`Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Lovest thou Me more than these? He saith unto Him, Yea, Lord; Thou knowest that I love Thee. He saith unto him, Feed My lambs.’ John 21: 15.

Peter was a fisherman. After the first miraculous draught of fish, the Lord had said, `Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.’ Peter’s work on earth was made the symbol of his heavenly calling. After the second miraculous draught of fish, in the days preceding the ascension, our Lord no longer calls Peter a fisherman, but a shepherd. There is a deep meaning in the change. One great point of difference between the fisherman and the shepherd is, that while the former catches what he has neither reared nor fed, and only seeks what is full-grown, casting away all the little fish out of his net back into the sea, the shepherd directs his special attention to the young and the feeble; on his care for the lambs all his hope depends.

The type of the fisherman gave no place for the Master to give special charge concerning the children of His Church. The shepherd’s calling at once suggested the words, Feed My lambs, and sets forth the deep importance and the blessed reward of giving a first place to the little ones of the flock. Peter, and Christ’s ministers, were not only to feed the sheep — the prosperity of the Church would specially depend upon their feeding the lambs. What was said to them is very specially applicable to parents as under-shepherds, who each have their little flock of lambs to keep and rear for the Master. Christ’s commission to His Church through Peter shows the place the little ones have in His heart, and teaches us to think of the weakness, the value, the need, and the hope of our children.

Feed My lambs, Jesus says, and reminds us of the feebleness of our children and their religious life. I was once leaving a sheep-farm in company with its master towards evening. There were threatening clouds; just as we had left he hurried back to call his son, and cry out, `Take great care of the lambs! there is a storm coming.’ The Lord was just about to ascend the throne; one of His last words is, ‘Care for the lambs.’ The sheep is a weak and helpless animal; how much more the little lamb! It cannot care for itself. The Master would have every minister and every parent think much how utterly dependent the child is on the care of those to whom it is entrusted. It cannot choose the company under whose influence it comes. It knows not yet to choose between good and evil. It knows nothing of the importance of little words or deeds, of forming habits, of sowing good or bad seed, of yielding itself to the world or God. All depends upon its surroundings: parents especially have the children in their power. What a solemn responsibility to lead and nourish them carefully, to feed them, not with the husks of this world’s thoughts and pleasures, but with food convenient, the milk for babes which our Father has provided, to lead them only in the green pastures!

Feed My lambs: the words remind us of the high value of the little ones. In the lambs the shepherd sees the possibilities of the future: as the lambs, so the coming flock. The Church of the next generation, the servants with whom, in but a few years’ time, Jesus has to do His work of converting and saving and blessing men, are the children of today. No wonder He says — alas! how little we have understood or heeded the voice — ‘Feed the lambs.’ He says more, He says, `Feed My lambs,’ `of such is the kingdom.’ Not only for what they are to become, but for what they already are in their childlike simplicity and heavenliness, He loves them and counts them of great worth. For the lesson they continually have to teach grown-up people, for all the influence they exert in making their parents and elders gentle and humble and trustful, for all the blessings they bring to those who receive them in the name of Jesus, they are to Him of unspeakable worth, the most beautiful part of His flock. Let us try to catch His spirit as He cries, `Feed My lambs.’ Oh, let us learn to look upon our children in the light in which Jesus looks upon them! Let us pray for the Holy Spirit to make the familiar words, Jesus’ lambs, a deep spiritual reality to us, until our hearts tremble at the thought. Our little ones are His lambs: we are daily to feed them as such, that they may grow up as the sheep of His pasture.

Feed My lambs: the children’s great need is here set before us. Food is the condition of growth. Food is something received from without, to be assimilated and taken up into our very life. The body has its food from the visible world. The mind is nourished by the thoughts that enter it. The spirit feeds, through the mind, on the thoughts, the words of God. The little ones cannot seek pasture for themselves; Christ looks to parents to bring to them day by day, not a chapter of the Bible just read over, and in most cases beyond their comprehension, but some of the thoughts of Divine wisdom and love, without which the soul cannot possibly grow. Not less carefully than the mother studies daily how to let the child have something to eat, and what it is to eat, ought she day by day to feed each lamb entrusted to her care. The one desire and aim must be to rear it for Him. The consecration of the child to the Lord must be the chief thing in its life. The idea of its being His, and growing up entirely and alone for Him, the absorbing desire, this will make the duty easy.

Feed My lambs: the words tell the provision Christ has made for His feeble ones. To whom were the words spoken? To one of whom the question had been asked, `Lovest thou Me?’ and who had answered, `Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee.’ It is only one who is inspired by love to Jesus who can truly take charge of the lambs. This is the examination of fitness for the duty of parent and shepherd of the lambs — `Lovest thou Me?’ This is the provision Jesus has made for the lambs: true love to Jesus can do the work.

Let every parent who longs to know how he can obtain the needed qualification for his work, give in his name for this examination. Let Jesus search your heart — once, twice, a third time — until the remembrance of past unfaithfulness brings tears, and the answer comes, ‘Lord, Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I do love Thee.’ Alas! it is this that is the blight of so many a Christian home — the conscious, fervent, and confessed love of Jesus is wanting. Nothing influences a child like love: the warmth of a holy love to Jesus will make itself felt. There may be a great deal of religion, and of teaching, and of praying; it is only love that will conquer. Love to Jesus will lead to obey Him very carefully, to walk with Him very closely, to trust Him very heartily. Love to Jesus will make the desire to please Him very strong, and the charge He gives us to keep very precious. Love to Jesus will make our testimony of Him very personal. The food with which we feed the lambs will have the warmth of a Divine love about it. Jesus wants parents who love Him, who love Him with their whole heart and strength: this is the provision He has thought out for His little lambs.

The religion of Jesus is a religion of love. Of the Father it is said, `God is love.’ Jesus Himself is the gift of a love that passes knowledge. His own life and work is one of love — love stronger than death. When the Holy Spirit comes to us He sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God. Our whole relation to the Divine is to be one of love. And our relation as parents and children was meant to be one of love. It was to restore this that Jesus came. And He does it by calling parents to love Himself, and then, receiving the little ones in His name, for His sake, and in the fervor of His love, to take charge of them. The love of earth He purifies and elevates by the love of heaven. And the home is consecrated by the light of Jesus’ love resting on the children, and the power of His love dwelling in the parents, and the whole of education being made a work of love for Him.

Christian parents! see and accept your blessed calling; you are the shepherds of the Divine love to tend and feed the lambs. In His Church the Chief Shepherd has many shepherds to care for the flock, but none who can so care for the lambs as the parents. `He maketh Him families like a flock:’ it is to parental love, inspired and sanctified by redeeming love, that Jesus looks for the building up of His Church. Let us pray very earnestly to have, in the first place, our eyes opened to see things as Jesus sees them, to realize by the Holy Spirit what He feels for our little ones, what He expects of us and is ready to do for us in giving us wisdom and strength. `Feed My lambs:’ when this word is made the law of a parent’s duty, what gentleness and love will it inspire, what heavenly hope, what faithful, watchful care, and what an unceasing life of faith in the love and grace and blessing of Jesus on our home! Let us often wait for the voice to say to us, `Lovest thou Me? feed My lambs.’

Blessed Savior! You are the good Shepherd, of whom my soul has said, `The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’ I bless You for the tender love that did not forget the little ones, but did so carefully commit them to the charge of Your servant Peter, at his installation to the office of shepherd, in Your precious, `Feed My lambs.’ I bless You for the holy privilege You have bestowed on me of being a parent, and also bearing Your commission: `Feed My lambs.’ I bless You with my whole heart for the honor and blessedness of being, in my little sphere, what You are in Yours, of being to others what You are to me, a gentle, loving shepherd. O my Lord! may my daily experience of the way in which Your shepherd-love does its work on me be a daily lesson to teach me how to feed my little flock of lambs.

Blessed Master! the servant of whose love I am to my children, I beseech You to open my eyes to look upon my children as You do, to regard them always and only in the light of Your claim upon them. Open my eyes to see what a holy life of fellowship with You.

`Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?’ Rom. 2: 21.

Nothing can be more inconsistent and vain than the attempt to teach others without teaching ourselves. It is in ordinary instruction only what the teacher is really master of and has thoroughly made his own, that he can successfully communicate to others. In the higher sphere of the life, truth which a parent has to impart, it holds far more good: it is only the lesson I first teach myself that I can really teach my child. One of the first laws in the science of home education is, that it depends far more on example than precept; what parents are avails more than what they say. There is not one of the great lessons of child-life which the parent must not first himself learn. Let us look at some of them.

The great aim of education is to give the child, when grown up to manhood, the perfect mastery and the ready use of all the wondrous powers God has endowed him with. To this end a wise self control is one of the first of virtues. As little as a state can prosper if there be no wise, intelligent ruler to make its laws and provide for its needs as they arise, can there be happiness in the little empire within man’s bosom, unless everything be subject to a ruling power. The child cannot be too early trained to habits of quiet thoughtfulness in speech and act, giving time and opportunity for mind and will to hold their rule. This training comes far more through example than precept. It is the atmosphere of a well regulated home, the influence of the self control which parents exhibit, which unconsciously set their mark on the child. When parents give way to impulse and temper, perhaps at the very time when professing to reprove or restrain the child’s temper, the effect of the good advice they mean to give is more than neutralized by the evil influence of the spirit displayed. It is the spirit that influences. The child may never look up and say, but God’s Word on its behalf says, `Thou that teacheth another, dost not thou teach thyself?’ If parents honestly watch themselves, they will often discover the causes or the helps to their children’s failings in themselves. Such discovery ought to lead to very earnest confession before God, to a very hearty surrender to the teaching of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We can depend upon the Divine renewal to fit us for true self control; and what we so by grace teach ourselves will in due time influence our children also.

