`Take every man a lamb, according to their father’s houses, a lamb for an house. When He seeth the blood, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to enter your houses.’ Exod. 12: 3, 23.

It has often been pointed out that, of all the Old Testament sacrifices, there is none that gives a clearer or richer revelation of the person and work of our Lord than the Passover. It has often, however, escaped observation how the whole institution of the Paschal Lamb aimed at deliverance, not of the individuals, but of families; it dealt not with the persons, but with the families, the houses of God’s people. What else is the meaning of the expression, A lamb for an house? or (as in ver. 21), Take you lambs according to your families? and of the blood sprinkled upon the house? As so it is expressly declared, `When your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel, when He smote the Egyptians and delivered our houses.’ Among the Egyptians it was the first-born in every house who died, as representing the house, as in Israel it was the first-born who through the blood was saved from the impending danger and consecrated for God. All teaching how God, in redeeming His people and revealing the principles on which He is to deal with them, lays this down as a fundamental law in the Passover and the blood-sprinkling: I deal with you, not as individuals, but as families. As I chose and blessed you, as the seed of your father Abraham, so I still bless every household through the believing father, who sprinkles the blood in obedience to My command. The lamb and its blood are the consecration of the dwellings and the family relations of My people. In the hands of the father, God thus places the destiny and the safety of the whole house.

Christ, our Passover, is slain for us. We love to trace how, in every, even to the most minute particular, the foreshadowings of the Paschal Feast were fulfilled in Him. Have we any warrant in God’s Word for excepting this so important feature, and allowing the type to hold good in every respect but this? Is, in this one respect, the Old Testament feast to stand higher than the New, and the blood which then was for the saving of the house here to be only for the individual? and not be sprinkled on the houses too? How the Christian parent might then envy the Jew, who enjoyed the privilege, as he looked at the sprinkled blood, of knowing that he had done it to the saving, not only of himself, but his household too. And the Christian parent would not have the right thus, in definite and assured faith, to claim the blood for his children? God forbid! Christ, the Lamb of God, is still `a lamb for an house’! His blood may still be sprinkled upon the door, that the destroyer enter not in. In the new covenant, and with the precious blood of Christ, the principle still holds good it is the believing father’s right and duty in faith to appropriate the blood for his whole house. His faith has the Divine warrant, and will be rewarded with the Divine blessing.

Let me endeavor henceforth to live in this faith, fully to realize this privilege. As I think of the precious blood, and seek to walk in the nearness to God which it gives, let me claim its cleansing power for my house as well as myself. Let me be assured that my faith as parent has power and does secure a Divine influence. Daily there is the sin of my house defiling and darkening. Even my sin, pardoned though it be, might justly, in its consequences, be visited on my children. The fulness of the application of the blood will correspond to what faith claims. I have in nature transmitted sin and death — through me they inherit it. Thank God, as a father, I may also transmit the grace and blessing of redemption.

Not only my own soul, but my house, can daily be kept under the sprinkling and cleansing of the blood. And each time I enter my door, or think of Satan entering it, in the light of heaven I may see it sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb. Parents and children together stand under the cover and protection of the blood: the Lord is our keeper.

Every year in Israel parents had to renew the sprinkling: the blood of the Lamb has been shed once for all. I have now only each day again to renew the consecration of my house to the Lord in the assurance of faith: the blood saves me and my children. In this faith I may confidently expect that the wondrous redemption of the blood will exercise its full and mighty influence, until all our domestic life and its relations be sanctified, our house be wholly the Lord’s, and each child be consciously and confessedly one of His redeemed.

To this end I must notice carefully how God commanded the parents to teach these things to their children (Exod. 12: 26, 13: 14). `The grace of God that bringeth salvation teacheth us.’ What is secured to the child in redemption must be made his own in free and personal appropriation. And this cannot be without his knowing it. The children were to be taught that they belonged to the redeemed people, that they belonged to the redeeming God. The parent was to act not only as priest, and thus, in a sense, mediator, but also as prophet and teacher. As he had dealt for the child with God in the blood-sprinkling, so he was to deal for God with the child in the instructions he gave him. Let me seek grace and wisdom in the spirit of faith to teach my children what the blood has done for them, to make them know and love the God who accepted them, ere ever they knew Him!

