as something hardly to be expected, but as the one gift the Father loves to bestow, and the first thing the child needs to grow up into a noble man and Christian. Lord! let our training of him, as Your exclusive sacred property, to know and say he is Yours, be our one desire. And we can count on this, that each child we so consecrate to You, You will, by Your Spirit, consecrate for Your own. May we so experience how wonderfully the parent's work and the Spirit's work blend in securing the seed of Your people for Yourself. Amen.
TWENTY-FIFTH DAY -- From Generation to Generation.
'My righteousness shall be forever, and My salvation from generation to generation.' Isa. 61: 8.
When we speak of a generation in the history of man, we think of the shortness of human life and the continual change among men. `One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.' What a contrast between man and the heavens above, or the mountains around him -- always the same. What a contrast, still more, between man, whose life is but a span, and the unchangeable, the everlasting God.
We will find in God's Word that it loves not so much to contrast as to link together these opposites; it lifts man out of the transitoriness of life, to find his refuge in the unchangeableness of God. `As for man, his days are as grass; but the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteousness unto children's children.' `O God, take me not away in the midst of my days: Thy years are throughout all generations. The earth and the heavens shall perish, but Thou shalt endure. Thou art the same, and Thy years shall have no end. The children of Thy servants shall continue, and their seed shall be established before Thee.' Death may separate one generation from another but God's mercy connects them, passing on from one to another; His righteousness, which is everlasting, reveals itself as salvation from generation to generation. At every point where God meets and acts with man, there are two sides to be regarded -- the Divine and the human. So it is here too, in the transmission of God's salvation from generation to generation. God's faithfulness inspires that of man, and therefore demands and rewards it. In some passages it might almost appear as if everything depended upon man and his keeping the covenant; and so it does indeed. But not as if this keeping of the covenant were to be his work, by which he secures the blessing. No, but it is in the mercy and truth of God, as these are known and trusted, that human faithfulness has its strength and security. To know God's purpose, to believe God's promise, to adore God's unchanging faithfulness, communicates to the soul the very spirit of that faithfulness, and binds us firmly to Him, so that He who is all in all can work out His purpose in us.
Let us first look at the Divine side of this salvation from generation to generation. In Isaiah, from whom we have these words, the truth is expressed with great frequency and distinctness: `As for Me, this is My covenant with them, saith the Lord; My Spirit that is upon thee, and My words which I have put in thy mouth, shall not depart out of thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy seed's seed, from henceforth and forever ' (Isa. 59: 21). This speaks of New Testament times. When God made His covenant with David, He anticipated generations in which there would be disobedience, and therefore punishment (2 Sam. 2: 14; Ps. 89: 30-33). But here the promise of the Spirit and the Word in the mouth of God's Anointed One and His people is not to pass from the mouth of the seed's seed. And blessed be God! there are families in which for generations, and even for centuries, the Word and the Spirit have not departed from the mouth of the seed's seed. Let us only open the heart to take in the promise, and to let it grow within us.
Then we have that other beautiful promise: `I will direct their work in truth, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them. And their seed shall be known among the Gentiles, and their offspring among the people: all that see them shall acknowledge them, that they are the seed which the Lord hath blessed' (Isa. 61: 9). Or, as it is otherwise expressed (Isa. 65: 23), `They are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them.' The covenant with Abraham and David was also an everlasting covenant, but its fulfilment was reached over the heads of generations that proved faithless. But here, in the power of the promised Spirit, believing parents may claim and expect, from child to child, to see the blessing of the Lord. This is to be the fruit of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit; the promise, `Thou, and thy son, and thy son's son,' is to have its literal fulfilment. And this not only for our comfort and joy, and the blessing on our children, but that God may be known and glorified.`Their seed shall be known among the Gentiles.' To be God's witnesses on earth, if need be, among the Gentiles to the end of the earth: it is for this that the Word and the Spirit are not to depart from the mouth of our seed from henceforth and for evermore.
Let us look now from the human side at the fulfilment of this promise: 'My salvation from generation to generation.' Most strikingly God's purpose is set forth in the words of Psalm 78: 4-7): 'We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come the praises of the Lord, and His strength, and the wonderful works He hath done. For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children which should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children; that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments.' And then we read (Ps. 145: 4), 'One generation shall praise Thy works to another;' the triumphant joy of that psalm of praise being the spirit in which the parents tell their child of God's glory and goodness. Here we have the human side. Parents who know God show His praise, and His strength, and His wonderful works to their children. Parental instruction is in the ministry of the Spirit, not less but more than in the old covenant, a testifying for God in the spirit of praise, telling what He has done to us, His strength and His wonderful works. And so the children are taught not to forget the works of God, but to set their hope on Him and keep His commandments, to trust and to obey Him. And so His righteousness, which is from everlasting to everlasting, becomes salvation from generation to generation.
Parents! it is God's will that His salvation should be from generation to generation in your family too; that your children should hear from you, and pass on to their children, the praise of the Lord. Oh, let us seek to enter into God's plans, and with our whole heart labor earnestly to secure the blessing and to please our Father! We know what is needed -- nothing but wholehearted devotion to God. But nothing less will do. God's salvation must not be a secondary thing, something to be enjoyed along with the world. It must be the first thing. We must set our whole heart upon it, even as God does. It must be the one thing we live for, to glorify this God; it is such a life, proving to the children what the joy of God's salvation is, a blessedness and a delight, that will influence them to come with us, that we may do them good. It is this wholehearted devotion that will give strength to our faith and confidence to our hope. Under its inspiration our prayers will be persevering and believing. It will impart to our instruction the joyful tone of assurance, and make our whole life the model for our children. It is one generation living for God that will secure the next for Him; I may ask and expect that my wholehearted consecration to God will, in His infinite mercy, be blessed to guide them; His salvation is from generation to generation.
Gracious and most blessed Father! I bow before You once again with the prayer, to open my eyes and my heart, that I may fully understand Your holy purpose with an earthly parentage, to transmit through it Your blessing. O my God! let Your word, `my salvation from generation to generation,' so fill my heart that my calling and duty, with Your promise and purpose, may be equally clear to me, and the salvation of my children be as sure as my own.
And grant, Lord that in Your light I may realize and manifest fully what salvation is -- salvation from sin and its power unto the holiness and the service of God. Let it be in me a salvation that fills the heart with gladness, and the lips with praise, and the whole life with purity and love. Let the salvation in which I walk, and in which I train the children, indeed be, not what man calls so, but the salvation of God.
O my God! I do beseech You, give me grace that this be the one heirloom of their parents my children cherish, the one thing transmitted in our home from child to child, the salvation, the love, the joy, the service of God. Yes, Lord! You are the Eternal and Unchanging One; let it be from generation to generation. Amen.