But the self control must know its object and the path to reach that object. The child finds both in the word we have already repeated so often — obedience. He must control himself to be able to render obedience to his parent, that in that he may be trained to what will be his liberty and his glory, obedience to God. But here again the parent’s obedience will be contagious, it will inspire the child. If the parent’s position be all one of privilege and liberty and command, the child may feel that the burden of obedience is all put upon him, the weaker one. `Johnny,’ said a father once to a child, who was hesitating about obeying his father’s will, `whose will must you do, your own or papa’s?’ `Papa’s will,’ was the reluctant answer. But on it followed at once the question, `But whose will must papa do, then?’ The father was able at once to answer, `God’s will,’ and to explain how he considered such obedience, to a wiser and a better will than his own, his greatest privilege. He could at once take his place by the side of his child as also having to give up his own will. The parent who can appeal to his daily life with his children, that they know how he in all things seeks to do the will of his God, and can in his prayers, in their presence, appeal to his God too, will find in the witness of such a life a mighty power to inculcate obedience in the child. When, on the contrary, the seeking of our own will marks our relation with our children, we need not wonder if our education is a failure. Let us turn at once and hearken to the voice, `Thou that teachest another, dost not thou teach thyself?’

Very specially does this hold true of that great commandment which is the fulfilling of the law. Family life has been very specially ordained of God as the sphere where love can be cultivated. In nothing is our self control to be more proved than in loving others, in restraining everything that is selfish or unloving. In the daily life of our children with each other and their companions, we have in miniature the temptations to which later life will expose them. For the exercise of the virtues of gentleness and forbearance, of forgiveness and generosity, of helpfulness and beneficence, continued opportunity will be found. Principles must not only be inculcated, but the trouble taken to lead the child to do the right thing easily and lovingly. Many a one wishes to help the poor, for instance, but does not undertake it, from not knowing how to set about it. It is one of the highest parts of a right Christian education to make beneficence the chief object of life, and awaken the desire to live to make those around us better and happier. But we feel at once how all this can only be attained as the parents teach themselves, and, for their own sakes, as well as their children’s, cultivate the virtues they inculcate. In the daily life of the family the parents must seek to prove that love is the law of their life. It must be understood that unkind words, harsh judgments, unloving reports, form no part of their conversation. In the intercourse with each other, with children, with servants, with friends, and the world around, love, God’s love, must be sought after and manifested. In the sympathy with the needy and wretched, in the thoughtful study of everything by which those who have none to care for them can be helped or comforted, in the actual loving self-denial exercised for the sake of the poor or the suffering, the example of Christ and His love must lie reduced to practice in daily life. Thus alone can education to a life of love be truly successful.

`Thou that teachest another, dost thou not teach thyself?’ With what searching light these words ask whether as parents we are doing the first and most needful thing for being successful teachers of our children: teaching ourselves. Yes, parents, teach yourselves. If we are to train our children wisely, we must go through a new course of training ourselves. We have to put ourselves to school again, and to be teachers and scholars in one. Of the two scholars whose education has to go on simultaneously, the parent and child, the parent will often find that the child makes more progress. The lessons which the attempt to train a child teaches parents, are often of greater importance and difficulty than those the child has to learn. It is especially well if the first lesson is learnt — the need of self-teaching, the need of teachableness, the need of continual daily learning.

Let the parent who begins to see this realize what it means to become a scholar. All schooling requires time and trouble, patience and payment. Teaching that costs nothing is of little value. No one can graduate as even fairly competent to train a child for eternity, without making sacrifices. Take time to study God’s Word and what it says of a parent’s duties. Study man’s moral nature, with its wonderful capacities, as the sacred trust committed to your care. Teach yourself to cultivate that nature to its highest fitness for God’s service: it will be the best preparation for teaching your children aright. And if you feel how much you need the help of some friend to stimulate and to guide — let Jesus be that teacher. He came and taught Himself, that He might know to teach us; He learned obedience that He might show us the way. He came to show us the Father; He will so reveal the Father’s love and grace, the fatherly tenderness of our God, that we shall be full of a joyful assurance that He will not refuse to teach and enable us to be true fathers and mothers to our children. And we shall understand that to be ourselves teachable, obedient, loving children of the Heavenly Father, is the surest way of having our children teachable, obedient, and loving too.

Gracious God! I come again to seek the grace I need for filling rightly my place as a parent. I ask of You to imprint deep on my heart the solemn thought that I can effectually teach my children only what I really teach myself, and that I can only expect the truth that influences my own life really to influence theirs.

O my God! I think with shame of how much that I reprove in them, is only the reflection of what they have seen in me. I confess how much there has been wanting of that spirit of childlike love and self-denial, of joyful obedience to You, and thoughtful self-sacrifice for others, which would have been to them the highest education. O my God! forgive me what is past, and give me grace in everything to teach myself what I want to teach my children.

Be pleased especially to make me feel deeply that it is as I live as an obedient child with my Father in heaven, that I can teach my children and expect them to be obedient to me. Lord! may childlike simplicity and obedience be the atmosphere my home breathes, the bond that makes parents and children one. As I think of my own slowness in learning, may I be very patient and gentle with my children, and yet full of hope that the lessons I impart to them will have their effect.

Jesus, Master, teach me Yourself, that with Your teaching I may teach my loved ones. Amen.

`Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?’ Rom. 2: 21.

Nothing can be more inconsistent and vain than the attempt to teach others without teaching ourselves. It is in ordinary instruction only what the teacher is really master of and has thoroughly made his own, that he can successfully communicate to others. In the higher sphere of the life, truth which a parent has to impart, it holds far more good: it is only the lesson I first teach myself that I can really teach my child. One of the first laws in the science of home education is, that it depends far more on example than precept; what parents are avails more than what they say. There is not one of the great lessons of child-life which the parent must not first himself learn. Let us look at some of them.

The great aim of education is to give the child, when grown up to manhood, the perfect mastery and the ready use of all the wondrous powers God has endowed him with. To this end a wise self control is one of the first of virtues. As little as a state can prosper if there be no wise, intelligent ruler to make its laws and provide for its needs as they arise, can there be happiness in the little empire within man’s bosom, unless everything be subject to a ruling power. The child cannot be too early trained to habits of quiet thoughtfulness in speech and act, giving time and opportunity for mind and will to hold their rule. This training comes far more through example than precept. It is the atmosphere of a well regulated home, the influence of the self control which parents exhibit, which unconsciously set their mark on the child. When parents give way to impulse and temper, perhaps at the very time when professing to reprove or restrain the child’s temper, the effect of the good advice they mean to give is more than neutralized by the evil influence of the spirit displayed. It is the spirit that influences. The child may never look up and say, but God’s Word on its behalf says, `Thou that teacheth another, dost not thou teach thyself?’ If parents honestly watch themselves, they will often discover the causes or the helps to their children’s failings in themselves. Such discovery ought to lead to very earnest confession before God, to a very hearty surrender to the teaching of Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We can depend upon the Divine renewal to fit us for true self control; and what we so by grace teach ourselves will in due time influence our children also.

But the self control must know its object and the path to reach that object. The child finds both in the word we have already repeated so often — obedience. He must control himself to be able to render obedience to his parent, that in that he may be trained to what will be his liberty and his glory, obedience to God. But here again the parent’s obedience will be contagious, it will inspire the child. If the parent’s position be all one of privilege and liberty and command, the child may feel that the burden of obedience is all put upon him, the weaker one. `Johnny,’ said a father once to a child, who was hesitating about obeying his father’s will, `whose will must you do, your own or papa’s?’ `Papa’s will,’ was the reluctant answer. But on it followed at once the question, `But whose will must papa do, then?’ The father was able at once to answer, `God’s will,’ and to explain how he considered such obedience, to a wiser and a better will than his own, his greatest privilege. He could at once take his place by the side of his child as also having to give up his own will. The parent who can appeal to his daily life with his children, that they know how he in all things seeks to do the will of his God, and can in his prayers, in their presence, appeal to his God too, will find in the witness of such a life a mighty power to inculcate obedience in the child. When, on the contrary, the seeking of our own will marks our relation with our children, we need not wonder if our education is a failure. Let us turn at once and hearken to the voice, `Thou that teachest another, dost not thou teach thyself?’