One thing more is deserving of very special note. The believing Israelite had not only every year to sprinkle the door-posts with blood, and so to testify that it was only in the blood that he and his house could stand before God; he had also to write upon these same blood-sprinkled door-posts the words of God’s law (Deut. 6: 7-9). In all the going out and coming in of his children, these words were ever to meet their eye, the freedom from Egypt’s bondage and Egypt’s curse was a freedom to serve God. God wills to be not only trusted but obeyed. It is `unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Christ’ that we have been chosen: the door-posts sprinkled with the blood, and inscribed with the words of the law, remind me of the blessed oneness of faith and obedience, liberty and service. I would in the joy of the great redemption train and educate my children to know, and love, and keep the commands of their God. Day by day, in faith and prayer, in teaching and, living, I would seek to set before them in its harmony the blessedness of a faith that freely accepts all that God gives, with a surrender that gives all He claims.

`A lamb for an house:’ I must pray that God’s Holy Spirit reveal in its full power all the truths that cluster round this blessed word. A father redeemed by the blood; his children through him and with him partaking of the sprinkling; the father, God’s minister every year anew to sprinkle the house; the father, God’s witness and messenger to the children to teach them of this precious blood, and of the God it reveals; the blood-sprinkled door-posts inscribed with the words of God’s law — such is God’s wondrous provision for getting full possession of His people, and making the family the foundation of the kingdom.

Blessed Lord Jesus! the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world, the Son of God, whose blood cleanses from all sin, in humble faith I claim that blood for myself and my children. May my own experience of its ever-cleansing power every day grow fuller and clearer. And may I by Your Holy Spirit realize fully my right to claim it for my house.

O most blessed Savior! may the power of Your blood work in me so mightily, that my faith may in full assurance accept it for each of my children as a present blessing. May we, under the covering of the blood, know ourselves protected from the destroyer.

O most gracious God! whose is this wondrous ordinance of a lamb for an house, I yield myself to You afresh as the minister of Your covenant. Use me, my God, to save my children, to train them for You, and You alone. I would have the door-posts not only sprinkled with the blood, but inscribed with the law. I would have Your service the one thing they grow up for. As You have chosen us, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and blood-sprinkling, may faith in the blood and surrender to Your will be as the two door-posts, between which we daily go in and out. The Lord make it so. Amen.

‘And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say, What mean ye by this service? that ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when He smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses.’ Exod. 12: 26, 27.

The Passover sets the believing parent before us in a twofold aspect. First, as dealing with God on behalf of the children, and bringing down the blessing on them; then as dealing with the children for God, and seeking to lead them up to Him. In the former capacity, he sprinkled the blood of the lamb upon his house, securing God’s protection for the children. In the latter he had to instruct his children, telling them of what God had done, and seeking to lead them to the personal knowledge and acceptance of this God as their God. Those two parts of parental duty are closely and inseparably linked to each other, the first being necessary as the root and origin of the latter. The parent’s work as priest fits him for his work as prophet and teacher. The second is indispensable to the full appropriation of the blessing that the former has secured. It was after having sprinkled the blood for himself, and his child too, that the parent had to instruct him in the meaning of the holy mystery. His interposition with God, his experience of God’s blessing on himself and child, were his own training to fit him for the training of his child. As we keep this in view, we shall recognize the beauty of that institution by which God has chosen and appointed the believing parent the instructor of his children, and realize its extreme fitness as the best means of securing a godly seed for the Lord.