Very specially does this hold true of that great commandment which is the fulfilling of the law. Family life has been very specially ordained of God as the sphere where love can be cultivated. In nothing is our self control to be more proved than in loving others, in restraining everything that is selfish or unloving. In the daily life of our children with each other and their companions, we have in miniature the temptations to which later life will expose them. For the exercise of the virtues of gentleness and forbearance, of forgiveness and generosity, of helpfulness and beneficence, continued opportunity will be found. Principles must not only be inculcated, but the trouble taken to lead the child to do the right thing easily and lovingly. Many a one wishes to help the poor, for instance, but does not undertake it, from not knowing how to set about it. It is one of the highest parts of a right Christian education to make beneficence the chief object of life, and awaken the desire to live to make those around us better and happier. But we feel at once how all this can only be attained as the parents teach themselves, and, for their own sakes, as well as their children’s, cultivate the virtues they inculcate. In the daily life of the family the parents must seek to prove that love is the law of their life. It must be understood that unkind words, harsh judgments, unloving reports, form no part of their conversation. In the intercourse with each other, with children, with servants, with friends, and the world around, love, God’s love, must be sought after and manifested. In the sympathy with the needy and wretched, in the thoughtful study of everything by which those who have none to care for them can be helped or comforted, in the actual loving self-denial exercised for the sake of the poor or the suffering, the example of Christ and His love must lie reduced to practice in daily life. Thus alone can education to a life of love be truly successful.

`Thou that teachest another, dost thou not teach thyself?’ With what searching light these words ask whether as parents we are doing the first and most needful thing for being successful teachers of our children: teaching ourselves. Yes, parents, teach yourselves. If we are to train our children wisely, we must go through a new course of training ourselves. We have to put ourselves to school again, and to be teachers and scholars in one. Of the two scholars whose education has to go on simultaneously, the parent and child, the parent will often find that the child makes more progress. The lessons which the attempt to train a child teaches parents, are often of greater importance and difficulty than those the child has to learn. It is especially well if the first lesson is learnt — the need of self-teaching, the need of teachableness, the need of continual daily learning.

Let the parent who begins to see this realize what it means to become a scholar. All schooling requires time and trouble, patience and payment. Teaching that costs nothing is of little value. No one can graduate as even fairly competent to train a child for eternity, without making sacrifices. Take time to study God’s Word and what it says of a parent’s duties. Study man’s moral nature, with its wonderful capacities, as the sacred trust committed to your care. Teach yourself to cultivate that nature to its highest fitness for God’s service: it will be the best preparation for teaching your children aright. And if you feel how much you need the help of some friend to stimulate and to guide — let Jesus be that teacher. He came and taught Himself, that He might know to teach us; He learned obedience that He might show us the way. He came to show us the Father; He will so reveal the Father’s love and grace, the fatherly tenderness of our God, that we shall be full of a joyful assurance that He will not refuse to teach and enable us to be true fathers and mothers to our children. And we shall understand that to be ourselves teachable, obedient, loving children of the Heavenly Father, is the surest way of having our children teachable, obedient, and loving too.

Gracious God! I come again to seek the grace I need for filling rightly my place as a parent. I ask of You to imprint deep on my heart the solemn thought that I can effectually teach my children only what I really teach myself, and that I can only expect the truth that influences my own life really to influence theirs.

O my God! I think with shame of how much that I reprove in them, is only the reflection of what they have seen in me. I confess how much there has been wanting of that spirit of childlike love and self-denial, of joyful obedience to You, and thoughtful self-sacrifice for others, which would have been to them the highest education. O my God! forgive me what is past, and give me grace in everything to teach myself what I want to teach my children.

Be pleased especially to make me feel deeply that it is as I live as an obedient child with my Father in heaven, that I can teach my children and expect them to be obedient to me. Lord! may childlike simplicity and obedience be the atmosphere my home breathes, the bond that makes parents and children one. As I think of my own slowness in learning, may I be very patient and gentle with my children, and yet full of hope that the lessons I impart to them will have their effect.

Jesus, Master, teach me Yourself, that with Your teaching I may teach my loved ones. Amen.

`We who died to sin, shall we live any longer therein? Or are ye ignorant that all we, who were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him, through a baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.’ Rom. 6: 3, 4. `In Him ye are complete, having been buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him, through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.’ Col. 2: 10-12.

In writing both to the Romans and the Colossians, Paul, in pleading with believers to live a life of separation from sin and the world — a life of holiness and liberty — uses their baptism into Christ as his great argument. He unfolds the spiritual meaning of baptism, as a union with Christ both in His death and His life, and shows how this is both the obligation and the possibility of a walk like Christ’s in newness of life. Baptism is the symbol of the deep spiritual mystery of our perfect oneness with Christ; as it is understood and believed, it is the pledge of an abiding union and the ever growing likeness to Him.

It is a matter of deep importance to remember that baptism brings and seals to an infant nothing less than to an adult. All the believing parent receives in the covenant and its seal, is by God meant and secured for the child too. For a double reason thus the parent needs continually to remember what God meant baptism to be. Without this he cannot educate the child into the possession of what God intended for it in its baptism. Without this he cannot live himself, in the power of his baptism, that life which alone can lead the baptized child to the blessing God has in store for him. Let us try and understand what, in the full light of the Holy Spirit’s teaching, baptism really is.

The great lesson we are taught is, that in baptism the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are set forth. We know that baptism originally was by immersion. Scripture teaches us how the old world, in the time of Noah, had been destroyed and renewed again by a fearful baptism of water. The old nature, mankind in its sinfulness, had perished under the water. From the water a new and cleansed world had emerged; Noah the believer had been brought forth, as begotten again from the dead. Scripture teaches us how, at the birth of Israel, God’s firstborn son among the nations, that terrible baptism had not been wanting. Under Pharaoh’s rule the Egyptians and the Israelites had been mixed up, very much one. In the Red Sea, Pharaoh, the old man, had perished; out of the waters that were death to Egypt, Israel came forth as God’s firstborn, to sing the song of redemption. The Holy Ghost teaches us (1 Pet. 3: 20, and 1 Cor. 10: 2) to regard the waters both of the flood and the Red Sea as types of baptism and its spiritual meaning. As the Jew, at John’s command, went in under the water, he not only thought of the water in its cleansing power. His life was so tainted by sin, that nothing but the giving up, the death of the old life, the reception of a new life, could really cleanse him. Going in under the water meant the drowning, the death of the old nature, the putting off of sin in confession and repentance; the coming up out of it, the profession and the hope of a new life.

John’s baptism of water was but a preparation; Jesus Christ alone could give the true baptism — the true deliverance from the old nature. But even He could not do this until He had Himself undergone His own baptism into death. In Him the two elements, the old and the new, which in the flood and the Red Sea were represented by two separate parties — in Him they were united. The power of sin He bore in His own flesh — `Our old man was crucified with Him;’ He descended into the great deep, where He had to cry, `All Thy waves and Thy billows are gone over me; let not the water-flood overflow me.’ (Ps. 40: 69). It was this prospect that made Him say, `I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it is accomplished.’ And again, `Can ye indeed drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’ This was Christ’s baptism, a terrible reality — a baptism into death.

But this was only the one half. There was also `the coming up out of the water,’ the entrance on a new life, redeemed from destruction. That new life, typified in Noah and Israel, symbolized in John’s baptism, now became a reality. Jesus was raised from the dead, in the power of a new victorious life that can die no more. ‘We were buried with Him, through a baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised, we also might walk in newness of life.’ `Ye were buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised, through faith in the working of God who raised Him.’ Baptism is, in the power of the Holy Spirit, our participation with Jesus Christ in the deepest and most mysterious experiences of His life; as our faith ever looks to, and rests on, and claims, and yields itself to the working of God who raised Him, we experience the power of His death and His life working in us; our life becomes conformable to His, that life of His which died and lives forevermore. Reckoning and knowing ourselves to be indeed dead unto sin and alive unto God in Christ, we have the power to walk in newness of life, we are made free from sin and live as the servants of God and of righteousness. And as often as the flesh suggests that we must sin, or tells us, with the Colossians, to seek our strength in carnal help and ordinances, God’s Word reminds us of our strength: `We have been baptized into Christ, into His death and into His life.’

What strong consolation this teaching of God’s Word offers believing parents in bringing their children to baptism. The deeper our insight into the spiritual blessings which the sacrament seals, the more we shall value the grace which secures them to our infants. Our gratitude will be deeper; our sense of responsibility more solemn; our faith more stirred to effort; our whole life will be holier, as the appointed channel through which all this blessing is to be conveyed to the child. Yes, believing parent! Your life is the means of grace, the medium appointed and consecrated by God, through which the life of the Risen One is to become the life of your child. It is through your life — not your teachings, or your prayers, or your beliefs, for these are but parts of yourself — but through your life, representing the sum of all you are, and of the influences you do exercise upon your child, that God would have him inherit the blessings his baptism into Christ have made his.

What an urgent call for the parent to live truly the life of a baptized one — as one who has been made one plant with Christ in the likeness of His death and resurrection. Let no believing parent say or think that this truth, that this life, is too high for him. If he be a true believer, this Christ, who died but lives again, is his life, his blessedness. He cannot taste the true blessedness of the life of faith, he cannot praise or honor God aright, he cannot abide fully in Christ, but as he accepts Him fully in all He is and gives. Parents I beseech you, make it your firm resolve to educate your children for nothing less than all their baptism offers them. Live to this end yourselves under its full power, as people who have been baptized into the death of Christ, with the flesh crucified, yourselves crucified to the world, made free from sin, bearing daily the cross and the dying of the Lord Jesus. Live as those who in baptism have been raised again by the faith in the working of God who raised Jesus. Let your faith claim all the power of His resurrection life; all that God wrought in Him, He will work in you (Eph. 1: 20, 2: 6; 1 Pet. 1: 21). Let the whole of your education be in this faith in the working of God to make true to your child all He promised in raising Jesus from the dead. Live as one baptized into the death and life of Christ, taking charge of a child who is partaker of the same baptism.