Observe, it is the parent, who has himself already experienced the salvation of God, who is appointed to lead the child to know God. The knowledge of God is no mere matter of the understanding; it is to love Him, to live in Him, to experience the power of His presence and His blessing. It is evident that the man who would teach others to know God must be able to speak by personal experience of Him, must prove by the warmth of love and devotion that he loves this God, and has his life from Him. When God instituted the family as the great instrument of transmitting His fear, He so arranged it as to give it the highest possible efficacy. This consisted in his revealing Himself to each head of a family as the God of his salvation. In the other sacrifices in Israel, the priest sprinkled the blood in the holy places, but in the Passover there was this peculiarity, that each father sprinkled it on his own house. He thereby performed the act of faith by which the destroyer was kept from his house; and when he went forth from Egypt, and undertook the journey to Canaan, he could bear personal witness to God’s faithfulness, and to the efficacy of the atoning blood of the lamb. He could speak as a living witness from personal experience. As a redeemed one he could tell of redemption; he could tell of the Redeemer-God. It is even so now still: personal experience of the power of the blood can alone fit a parent for speaking to his children of God. It is the looking back upon the time when personal deliverance from sin was experienced, and the looking up to a God with whom, in the spirit of adoring gratitude, a personal intercourse is maintained, and the looking forward to a home where the longing spirit knows it will inherit a place prepared by the Father. It is this and this alone that fits a parent to speak aright and in power. It is the parent who has himself experienced redemption who can tell his child in truth of the God of Redemption, who can act in accordance with the injunction (13: 8): And thou shalt show thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me in the day when I came forth out of Egypt.’

And as parents in Israel had every year to renew the remembrance of that deliverance, so now it is the parent who lives in the ever fresh experience of what the powers of redemption are, who can, with ever-deepening earnestness and freshness, speak of the mercy and the truth, as well as of the blessed service, of the God of salvation.

But observe, further, this parent has also been constituted and accepted as God’s appointed minister in the redemption of the child. It is this that gives an increased fitness for his work as instructor of the child. He can not only speak of a salvation he has experienced — urging and inviting the child to come and taste that to which he is as yet a stranger. No; in sprinkling the blood upon the door of his house, he saved his child too from the destroying angel. He was honored to act with God on behalf of the child; what the child could not do, he did for him, and the deed was accepted. The child has initially been made partaker of the blessing of that sprinkling of blood, and has, in growing up, personally to accept what has been secured and sealed to him. And what a mighty vantage ground it gives the believing parent in his labor, when he can thus look upon his child in the light of that great transaction between God and himself, of which that child has been the object! With what confidence it inspires his faith! how his energies will be roused! and what a strong motive in pleading with the child himself! He speaks to him, as no longer a stranger to the covenant of grace, but as a child of the covenant. He points him to a God who began to deal with him in the feebleness of infancy; he can attest to the reality of an engagement entered into between God and himself, and sealed in the sprinkling of blood. He shows him how God dealt with the houses, with the families of Israel; and if not in the way of argument, yet practically, and in the tone of the language which his faith adopts, he lets him feel that he cannot consent to one of his house refusing to acknowledge the God of the house.

And it gives him no less power in pleading with God on behalf of the child. He reminds the great Jehovah of the blood and the oath of the covenant, and claims for his child the blessings of redemption — that just as he is a child of the redeemed people, he may grow up personally to accept and ratify the covenant. Next to his own personal experience of the blessing of salvation, this consciousness of what, as a believing parent, he has been allowed to do, and of his seed having been received with him into covenant, constitutes the fitness of the believing parent for his being the minister of God’s grace to his child.

But there is another thought that brings out still more strikingly the wondrous adaptation of the family constitution for the working out of God’s purposes — this, namely, that it is grounded on the natural relation, sanctifying its affections, and adopting them into the service of redemption. It is not any one redeemed man saying to his fellow-man, Come and see what God has wrought for me. Nor is it any one redeemed man saying to some child to whom he sustains a certain official relation, and on whose behalf he has performed an act of atonement, Come and let me lead you to your God. But it is a father, with his own child. In nature they are one, united by the closest and most wondrous ties. The child has his life from the father. The father looks upon him as part of himself, of his flesh and of his bones; he loves and cherishes him. This love seeks, even in nature, the happiness of the child, and can often make wondrous sacrifices to attain it. And it is this love God lays hold of in the parental covenant, and purifies to be the minister and vehicle of His grace. And with a parent’s love there is a parent’s influence. The weakness of the child renders him dependent, to a wondrous degree, upon the parent’s will. The character of childhood is formed and molded by impressions; unceasing intercourse with the parent can render these impressions deep and permanent. The child’s love to the parent rises and meets the parent’s love, and the spirit of the parent can thus, in addition to the natural influence of birth, in wondrous measure be breathed into the child. Of all this God’s grace seeks to avail itself, and while it is the sole prerogative of the Holy Spirit to renew the soul, and make a child of God, there is nevertheless a need for the means and instrumentalities through which His gracious workings are prepared and applied, are confirmed and established. And of all these instrumentalities, there is none more wondrously devised, or more beautifully adapted to its object, than this of godly parentage. A parent made partaker of God’s love and grace himself, accepted and blessed with the promises of the covenant and the Spirit, as covenanting for his child; and then sent forth, in the power of consecrated parental affection, to make all the influences and intercourse of domestic life the auxiliary to the great work of gaining the child for God, this surely is one of the most wondrous exhibitions of God’s grace upon earth.