And make that baptism the starting-point of all his education. Lead him to Jesus, to whom he alone belongs. Lead him to the cross, to take it up and bear it in the love of Jesus. Help him, as sin and self come up, as the flesh and the world tempt, to practice the blessed self-denial which Jesus links with the cross. Guide him in that path of bright and loving obedience, where truest happiness is found. Speak to him of Jesus, the Risen One, as a living Friend, as the power of his new life. Long before he can understand the theology of it, let the impressionability of his young heart have been won for Jesus and a life like His, devoted to His service. Pray for grace, that above everything you may be to your dear child the interpreter who teaches him to understand the wonderful baptism with which he has been baptized into Christ, the guide who leads and helps him to the full possession of all it gives.

O my God! with my whole heart I thank You for all the blessing and power that is secured to me by my having been baptized into Christ and into His death. And that my child is partaker of this baptism also. And that You have set me apart as parent so to live as one baptized into Christ’s death, that first my life, and later on my teaching too, may lead my child to know the blessed life in Christ which has been sealed to him.

`Now are your children holy.’ 1Cor. 7: 14.

Let us bless God for this precious sentence. There is not a deeper or more distinctly Divine word in Scripture than holy; in this statement the whole treasure of holiness, with all that revelation teaches us concerning it, is made the heritage of our children. God’s holiness and our children are meant for each other; as parents we are the God ordained links for bringing them into perfect union. If we would do this we must know to understand and apply this precious truth. The revelation of God’s holiness was a very gradual one, because it was the opening up of the mystery of the Holy Trinity. There was first holiness as seen in God, its source and fountain; then in Christ, the Holy One of God, our sanctification; then in the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of holiness in the Church. It is only by gradual steps that we can rise from the lower to the higher use of the word, and enter into the fulness of Divine meaning which the word has as used of our children.

Holy. The word expresses a relation. Whatever was separated unto God and made His property was called holy. `The Lord will show who are His and who is holy: the man whom the Lord shall choose, he is holy.’ Apart from the moral character, even an inanimate object, whatever had been given to God, and taken by Him to be His own, was holy. And so the first and simplest thought our faith must take in and fill with spiritual meaning is this: our children belong to God. The very fact of their being born of believing parents make them His in a very special sense. Just as in olden times the children of the slave were the property of the master as much as the slave himself, so the Lord’s redeemed, who love to call themselves His bond-servants, have no desire to look upon their children in any other light than themselves — wholly and absolutely His. `Now are your children holy.’

Holy. The word suggests a destiny. It is of great importance, as we study the word holy in Scripture, to notice how everything that is called holy had a use and purpose; every holy day and thing, place and person, had its service to fulfil. Let the Christian parent beware of looking upon holiness as a mere means to an end, simply as the way to get safe to heaven. Oh, it is infinitely more. Let him consent to it, that his child is God’s property, to be used in this world only as God directs, to be trained with the one purpose of doing God’s will, and showing forth God’s glory. The more clearly this is apprehended and made the distinct object of the work of prayer and education, the more speedily shall we be led to grasp what the word ‘holy’ contains in its higher meaning, and what the path is to realize the blessing it offers.

Holy. The word is the pledge of a Divine life-power. Though we find that God Himself uses the word holy sometimes of external relation or privilege, and at others of real spiritual blessing, we must remember that the former always had the latter in view as its aim. Let us beware of emptying the word holy of its Divine truth and power. If God calls our children holy because of the covenant in which He has taken them up, it is because they are born, have their life from a believing parent, who is holy in Christ, and therefore are holy too. The child of true believers, having soul and body under the rule and indwelling of the Holy Spirit, inherits from his parents, not only the sinful nature, but habits and tendencies and dispositions which the child of the heathen or the infidel does not share. These are the true seed-germs of holiness, the working of the Holy Spirit from the mother’s womb. Even where it cannot be seen, and is but very feeble, there is a secret heritage of the seed of holiness implanted in the child of the believer. And with this there is given, in the word holy, the promise of the Divine life and power to make to the child a reality and a personal possession what is his in covenant and in the being born of a holy parentage. There is secured to him that Holy Spirit in whom the holiness of God has reached its full manifestation. In promising the Holy Spirit to His disciples, our Lord said He would be a river of living water flowing from them to others. The believer has a power to influence those with whom he comes in contact; his faith is to save his household, since the child born of him inherits a blessing in the very life he receives from one who is sanctified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In the mother’s womb the child can receive the Holy Spirit. Oh, let us be sure of it, when God gives our child the name of holy, there is the beginning and the pledge of a Divine power, even the work of His own Holy Spirit. Let nothing less than this be what our heart reads in God’s words: Your children are holy.

Holy. The word describes a character. God’s holiness is His infinite moral perfection; that He hates and destroys the evil, that He loves and works the good. Holiness is the Divine energy of which perfect righteousness and infinite love are the revelation. It is correspondence with Himself that God seeks and that He gives. `Be ye holy; I am holy; I make holy.’ In calling your children holy God invites you to have them partakers of His holiness; without this, holiness is but a name and a shadow. It is the work of the Christian parent to train his children in such dispositions and habits, such ways of thinking and feeling and acting, as shall be in harmony with the faith, that they are holy in Christ and belong to the Holy Spirit, as shall be a preparation for His dwelling in them and using them as His temple. `Holy in all manner of conversation is what your children are to be; their young child-life separated from the world, its spirit and its service; consecrated to God, His Spirit, and His will.

It is as we begin to understand the word, `Your children are holy,’ clearly, that we shall know to apply it rightly. We shall find it a word of great power in our dealings both with God and with our children. With God it will be the strength of our prayer and faith. We shall feel liberty to claim that we be not sent away with a mere possibility, a promise without fulfilment, a covenant right without a personal experience. No. We may be sure that when our children are called holy, all that is implied in the word holy is meant for them. As we study the wonderful word in the story of Israel, in the character of God, in the person of Jesus, in the work of the Spirit of holiness, we shall find in God’s `Your children are holy’ the assurance that it is all for them. As we plead for the conversion of our children, we shall say with holy boldness, Have not You said they are holy? As we plead still more earnestly that they may not only be saved, but truly and fully sanctified, vessels meet for the Master’s use, we shall most confidently cry, O You who have laid the name of holy on them, it cannot be Your will it should mean anything less than all Your power and love can give. As in its light we confess how little we have realized the holiness of our parentage and the holiness of our children, the blessed heritage of holiness they have in us as believing parents, we shall yield ourselves more than ever to train them as holy to the Lord.

And so the word will exercise its mighty influence in our dealings with our children. We shall think of our home and family as His home, the dwelling-place of His holiness. We shall learn to look upon sin in our children, upon the spirit of the world, or conformity to it, as at utter variance with a child which the Holy God has set apart for holiness. We shall write holiness to the Lord upon our doorposts. We shall realize that the first need of a parent, whose children God calls holy, is to be very holy; that personal holiness is the indispensable condition for educating a holy child. `Your children holy’ will lead us to look to our own position, `Ye are holy in Christ Jesus,’ and to our own example and conduct as the channel through which the knowledge and the love and the power of holiness are to come to them. And as we hear the words we have known only as spoken of Jesus used by God Himself of each child as it is born, `that holy thing which is born of thee, ‘thy holy child,’ we shall realize that nothing but a life in the holiness of God, a life entirely under the leading of the Spirit of holiness, can fit us for watching over and training the children God has given us.

O my God! my meditations on this word of the Holy Spirit have made me feel deeply the need of His Divine light to teach me what it means to You. Lord, show me, I pray, what the thoughts and the purposes of Your heart are when You say to Your believing people, whom You have sanctified in Christ, `Your children are holy.’ Show me, my God, how in this word there is secured to my child all that treasure of sanctification which is prepared in Christ, and which the Spirit of sanctification makes our personal possession.

O blessed God! You are the Thrice Holy; the glory which the seraphim praise and worship without ceasing is the glory of Your holiness; in it all Your attributes have their perfection and their beauty. You have revealed Yourself as the Holy One who makes holy, Your Son as Your Holy One, Your Spirit as the Spirit of holiness. You call Your people Your holy ones, and even of their little ones you say, `Your children are holy.’

O my God! Your words are never like men’s words, empty thoughts; they are full of meaning, of life, and of power. Oh, make these words of Yours quick and powerful in our hearts, that we may understand and rejoice in and hold fast the infinite blessing they bring us. And grant, Lord, that as we love and train, as we pray and believe for, our children, it may all be with this one object as our motive and aim, that we and they may be holy to the Lord, realizing and showing forth the glory of His holiness. Amen.

`Ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath.’ Eph. 6: 4. ‘Fathers provoke not your children, that they be not discouraged.’ Col. 3: 21. ‘Love suffereth long, and is kind; seeketh not her own, is not provoked.’ 1 Cor.. 13: 4, 5. ‘Train the young women to love their children.’ Tit.2: 4.

The apostle had noticed in the houses he visited, how sadly education often suffers from a want of love. And so, in addressing different classes in his general epistles, he speaks especially to fathers, and, on the two occasions in which he names them, repeats the warning to them not to provoke their children to wrath. His words suggest the three thoughts that a child is often very provoking, that a father often allows himself to be provoked, that then the result generally is that he again provokes the child to wrath. Instead of thus, by his reproof, being the help and the strength of his child in seeking what is good, he discourages and hinders him. Paul’s warning opens up to us the whole subject of the difficulty of giving reproof or punishment in the right spirit, of the need of patience and wisdom and self-control, of the secret of a parent’s rule being this, that it is to be a reign of love.

Let us mark first that fathers are here especially addressed. They are expected to take a part in the management of the children. There are many fathers who neglect this, and seek to throw the work entirely on the mother. When returning home from the day’s labor, they do not feel inclined to trouble themselves, and the children are regarded more as a burden and a weariness, than as a charge entrusted by the Lord, to be met in the spirit of love and gladness. God has joined to the weakness and gentleness of the mother the firmness and strength of the father; it is as each takes his share in the work, and becomes the helper of the other, that the Divine blessing may be expected. On this account it is of such great importance that in addition to the daily united devotions at the family altar, there should be set times when father and mother join in reading and conversation and prayer on the training of their children. One half-hour a week set apart for this purpose, if it were only for one year, would bring a rich reward. It would supply the lack of a training-school for parents, and draw attention to many an important lesson which is otherwise not noticed in the presence of work. It would give the opportunity for a mother’s calling for, and receiving a father’s aid and guidance. It would bring the blessing on conjugal and parental love, of which Peter speaks: `Ye husbands, dwell with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor unto the woman, as unto the weaker vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; to the end that your prayers be not hindered.’ Let every father accept his calling to take his part in the training of the children.

‘Ye fathers! provoke not your children unto wrath.’ The occasion of this taking place is ordinarily that the child has first provoked the father. A child is sometimes wayward, often thoughtless, always feeble and ignorant, so that even what was well meant may be the cause of annoyance. It is only when the nature of the child, and especially its weakness and sinfulness, is carefully and lovingly taken into account, that the parent will be able patiently to bear with it and rightly to train it. It is the privilege and honor of the parent to have this immortal spirit, with all its failings and with all the trials of patience it involves, entrusted to his charge, with the view of his being the artificer through whom God is to make of it something of beauty and of glory for Himself. Let parents take into their consideration the weakness and the wilfulness of their children; let them not be surprised or taken unawares by what may be trying to temper and to patience; they will see the need for preparing themselves for their holy work by faith in Him who fits us for every work He gives us to do.

`Ye fathers! provoke not your children to wrath.’ There is much in some children that is provoking, there is much in some fathers that is easily provoked: beware above everything of giving way to such provocation; it has been the ruin of many a child. To educate a child is impossible without self-control. If anywhere, in this that scripture is true, `Ye have need of patience,’ `Let patience have its perfect work.’ The whole life of the Christian is meant by the Father in heaven, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to be one of watchfulness and self-recollection. In home life these graces are especially indispensable. The sudden outbreaks of temper in children, the little vexations arising from their disobedience or neglect or mistakes, their little quarrels and naughtinesses, are all so many occasions on which a father needs the love that is not easily provoked. God meant the rule of the family to be like His own, a reign of law inspired by love.

`Ye fathers! provoke not your children to wrath.’ However provoking the child may have been, however much inclined the father may be to feel provoked, he must see to it that he does not provoke the child to wrath. One provocation calls forth another, an angry father, giving way to his failing of being provoked easily, makes an angry child. There is innate in each human bosom a sense of the dignity of government and the duty of submission to authority. The calm, quiet assertion of authority helps greatly to bring the offender to the acknowledgment of the justice of his punishment. When, instead of trusting to this, the parent gives way to anger and passion in the sharp reproof or the hasty punishment, the child’s passion is roused too, and he is angry and vexed at an infliction of which he does not understand the reason or perhaps the justice. Passion ordinarily incites passion; the parent is the teacher and example of the child appointed of God to meet and conquer outbreaks of his passion by the gentle firmness of love: how sad when the very opposite is the case, and a father’s hasty anger inflames a child’s passion, and he becomes his provocation to wrath!

‘That they be not discouraged.’ In the struggle between good and evil that goes on in the child, there is nothing so much needed as that he should be encouraged to believe that the victory of the good is within his reach, that goodness is possible and pleasant. To inspire a child with a holy confidence in what, by God’s grace and the aid of his parents, he can accomplish, is one of the blessed secrets of success in training. In training a horse the utmost care is taken never to overtax it, or give a load that might lead to failure; at each difficult place you see its master all alert with voice and hand to inspire it with confidence; it must not know that it cannot succeed. That the child may never be discouraged by thinking that its weakness is not taken account of, that its little reasonings are not regarded, that it has not received the pity or the help or the justice it expects, will need a love which children all too little receive, and a thoughtfulness which parents all too little bestow.

‘Ye fathers! provoke not your children to wrath.’ The education of a child is a holier work than many think. It needs above everything self-training. This was one of the objects with which God created the family relation: it is one of its chief blessings. Without his knowing it, your child is God’s schoolmaster to bring you ever nearer to Christ. Not only does the child, in his tenderness and lovingness, call forth the love of your heart; his waywardness and wilfulness call for it still more, as they put it to the test and school it in forbearance and gentleness. Study to have every token of your displeasure, every reproof and every punishment, so marked by love that through it all the child may really be encouraged into goodness.

But it is not by reproof and punishment, however gently and wisely administered, that parents will keep their children from getting provoked or discouraged. This is but the negative side; the positive is of more importance. Prevention is better than cure. Cultivate ever in yourself and the child that state of feeling which takes away the opportunity of its coming into collision with you. Endeavor by your own tranquillity, gentleness, and kindliness to promote the same feelings in the child. Count upon the wonderful ascendency and influence over children that sympathy gives, in both its aspects. Throw yourself in sympathy into their interests, entering into their state of mind and feeling. Expect them — for their nature is as keenly susceptible of sympathy for others as from others — to enter into your spirit and temper, and instinctively to yield themselves to its influence. And as you seek to maintain the rule of love, not the mere love of natural instinct, but of love as a principle of action, earnestly sought in prayer from above, and carefully cultivated in all your family life — you will find how the children will catch its spirit, and become your helpers in making your home the reflection of the life of love in which the Heavenly Father guides and trains His children.

Gracious God and Father! the longer we listen to the teaching of Your Word on our duty as parents, the more deeply we feel the need of a Divine grace for doing that work aright. I come to You with the humble confession of my sin; how often sin in the child has only been met by sin in the parent, to call forth in the child new sin, and to discourage him in the battle with it. And You had meant the parent to be to the child the model of a holy, patient love, uniting and helping its feebleness, and by his example encouraging him into the assurance that he, too, can conquer.

O God! we beseech You to open our eyes that we may know our holy calling. Give us a deep conviction that nothing but Your own Spirit, dwelling in us day by day, can fit us for training sinful beings in a life of holiness; that nothing but the most entire surrender to walk with You, and to be in everything guided and possessed by Your Spirit, can prepare us for the work of parents. O God! we pray especially for a baptism of love, of Your own love. May a holy wisdom and patience in meeting each little outbreak of the evil nature, may the power of a love that enables us to bear and yet to conquer, as well as to inspire our child with confidence in us and the victory of good, be given us. O God! we would train our children after Your mind, and to be a pleasure to You; be Yourself our help. Amen.

`Ye fathers, nurture your children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.’ Eph. 6: 4.

We know of what great importance it is to attend to the distinction between instruction and education, between teaching and training. The former is the communication of knowledge, secular or religious; the latter is the development of the faculties, both intellectual and moral, helping the child really to do and to be what the teaching has set before him. The two words the apostle uses correspond exactly to our expressions: we might translate, ‘Nurture them in the training and teaching of the Lord.’ [Note: It is difficult to understand why the Revised Version should have translated the first of the two words by chastening. The Greek word ‘paideia’ is the exact equivalent of our education, and is only translated chastening where the context evidently requires it as being a part of education.]

Let us first note the spirit which must pervade the upbringing of our children: `Nurture them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord.’ Our children are the Lord’s; their whole education must be animated by this thought; we train them for Him, according to His will and in His spirit: it is the Lord’s own training of which we are to be His ministers to them. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as our Lord and Master, with His personal presence, His love and rule in heart and home, must be our aim; we must educate our children as `unto the Lord.’ That they may know and love Him, that they may be fitted to obey His will and to serve Him, must be what all our education strives after. And it can only be this, as we very earnestly study His will, and the rules He has laid down in His Word for parental duty, as we wait for His Spirit to guide and to sanctify us for our work. Our whole nurture is to be the nurture of the Lord.

In it the two parts God has joined together may not for a moment be separated. In the life of the child its emotional nature, with all its sensitiveness and impressionability, is first developed. For the due regulation of this, the Creator has endowed it with two great powers, that of willing and knowing. Training seeks to influence the will, as the power which really makes a man; teaching supplies the knowing by which the willing is to be guided and strengthened. The nurture of the Lord is to bring up the child that he may be a vessel meet for the Master’s use, with every faculty of spirit, soul, and body prepared for doing His will. The training and teaching must work in harmony for securing this blessed object. All instruction and admonition has the forming of the will, of character as a completely fashioned will, of the perfect man as its purpose.