O my God! I come to You again with the earnest prayer for Your teaching. You have said, ‘I will be the God of all the families of Israel.’ Open my eyes to see clearly, and my heart to feel deeply, what Your purpose is in this.

Since sin entered and ruined our nature, You would early take possession of the little ones for Yourself. You seek to secure parents with all their love and influence to be Your ministers. You enter into covenant with them, giving them the right to claim the Blood of the Covenant for their children, and in that Blood the promise, `A God to thee and to thy seed.’ And then You send them, as themselves redeemed, as having claimed and accepted redemption for their children, to use their influence for You, and win and train their children for Your love and service.

Lord God! open the eyes of the parents of Your Church to their calling, that they may honor You as the God of their families. And, O Lord my God! bless my own house, and give me grace, as one of Your redeemed ones, to train my children for their God. May the joy of a personal experience of redemption, and the love of the blessed Redeemer, warm my heart, and inspire my words, and light up my life, to testify of You, and train them for You alone. Amen.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Sanctify unto Me all the firstborn. . . . All the firstborn of man among thy sons thou shalt redeem. And it shall be, when thy son asketh thee in time to come, What is this? that thou shalt say unto him, By strength of hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt; and it came to pass, when Pharaoh would hardly let us go, that the Lord slew all the firstborn of Egypt; therefore I sacrifice unto the Lord all that openeth the womb, being males; but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ Exod. 13: 1, 13-15.

`Let My people go that they may serve Me,’ – in these words so often repeated by the Lord in sending Moses to Pharaoh, we see how service is the aim of redemption. God makes His people free from the bondage of Egypt, to translate them into the liberty of His service, the willing, loving, free service of a redeemed people. The deeper God’s people enter into the spirit of redemption, the deeper will be the insight into the blessed unity of liberty and service, of liberty and necessity. No true service of God without liberty; no true liberty without service.

We have seen in the Passover what a permanent place the family and the children take in redemption. No less than their parents were they redeemed to serve; all their training was to be a training to the service of God. When Pharaoh said to Moses after the plague, `Go, serve the Lord your God; but who are they that shall go?’ the answer was very distinct, `We will go with our young and our old, our sons and our daughters.’ It was on this point that the negotiations were broken off. The going of the children was what the king would not consent to: `So be the Lord with you, as I will let you go with your little ones: look to it, for evil is before you’ (Exod. 9: 8-10). And when later on Pharaoh still wanted to keep the property, he felt that this at least must be conceded: `Go ye, serve the Lord; only let your flocks and herds be stayed; let your little ones also go with you’ (Ex. 10: 24). It is the future of the nation that is to be secured for God; a people that is really to serve God must, in the first place, see to the little ones.

After the people had left Egypt, the very first command God gave to Moses was in regard to the firstborn, who were to be separated and sanctified for Him. In each family the firstborn son was counted the chief and the best; the father looked upon him as Jacob said of Reuben: `Thou art my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength.’

His was the birthright and the place of honor in the family. He was the representative and head of all the children. God looked upon Israel as His firstborn among the nations. Because Egypt oppressed him, and would not let him go, God slew his firstborn. And now in commemoration of this, and as a pledge of God’s claim on all the children and the whole people, every firstborn belonged to God, and was set apart as His peculiar property.

And with what object? For none other but His service. This comes out with great distinctness in the exchange that was made, by which the tribe of Levi was taken instead of the firstborn. `The Levites shall go to do the service of the tent, for they are wholly given unto Me from among the children of Israel; instead of all the firstborn of the children of Israel have I taken them to Me; for all the firstborn are Mine’ (Num. 8: 14-19). And in the redemption money, which had to be paid at the birth of each firstborn for his release, the parents had the unceasing reminder that the firstborn belonged to God and His service, and were represented in the Levites.

The principle involved in this is one of the deepest importance. God claims our best children for His own direct and immediate service. The whole people, old and young, were to serve Him, but the firstborn, the very best, were to be entirely set apart for the special maintenance of that service, not only by the part they took in the worship, but by instructing the people in the law of their God. Let us try to take in fully the lessons the Christian Church has to learn from this.

In Israel all the firstborn, and as their representatives, all the children of Levi, a twelfth part of the whole nation, were exclusively claimed by God to be continually at His disposal in the service of His house. And in Israel that service consisted solely in the maintenance of what existed, nothing had to be done for the extension of the kingdom or the propagation of the knowledge of God among the heathen. The Christian Church has now not only to see to it that she maintains her hold on what she once has occupied: her calling in her redemption from sin is distinctly and essentially aggressive, to teach all the nations and seek the extension of the kingdom throughout the whole world. And the question is naturally suggested: If Israel had to set apart one-twelfth of its children for the work of God, what portion should the Christian Church devote to the work committed to her? And what portion has she devoted?

Alas! that the answer to the latter question should be so sad! There is hardly a missionary or philanthropic society engaged in teaching and rescuing the ignorant and the lost, that has not to complain of lack of laborers. The call is being sounded forth louder every year that the doors to the hundreds of millions of heathen are opened wide, and yet how few, how sadly few, is the number of laborers. And why? Simply because Christian parents do not, as a rule, educate their children under the conviction that they are the Lord’s, do not place them at His disposal, do not train them to look upon this as their highest privilege, if they be found worthy to bear the name of Christ among the heathen.

Let us just think a moment what would be thought of the loyalty of Englishmen to their Queen if it were found difficult to find men to form her bodyguard, or accept appointments in her service! Or what of the enthusiasm of an army where the General could never obtain volunteers for a post of danger and of honor! And Jesus Christ, our King, who came to seek and save the lost, has said that these are His guard of honor, and shall have His richest rewards, who forsake all for His and the gospel’s sake. And yet, while in every profession there are complaints of more applicants than openings, the Master has to wait, and His work has to suffer, because His people do not understand that they and their children have been redeemed to serve Him who gave Himself for them.

And what is the cure of this evil? And what can we do, each in our sphere, to wipe out this terrible reproach? What we can do is this: Let us devote every child to God and His service. Let us cease praying that our children may be saved, while we never think of giving them to serve. Let us cease choosing honorable and lucrative professions for our children, with the truth that they can serve God in any calling, turned into an excuse for declining special service. Let us lay each child upon the altar, specially our first-born and our best, and seek this one thing — that they may become worthy and fit to be set apart for the service of the King.

And let the Church learn as part of her preaching of redemption to lift aloud her voice and cry, You are redeemed for service, you and your children. Is not this the reason that so many a parent has prayed for the salvation of his child and been disappointed? the prayer was utterly selfish; it was simply the desire to see the child happy, without any thought of the glory of God, or of consecration to His service. When God established His covenant with Abraham and gave him Isaac, it was to have him at His disposal as the channel of blessing to the world. When God rewarded the faith of Moses’ parents, it was because He wanted a servant by whom He could save Israel. When God redeemed Israel’s firstborn in the night of the Passover, it was to have them for Himself. Oh, Christian parent, when God offers to be what He was to Isaac, and Moses, and Israel’s firstborn, to your children, it is because He wants them, for His service, His blessed service of love and liberty. Oh, say, has He not a right to claim it, and shall He not have it? He gave His Firstborn, His Only-begotten, for you and your children; can anything be too precious for Him? Listen not to the thought that the demand is hard or the sacrifice great. Know that for yourself, as for your children, it is the path of honor and blessing. And let your example teach the Church that there are those who, just because they love their children most intensely, know nothing better for them than to yield them utterly to the will and the work of their God.