The word education is so much used of what is merely instruction, that I have used the word discipline to give the idea the apostle intended. The foundation of a useful and happy life will be found in the habit of order and self-control, the ready submission to law and obedience to duty. When not impulse or circumstance, not our likes or dislikes, but the steady purpose and power of knowing and doing right rule the life, one of the chief objects of education has been attained. Discipline uses the means, and exercises the power needed for securing this result. The discipline of the Lord has not only reference to what may be considered more directly religious, but to the child’s whole being, spirit, soul, and body. Whatever contributes to the healthy development of the powers God has bestowed on us, is included in the nurture of the Lord. There are what may be called physical virtues, at the foundation of which is order. `Order is heaven’s first law’ throughout the immeasurable spaces of the universe, and in the minutest atoms that the mind can conceive there reigns a Divine order; everything owns submission to law. How little it avails that a child or a man is converted, if the power of self-control, the power of at once doing what is seen to be the right in its time and place, has not been cultivated. Conversion will not give this: the parent has to prepare the home in which the Spirit of God is to dwell, and to find its servants. The habit of order cultivated in a little child in external things can pass on into his intellectual training, and become a mighty power in his moral and spiritual life. And it leads to that other foundation — virtue, decision of character, firmness of purpose; strength of will. In submitting to order in the external, the child learns that for everything there is an ought and a must, and that his welfare will be found in entering at once and heartily into that ought and what it requires. Let every parent seek, in nurturing a child for the Lord, to discipline into a fixed habit the innate sense of the rightness of order and decision. They will become ruling principles, in the wake of which other natural virtues will easily find their place.

Then come what may be called the legal virtues — those distinctly commanded in God’s law. Such are obedience, truthfulness, justice, and love. Parents cannot too often or too earnestly remind themselves of the power of single acts often repeated to become habits, and the power of habit to aid in giving ascendency to the principles that underlie the acts. Our moral, no less than our bodily powers, are strengthened by exercise. Conscience may in early life be so disciplined as, by the Divine blessing, to become habitually tender and ready to act. The innate sense of right and wrong, the feeling of guilt and shame following on sin, the authority of God’s Word — all these the discipline of a wise training appeals to in nurturing for the Lord.

And then there are the virtues that belong more distinctly to the New Testament, and the great redemption it reveals. These are the faith and love of Jesus, the indwelling and leading of the Holy Spirit, the self-denial and holiness and humility of a Christlike life. All this is not to be only matter of teaching in the faith of the promise of the Spirit, working all unconsciously in the children; they are to be trained into it. To be temples of God through the Holy Spirit, to bear the image and be fit for the service of the Lord Jesus must, from the outset, be the aim of the Divine nurture in which we seek to bring up our children.

For such training to be successful, it is absolutely necessary that there be authority; the nurture must be in the discipline of the Lord. To this end it is not enough that the parent as the superior assert the right God has given him; the authority derived from God must become a personal possession by the influence the parent acquires over the child. The parent must prove himself worthy of his place; his ascendency will depend upon the weight of his moral character. To acquire such influence must be a matter of study and effort and prayer. All who wish to govern children not by force, but by influence, not against their will, but by means of it, not in virtue of a position in which they have been placed, but in the power of a life that proves them worthy of that position, and that secures an instinctive acknowledgment of their authority, must make not only their own duty, but especially the nature and the needs of childhood, their careful study. Only then can the education of our children become, instead of being a series of experiments and failures, that teach us wisdom when it is too late to benefit by them, the wise and well ordered commanding of our household that they may keep the way of the Lord.

Of such influence, in which true authority has its root and strength, the secret is, a life in which we exhibit ourselves what we ask of our children. A life of childlike trust in the Father’s love, of submission to His authority, and surrender to His training, will make itself felt through the home. It will awaken our sympathy for their childlike needs and failings. It will awaken their sympathy with our teachableness of spirit and our quiet restfulness in the Divine rule. And the nurture of our children will be to ourselves and to them truly the Lord’s nurture — God’s nurturing us by means of them, that He may nurture them by means of us.

Blessed God and Father! who has appointed us Your servants to bring up our child in a training and teaching which is to be Your own, we come again with the prayer for wisdom and grace to perform our task aright. We ask of You to show us the difficulty and the sacredness of our task, to show us, too, the nearness and sufficiency of Your help. We want especially to realize that it is as we yield ourselves to Your training and teaching, and walk with You as loving, obedient children, that we shall have power to nurture them aright.

We ask for grace rightly to combine the admonition that points out the way, with the discipline that trains to walk in it. We would form our children’s character to that order and self-restraint, to that submission to law and authority, in which is the secret of happiness.

‘The bishop must be one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; (but if a man knoweth not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the Church of God?) Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling well their children and their own houses.’ 1 Tim. 3: 4, 5, 12.

It is a most suggestive thought that among the qualifications for office-bearers in the primitive Church, bishop, elder, or deacon, in each case the state of their household should have been taken account of, and a failure there should have been considered sufficient to bar them from the office for which personally they otherwise might have appeared fit. It reminds us once again of the closeness of the link between parents and children, and the organic unity of the home as a whole. From the household you can infallibly judge of what the parents are: the parents make it: it is the outgrowth and the expression of their life, the mirror in which, often with startling faithfulness, their hidden failings are revealed.

Some may be inclined to doubt the truth of this statement. They have so often heard, they know, of pious parents whose children have turned out ill. Is all the blame to be laid on the parents? We have no power to change the evil nature; it is grace alone can do it. Is it not going too far to put the blame of unbelieving or unruly children on the parents, and count such a father unfit for holding office in the Church or household of God, because his own household is not what it should be? And yet just this is what the Holy Spirit does. He teaches Paul to connect unbelieving and unruly children with the failure of the home rule, and unfitness for Church rule. He thus stirs us to search out what the secret evil may be by which, in parents who otherwise appear fit to be leaders in the Church, the training of their children is robbed of its power and its promised blessing. We are to seek for causes of failure in the home rule.

The first answer may be suggested to us by the words of Paul, as he argues from failure at home to failure in the Church. We may go a step backward and argue from failure in the family to failure in the person; the wrong in the home reveals something wrong in its head. We have more than once seen that the secret of home rule is self-rule, first being ourselves what we want our children to be. The wonderful power of the will with which man has been endowed was meant to make him in the first place his own master. And yet how many Christian parents there are to whom real self-control in daily life is quite foreign! It is not the thought of God’s will, nor the rule of their own will, that guides and decides their conduct, but in conversation and action, in likes and dislikes, they are led away by the feelings of the moment. Because they trust that they are God’s children, and that Christ’s blood pardons their sins, and that their prayers will be heard, they hope for the salvation of their children. And yet their education is setting up the most effectual barrier against God’s grace. Pleasing themselves, allowing their inclination or temper to be the rule of language and conduct, they give the most effectual contradiction to their profession of being the servants of God’s will. Would that all Christian parents might learn the lesson that a quiet self-recollection and self-control, that a calm stillness of soul that seeks to be guided by God’s Spirit, is one of the first conditions of success in our own spiritual life, and so in the sacred influence we wish to exert on our children. `In quietness and confidence shall be your strength;’ nowhere will the unconscious but strong influence of this restfulness be felt so soon as in family life.

But there may be other causes. A Christian parent may not be wanting in self-control, and yet fail. The reason will very possibly be found in neglect of the duty of ruling. With some this may come from an entire ignorance of the solemn place a parent occupies. They have never thought seriously of the extent to which the souls and wills and characters of the children are in their hands. They have never taken any trouble to think carefully of the work entrusted to them. They may pray earnestly at times that their children may be saved; they know not that it is of more importance to pray daily that they themselves may be fitted to guide their children aright. With others the neglect of the duty rests on wrong principles thoughtlessly adopted. They admire a strong will; in the waywardness or self-assertion of a child’s will they often see nothing but cause of amusement or admiration. They wish to see their child grow up a strong, bold character, able to do and dare; they would not for anything weaken his will. They know not that a wayward will is a curse; and that a will that masters itself to obedience is the truly strong will. No wonder that the children later on should be disobedient or unruly. And then with others the neglect of the duty comes from simple weakness and sloth.

They admit that it is their duty; but it is so hard ; it takes so much time and thought. It is so trying to their love to punish or to thwart the child, and, under cover of the name of tenderheartedness, the authority with which they have been entrusted of God is neglected and abused. Let parents take time and thought to realize: to rule a child is as distinctly God’s command as to love it or to care for it. The interests of parent and child demand it; the time and labor spent in cultivating this grace will be richly rewarded.

But still there are parents in whom neither of the causes of failure mentioned hold good. They do rule themselves, and they do seek to rule their children, and yet have failed. The cause must be sought deeper: the want of the Divine blessing must be sought in the want of true faith and consecration. There are some children easily ruled; there are others of nervous temperament or wayward disposition who appear to defy control. `The things that are impossible with men are possible with God.’ Education is a work in which the parents are meant to be God’s servants, His fellow-workers; but to work really with God means to walk closely with Him. It is to the soul that is wholly given up to Him, and seeks undividedly to do His will, that the power of faith will be given to hold fast the covenant, and to live in the assurance that God Himself will do the work. Let there be but simple, childlike heart-searching, to see if there has not been in our aim with our children desire for worldly honor or position; the spirit of the world is the most secret but most certain hindrance to true faith. Let the surrender of ourselves and our children — not only to God’s mercy, to save, but to God’s will, to rule and use — be complete and unreserved; we shall find God to be our ally, our covenant-helper in training the children; and with Him on our side we must prevail. To have had power with Him in prayer is the sure guarantee of victory with the child.