O Lord! You are a great and a glorious God, and Your kingdom rules over all. You alone are worthy to be praised; You alone have a right to the love and the worship and the service of all Your creatures. And this too is their blessedness: in heaven above and on earth below, blessed are Your servants who stand around Your throne and do Your will.

O Lord! we do bless You that You ask and accept of our children for Your service. We acknowledge Your claim: let them all be used for Your service and glory. But especially would we offer You the first and the best.

O God! teach us to feel deeply that You have need of them. For the building up of Your temple, in the struggle of Your kingdom with the power of darkness, in the ingathering of Your people from the hundreds of millions of heathen, You have need of our children. We give them to You. We will train them for You. We will wait in prayer and faith, and beseech You to inspire them with a holy enthusiasm for the kingdom and its conquests. We beseech You to fill them and us with love to Jesus and love to souls, that they may serve You as Your Son did, and give their lives to save men.

O Lord God! You have redeemed us and our children by the blood of the Lamb, let our firstborn, let all our children, be holy unto the Lord. Amen.

`The seventh day is a Sabbath unto the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter.’ Ex. 20: 10.

Among the most precious blessings which a child going out into the world from a godly home can take with him, is the habit of reverent observance of the Sabbath. In its separation from evil company, in its leading to God’s house, in the calm and thoughtful quiet it sometimes brings over his spirit, it will, even if he be still a stranger to grace, be a safeguard and a help, a schoolmaster to bring to Christ. If he be a Christian, it will be one of his surest aids in the growth and strengthening of the life of faith. It is a part of a parent’s duty that needs to be studied in earnest prayer, and for the performance of which much wisdom and grace are needed. The Lord, who has enjoined the duty, will not withhold the grace.

Note in the words of the fourth commandment how specially the children are remembered. It is to parents the command is given; it is in the keeping holy of the day by their children, as well as by themselves, that their obedience is to be manifested. ‘Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant:’ it is not so much as a private, nor as a national, but as a family ordinance, that the Sabbath was first of all appointed. `Thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter: just as the terms of the covenant, `a God to thee and to thy seed,’ the words suggest the two thoughts that it is first the parent, and then the child through the parent, with whom God wishes to deal. The parent must first learn to keep the Sabbath day holy himself, then to train his child to keep it holy too.

The parent’s keeping holy the Sabbath precedes the training of the child to do so. Here comes up the principle which lies at the root of all true education: What I am to make my child I must first be myself. Example is more than precept; being more than teaching; what I am and do, more than what I tell him to be or do. The question is often asked how we can teach our children to revere and love the Sabbath, and in answer many lessons of great value have been given. But we cannot too earnestly insist on the truth that the first requirement is that the day should be a holy day to the parents themselves. It is as they serve God upon it in the beauty of holiness, as the spirit of holiness breathes on and from them in the services of the Sabbath, as that day is to them a day not only of strict observance, but of joyful worship, of quickened devotion, of real loving fellowship with God, as the Sabbath is a delight, that the first condition will be fulfilled for teaching their children to love it.

Let Christian parents note this. God means the Sabbath to be to your child what it is to you, not in value of your training and habits, but what it is to your own experience, as a day you really love and rejoice in. Study to this end its wonderful significance and the riches of blessing connected with it.

Look upon it as the day of rest, of entering into God’s own wonderful rest. The rest of God is in a finished work; by faith in that work we enter into that rest, and the great calm, the peace that passes understanding, keeps the heart and mind (Gen. 2: 3; Heb. 4: 3-10).

Look upon it as a holy day, the day God has given as a token and pledge that He who is holy makes us holy too (Ex. 31: 13; Ezek. 20: 12). It is in fellowship with God that we are made holy; let His presence, His love, His joy, be the mark as well as the fruit of keeping it holy.

Look upon it as a day of blessing (Gen. 2: 3). Of the blessing God laid on the day sin robbed us. In the resurrection of Christ the finished work of creation was restored, was finished and perfected in a higher sense. Under the leading of the Holy Spirit, the first day of the week, the day of the Lord Jesus, the Sabbath of the new Life, took the place of the Sabbath of death, when the Lord of the Sabbath was in the tomb. The Sabbath of creation, rendered void by the fall and the law, is now glorified in the Sabbath of redemption. And now all the blessings of the Living Christ, His finished work and resurrection power and eternal rest, and of the Holy Spirit, who descended from Heaven on this new Sabbath, are to be made ours by this day. Oh let it be to you a day of blessing, in the fellowship of the Father’s love, and the Son’s grace, through the Holy Spirit, and you have taken the first and the surest step for its being a blessing and a joy to your son and your daughter too.

And now comes the second lesson. It is not enough that the parent keep holy the Sabbath day; the Lord lays it upon him to secure the child’s doing so too. As parent he is responsible for it, and must make it a matter of distinct effort and prayer. It is not enough that Christian parents seek to keep the day holy: the training of their children to do so is a sacred obligation resting upon them, and requires, just on account of its difficulty, the sacrifice of personal enjoyment, the exercise of thought and wisdom, and the patience of much faith and love.

In seeking to do so, there are two dangers to be avoided. In human nature we find that there are two principles implanted in our hearts to guide us to action — pleasure and duty. The former leads us to seek what is agreeable and for our own interest, and is one of the most powerful motives in all our conduct. When our pleasure, however, is at variance with the interests of others or the will of God, the sense of duty comes in to restrain and regulate the desire for pleasure. The reward of obedience to duty is that in course of time it is no longer a check to pleasure, but becomes itself the highest pleasure. The art of education consists in so bringing pleasure and duty into harmony, that without the sacrifice of either both may be attained.

In training the child to keep holy the Sabbath day, there is a danger of putting either of these principles too exclusively in the foreground. With our Puritan and Covenanting ancestors the former principle was urged, and the only sanction sought for keeping the Sabbath was the law. In our days we are in danger of the opposite extreme. To make the Sabbath interesting to the children, to make them happy on it, if possible to make them love it as a day of enjoyment, is so exclusively the object of attention, that the thought of obligation is almost lost sight of, and the principle almost unconsciously instilled that the day is to be hallowed and loved only as far as it is made interesting and pleasant. Let parents seek grace from Him who, as Divine wisdom says, guides in the midst of the paths of right, to be kept from the right-hand as well as the left-hand error.

Do not hesitate to speak of God’s command and of duty. God trained Israel as a child in the life of law for the life of love in Christ. Education consists, in its first stages, more in training to right habits than inculcating principles: these come later. Be not afraid, in connection with the Lord’s day, of the element of self-denial and quiet self-control which the thought of obedience to God’s will and to your will brings over the child’s spirit. They are part of the foundation of noble character. Tranquillity of mind and serenity of spirit are invaluable blessings; the quiet of the Sabbath helps to foster them. Holiness is much more than separation; it is a positive fellowship and enjoyment of God. But it begins with separation: the putting away of week-day toys and books and companions, the marking off of the day from other days, even in little things, is, under a wise guidance, a preparation for the truer hallowing of it later on.

This on the one side. On the other, exercise a wise and loving thoughtfulness as to the ways in which the day can be made a happy one. In the picture lessons to the younger ones, in the careful selection of suitable and interesting reading for the elder ones, in the merry singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody to the Lord, in the forethought with which possible transgression is guarded, in the tone of gladsome and loving reverence with which the day is spoken of and spent, in the personal intercourse especially given in Bible study and prayer, the believing parent will find the means of leading the child on to call the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord (Isa. 58: 13), and to inherit the blessing promised to those who do so.

Dear Christian parents, how deeply the thought of how we ought to train our children to love the Sabbath reminds us of our shortcomings and our impotence. But let not this discourage us. We have God, the God of the Sabbath, who gave it to us as a token of the covenant He has with us and our children, to sanctify us. We have Himself to teach us and our children to sanctify His day. Let us look to Him to give us grace to feel and show that the Lord’s day is the happiest of the week. In the divided life of the ordinary worldly Christian it cannot be so. God’s commandments cannot be obeyed without a wholehearted surrender to live for Him alone, without a life under the full power of His Holy Spirit. But if God be our chief joy, the desire after His service and love our highest aim, He Himself will sanctify our Sabbaths, our hearts, our homes, our children, by His Holy Presence. And the Sabbaths will be but a part of a life holy to the Lord.