Parents! the work entrusted to us is holier than we know. The precious instrument, so delicate, so wonderfully made, so marred by sin already, and so exposed to its power, is of such inconceivable worth. To take charge of an immortal soul, to train a will for God and eternity, surely we ought to shrink from it. But we cannot. If we are parents, the duty is laid upon us. But, thank God! sufficient grace is prepared and promised also. If we do but give up our home and our life to God for Him to come in and rule, He will Himself take possession, and by the gentle influence of His Holy Spirit bow their will to Himself. And the discipline which our thus ruling the children brings will be the best preparation for our ruling in God’s house, with that rule of which Jesus speaks: `He that is chief among you, let him be servant of all.’ If, for the sake of serving God in our homes, we deny ourselves to acquire real influence and power to rule with our children, He will count us worthy of influence and power with our fellow-men and in His Church. Faithfulness in the home rule will give power to take care of the Church of God — will be, as it was with Abraham, the secret of admission to the counsel of Him who rules the world, to the power that prevails with God and men.

Adorable Lord God! we worship You as the Ruler of the universe. Righteousness and judgment are the foundation of Your throne. You are gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy. Your kingdom rules over all; and Your rule is everywhere the fountain of all blessing and good.

O Lord! it has pleased You to ordain that in each home on earth Your heavenly rule should have its reflection. You have given to parents power and authority over their children to rule in Your name. You have promised to give them all needful wisdom and strength for maintaining that authority, and ruling their children well.

We have to confess with shame how often this holy trust of ruling in Your name has been neglected and abused. We beseech You to forgive us. We beseech You to deliver us from all that hinders that rule. We desire to take it up as a life-work in Your strength. May a holy self-rule fit us for a happy home rule. We desire to make the work You give us a study and a pleasure; to fit ourselves carefully for doing it well. Be Yourself our Teacher and our Help.

Lord Jesus! we do indeed yield our homes and our children, our lives and all our powers, to be wholly Yours. You are able to keep that which we commit to You. Keep our homes as Your sacred dwelling-place, where we and our children serve You in righteousness and love, in peace and in great joy. Amen.

‘Having been reminded of the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.’ 2 Tim. 1: 5. ‘Abide in the things which thou hast learned, and been assured of; knowing that from a babe thou hast known the sacred writings, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.’ 2 Tim. 3: 14, 15.

If we connect these two passages, we find in them the true relation in which children and Scripture ought to stand to each other. Between the unfeigned faith of the mother and grandmother, and the faith of Timothy, Scripture had been the connecting link. Scripture needs the believing parent as its messenger. The believing parent needs Scripture as the vehicle for the communication of his faith. A parent’s faith teaching the word of faith may count upon the child’s faith as the fruit of his labors.

God has so ordered it that it is mostly through the Holy Spirit dwelling in His saints that the word is brought to sinners in the power of the Spirit. It is one Spirit dwelling in the word and in the child of God; in the combined action of the two the word is made a blessing to others. It is one of the highest honors God has for the believing parent, that He has made him the minister of His holy Word to his children. It is the unfeigned faith of father or mother, a faith which lives on and according to the word, and speaks of it in the power of personal testimony and experience, that will be used of God to awaken a child’s faith. In real living faith there is something contagious; the life of the Spirit breathes in it, and makes its words a blessing. This truth suggests some very precious lessons a parent should seek to learn.

Teach your child to believe the Word of God. Of old God sought above everything to train His saints to be men of faith. There is nothing more pleasing to Him than faith. Faith is the soul’s surrender to God, to hear what He says, to take what He gives, to receive what He works, to be entirely at His disposal. Faith in God begins with faith in His word, and there is no habit a parent can cultivate in a child of deeper importance than that of a trustful acceptance of all that God has said. In an age of doubt and questioning, teach it to accept what it cannot understand, even what appears mysterious and contrary to reason, because God who is wise and great has said it. Teach it to believe in His love, in the gift of His Son, and in the life through Him, as realities which come true to us as our faith simply trusts the word and is assured of what it says. Teach it day by day to look upon every promise, every truth in the word, as the food of faith, meant to make our faith, and through it our life, stronger. Parents! a child is naturally trustful; guide its young trust to that word which never fails. The child wants to trust; the word wants to be trusted; let your unfeigned faith bring them into contact.

To the end teach your child to know the Word of God. Faith depends upon knowledge. Timothy had known the sacred writings as able to make him wise unto salvation. If the grace of God is to save us, it must teach us; it is a wisdom from above; we must love God with the mind as well as the heart. Let the parent seek to give the child a clear and intelligent apprehension of the great truths of salvation God has revealed. He may not entrust this work to school or church; it is astonishing how vague the knowledge thus obtained often is. Let family worship be so ordered as to be really helpful in the knowledge of God’s Word. Try always to make it clear at what stage in the history of the kingdom and in the progress of revelation it was that the word you read was given. Take trouble to lodge in the mind not only the truths and the history of the Bible, but especially to store the memory with some of God’s own words. Be not content with the child’s learning and saying his text at fixed times; it is often forgotten as soon as said. But seek to have some of these words, by frequent repetition, so rooted in the mind that nothing can efface them. Teach the child to know the book itself too; to be at home in it, to feel at home and more at ease in it; to be taught by unfeigned faith thus to know the sacred writings is an inestimable blessing.

Teach your child to love God’s Word. This is more difficult than to teach it to believe and to know it. There is often the assent of faith, and an interest in the knowledge of Scripture, with very little of real love to it. To teach this is no easy task. Its first requisite is, of course, that we love it ourselves. `Oh, how love I Thy law,’ is an expression of piety which many an earnest believer will be afraid to utter. Love and joy ever go together: what I love I rejoice to possess. Reverence and respect for God’s Word, the earnest study of it, and the desire to be guided by it — these are good — but they do not necessarily breathe that bright spirit of delight which says to God, `Oh, how love I Thy law.’ And yet it is love of which a child’s heart is especially susceptible. Childhood is the age of feeling and impression; the child can be won before it can give a reason of its hope. And a parent’s holy, tender love to the Word of God will be the surest means of inspiring the child’s love. Let this be a distinct matter of desire and prayer, and of careful study too, so to guide the child in his dealing with the Bible, that he may not only not dislike it, not only like it for its stories and its study, but truly and heartily love it as the Father’s word. This will indeed be the token of Divine grace, and the preparation for all blessing.

And then, teach your child to obey the Word of God. God connects all believing, knowing, loving, with doing; obedience is God’s test of uprightness and reality. Teach the child to make what the Father has said the standard of conduct. Let him see and hear that you do so. In our ordinary Christianity, children are educated into the belief that God’s commandments are grievous; the idea of obedience to Him, whole-hearted and unceasing obedience, being simply happiness, is never thought of. And yet this is the only religion that really will be mighty to plant itself in the hearts of our children. The Bible must not be as a law continually holding us in check, keeping us from what we would like, and demanding what is difficult. No! with our children we must take up an entirely different position. As the Father’s redeemed ones, the children of His covenant and kingdom, we must say, with the only-begotten Son, `I delight to do thy will, O God; yea, Thy law is within my heart.’ It is His covenant promise to work this in us and our children. If in Christ Jesus we enter into the blessed life of the liberty of God’s children, our children will learn from us how impossible it is to us to read the Father’s Word and not do it. Our study of it with them will all have this as its one purpose: we want to know and do the will of God.

The custom of family worship is to be found in almost every Christian family. Every day a portion of God’s holy Word is read there. But alas! in that reading there is often little power or blessing. Many an earnest Christian parent looks more to his private reading for profit and nourishment. And yet the daily gathering of the family round the Word of God might become such a season of spiritual refreshment and nourishment! If the same care we take to have a properly prepared meal placed on the breakfast table, and each child served with just what he needs, were only taken to see that the children really receive and enjoy the feeding with the Divine Word. Let parents make a study of it to have their family worship so ordered, as indeed to lead the children into the holy place, to be presented before the Lord, to be fed with the bread each one requires, and to receive the Father’s blessing for the day. Let them prepare for reading the Word with the family. Let the reading be as of God’s Word, in His presence, and waiting on His Spirit. Beware of the hurry which just gives time enough for the hasty reading of a chapter. Family worship becomes a dead and deadening form, hardening children into a habit of careless dealing with the Word and with God Himself. A few moments devoted to a quiet, loving, calling of the attention to what God says, and to making the personal application, encouraging the children to take and keep the word, may be the beginning of great blessing.

Parents! God’s Word is your child’s heritage from the Father in heaven. And you are commissioned to lead him into the knowledge and the love and the possession of its treasures. Make it a matter of earnest prayer that you may wisely and rightly do it. Let that word dwell richly in you in all wisdom. In giving His promises, Jesus said, ‘If ye abide in my word; if my words abide in you.’ Let your life be one of unfeigned faith, that lives and delights in doing God’s word, such faith will pass on into your children. The quiet confidence that comes from God’s word is a power that makes itself felt with our children. And if you often feel that you know not how to bring the word aright to them, or see in them what hinders its reception, be still of good cheer, you have God to do the work, to make the word effectual. Pray and believe for the Holy Spirit’s working; He will make the word, which you speak and live in unfeigned faith, the seed of faith to your children also.

Gracious God! we ask You to give us a very deep sense of the blessedness of this part of our work as parents, to bring Your holy Word to them. May the privilege Timothy had be that of our children: from earliest youth to have the unfeigned faith of a loving parent as the interpreter of holy Scripture. May a deep, full, and very joyous faith in Your blessed Word be the power in which all our Scripture teaching comes to them. Give us to see clearly how their hearts are claimed by You, to be filled with Your words, that these may be in them the seeds of all holy thoughts and dispositions.

We ask of You the grace of wisdom, and faith, and patient faithfulness, to bring Your word day by day to our children. May our family worship every day be a holy season of communion with You, the Unseen One, in which we lead our children into Your presence to hear Your voice speak, and to receive Your teaching. O our God, we yield ourselves to the supremacy and the power of Your Holy Word; let it so abide in us, that our life may be the shining forth of its holy light. Let us be so full of faith and love and obedience to the word, that our dear children learn from their youth to love and believe and obey it too.

Father! forgive us that this has been too little so. Will You not by Your mighty power make it so now? Amen.

`Ordain elders, if any be blameless, the husband of one wife, having children that believe, not unruly.’ Tit. 1: 6.

God expects that the children of believers should be believers too. There is nothing so honoring or pleasing to God as that we believe Him; nothing that so opens the way for His blessing and love to flow in and take possession of us, as that we believe Him. And the very object and purpose of God in the institution of the parental covenant is that believing parents should educate believing children. They are the children of the promise; God and His grace are theirs in promise; a promise has no value but as it is believed; parents who truly believe will understand that it is their privilege and their duty to train `children that believe.’

We have seen how, on the day of Pentecost with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, Peter announced that the foundation-principle of God’s covenant with Abraham was in the New Testament to remain unchanged, and children were still to be regarded as the heirs of the promise. Family life, as ordained by God in Paradise, the household, was still to be the channel for the transmission of the blessing of the Spirit. Faith was not to be an individual thing, but to embrace the household, and then from the parent out to pervade it. It is in harmony with this that we so often find in the Acts — that book of the Acts of the Holy Ghost — mention made of the household. ‘Cornelius feared God with all his house.’ `Lydia was baptized, and her household.’ To the jailor of Philippi Paul said, `Believe, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house,’ and `he was baptized, and all his, immediately;’ and `he rejoiced greatly with all his house, having believed in God.’ `Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue at Corinth, believed in the Lord with all his house.’ In the Epistles of Paul we find that he four times uses the expression, `the church in thy house;’ he does not say the church assembling in thy house, but the church which is in thy house, referring evidently to the circle of believers constituting the family. Though in these cases no express mention is made of children, the principle of the organic unity of the family, on which the idea of a household rests, assures us that the children were comprehended in it too. And it is so clear to Paul that believing parents ought to have believing children, that, when such is not the case, he regards it as a matter of blame, as a sure index that there has been something wrong on the part of the parents, that their own faith and life has not been what it should be; they are at once debarred from holding any place of honor or influence in the Church of Christ. When the father, as the ruler of the church in the home, has not trained children that believe, he is unfit for taking care of the house of God. Children that believe are to be looked for from parents whose life is truly that of faith. Let us try and once again take home the lesson God would teach us.

Even children can be believers. Trustfulness, the power of simply believing what is told, of resting on what love has promised, is one of the most beautiful traits of true childlikeness. It is this wonderful power of a child’s heart, of which the parent avails himself every day, and which often fills him with such gladness, that must be guided heavenward, and led to cling to God and His Word, to Jesus and His love. There is nothing more natural to children than to believe; it is through a parent’s faith that the Holy Spirit loves to take possession of the child’s, and makes it the living link to a living Savior. As the child grows, the faith may grow; a deep and hidden root of life that even amid temporary coldness or declension still holds on to the blessed Savior.

God expects our children to grow up believers. We ought to expect it too. It is of the very nature of faith in God that it ever seeks to think as He thinks, to count upon Him for what with man and nature is impossible, to make His promise and His power the measure of its hope. Let us take time to realize that God’s wonderful promise to our children is meant so to take possession of us that it shall fill us with the sense of His holy power waiting to fulfil it, and draw us to live in His presence and in presence of our children as the channels of that power and that blessing. The confidence that our children will grow up true believers — something much higher than the confidence that they will eventually be saved — will exercise its influence on us and on them. On us as a daily call to a life of pure holiness and consecration; on our children in the creation of an atmosphere of faith around them in which they breathe and live. In our homes God expects that there shall be children that believe.

The proof that our children are believers will be their conduct. Paul writes, `elders having children that believe, not unruly.’ Faith is ever perfected by works; like every other function of life, it can grow and become strong only by action. A life of faith is always a life of obedience. And a child’s faith must prove itself in a child’s obedience, that is, obedience to the parents. Children that are allowed to be unruly and disobedient and self-willed will speedily lose their childlike faith. What is said of men, that, having thrust from them a good conscience, they have made shipwreck of the faith, holds good of children too. Faith is surrender. I yield myself entirely to the influence of the news I hear, of the promise I receive, of the person I trust. Faith in Jesus is entire surrender to Him, by Him to be ruled, and influenced, and mastered. Faith in Jesus is the surrender to Him and His will. Faith in Jesus to be saved by Him, is the surrender for Him to let Him save us in the way He has opened up, the way of trusting, loving, holy obedience. Let parents seek to lead the little one’s simple faith in Jesus to this surrender. Let them claim the child’s obedience to themselves as obedience to Jesus. Let them educate the child to obey conscience in Jesus’ name; their home will be the happy proof that believing children are not unruly.

If ours are not children that believe, let us seek the cause with none but ourselves. God’s promise is sure, and His provision is perfect. There is something wrong in our consecration. It may be — alas! how frequently it is so — that the spirit of the world so prevails in heart and home, that while the Sunday talks teach the children faith in Jesus, the weekday life trains them to faith in the world, to a surrender to its spirit and rule. Or it may be that, while we are earnestly engaged in religion and religious work, there is but little of true spirituality, of the joy and the love and the power of holiness which alone make religion a reality. Religion has been an occupation like any other; but the holy presence of Jesus has not been felt by our children. Or even when there has been a striving after this, there may have been failure, in our not devoting ourselves to the holy task of training children; we have entrusted the work to others, and neglected the self-denial and the study needed to fit ourselves for the work of ruling them well, and of guiding them in the ways of the Lord. Let us seek very honestly and very earnestly to discover the reason of failure, to solve the sad enigma: we are believers, we have a faithful God, and yet we have not what he claims, `children that believe, not unruly.’

God calls us to heart-searching, and confession, and return. And even if we have children that believe, but of whom we cannot but confess that their faith is not in such power and devotion as we could wish, let us turn to God with humbling and a new surrender. Our home life needs the power of a true consecration. The warm light of a Savior’s love and the joy of His near presence shining from us, it is this our homes need as the secret of a successful education. Each new step in the path of entire separation to God, and of larger faith in His abiding and keeping presence, must make itself felt in the family. If there are circumstances and influences that appear to make it impossible, let us remember what faith can do: it can bring Almighty God and His power into the scene. It may not obtain at once what it asks. But it can live the life God wants His child to live, it can keep the soul in peace and rest; it can in secret exert its slow but sure influence. It is the faith of an entire surrender that our homes need, and that will transform them into what God would have, the nurseries of believing, obedient children. Both with God and with our children, let us study and remember this well: there is no power so mighty as that of a quiet, restful faith, that knows that God has given what we have asked, that He has taken charge of what we have entrusted to Him, and that in His own hidden, silent ways He is already working out what He has undertaken. Parents who are believers, who believe with their whole heart and strength and life, will have `children that believe, not unruly.’

Blessed Lord God, the God of the families of Israel! we thank You for each message that reminds us of what You would have our children be, as the proof of the reality of our faith in Your Word and our life in Your love. We pray to You, blessed Lord! to imprint it deep in our hearts that in every believing home You do expect and do seek for believing children. Lord! as trees of Your planting, we would yield You the fruit You seek.

When You do not find it, we beseech You to work a deep conviction of the sin that is the cause of the shortcoming. Whether it be unbelief or worldliness, the want of ruling well or the want of living well, reveal, we pray, the sin, that it may be confessed and cast out. Reveal especially how it is chiefly the lack of our undivided consecration to Your will, with its consequent want of a full assurance and experience of Your presence, that is the secret cause of all our failure.

Blessed Lord Jesus! it was Your presence, the tidings of Your being so near and so loving and so mighty to bless, that drew so many parents to trust You when You were on earth. O our Lord! it is Your presence with us which will strengthen our faith and give us children that believe. We do set our homes open to You. Come in and reign. Be our joy and gladness every day. We have yielded ourselves to live each moment under Your rule; we have believed in Your acceptance of our sacrifice to keep us abiding in You; oh, give us the wisdom and sweetness, the faith and the power to be a blessing to our home. Oh, give us children that believe, children whom in the power of faith You can use for Your glory. Amen.