Most Holy God! I thank You for the precious gift of the holy Sabbath day, and the wonderful blessings of which it is the pledge. I hank You above all for its redemption, in the death of Jesus, from the power of sin, and its restoration to us in the power and the joy of His risen life. Oh, grant that each succeeding Sabbath may lead me deeper into Your rest, the rest of God in Christ, and so into the fellowship of Your holiness and Your blessedness. May a daily life that seeks its only joy in Christ, and is wholly yielded to the Spirit, prepare me for keeping the day holy.

Blessed Father! I especially ask for grace to train my children to love and hallow your day. I know it, nothing but the joy of Your presence in my own life can fit me for it. Give me this. And then give me the wisdom, as Your servant, to bring to them the sense of Your Holy Will and Your loving-kindness, in claiming the day for Yourself, and then giving it to them as Your own day, that the fear of grieving You and the joy of pleasing You may each find due place in their hearts. So may the command and the promise, the duty and the pleasure, be one to them, and their delight in Your day indeed meet the promised reward, `Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord.’ Amen.

‘Honor thy father and thy mother; that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’ Ex. 20: 12. `Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.’ Eph. 6: 1. ‘Children, obey your parents in all things: for this is well-pleasing in the Lord.’ Col. 3: 20.

The first four commandments have reference to God, the last five to our neighbor. In between stands the fifth. It is linked to the first four, because to the young child the parent takes the place of God; from him the child must learn to trust and obey his God. And it is the transition to the last five, because the family is the foundation of society, and there the first experience comes of all the greater duties and difficulties of intercourse with men at large. As the training-school for all our intercourse with God and man, this commandment lies at the foundation of all Divine and human law, of all our worship of God, and all our intercourse with man.

Of the ten, this one is especially the children’s commandment. But just on that account, very specially too, the parents’ commandment. A wise ruler makes good subjects; a firm commander, faithful soldiers; it is on the parents’ character that the children’s fulfilment of this precept will depend. And so it leads us to consider what parents must be if they are to succeed in training their children to honor them.

The sentiment of honor, reverence, is one of the noblest and purest our nature is capable of. The power of perceiving what is worthy of honor, the willingness to acknowledge it, the unselfishness that feels it no degradation, but a pleasure, to render it — all this is itself honorable and ennobling; nothing brings more true honor than giving honor to others. This disposition ought to be cultivated most carefully in the child, as an important part of his education. It is one of the chief elements of a noble character, and a preparation for rendering to God the honor due to Him. If the teaching of Scripture to honor God, to honor all men, to honor the widows, to give honor to whom honor is due, is to be obeyed by our children, they must be prepared for it by learning first to honor their parents. If they are to honor God, it must begin by honoring

their parents. If they are, in after life, to do what is so difficult, to honor all men, by recognizing even in the degraded and the lost the worth that belongs to them as created in the image of God, they must be carefully prepared for it in the home-school of family life. It is not only to secure a happy home, and place the intercourse of parent and child on a right footing, but to fit the child for all his future relations to God and his fellow-men, and to lay in him one of the foundation-stones of a noble character and a holy life, that God has placed this commandment the first of those on the second table. Parents may well study how they can train their children to fulfil it.

The child must honor the parent in obedience. Obey your parents is the New Testament version of `Honor thy father and thy mother.’ The importance of this word, obedience, is more than the mind can grasp. God created man, with his wonderful liberty of will, that he might obey Him. Obedience to God was to lead to the enjoyment of God. By disobedience sin entered; in obedience, the twofold obedience, of Christ and to Christ (Heb. 5: 8, 9), salvation comes. And on the parent the sacred charge is laid of training the child to obey, teaching it to link all the memories of happiness and love in home-life with obedience, working the principle into the very life of mind and heart, not so much by instruction or reasoning, as by training and securing the habit of obedience. The child is to be taught to honor the parent. The will of the child, no less than his mind and affections, is given into the parent’s hands to mold and guide. It is in yielding his will to the will of the parent that the child acquires that mastery over it and over himself which will afterwards be its strength and safety, and make it a fit instrument for doing God’s will. Man was created free that he might obey; obedience is the path to liberty.

On this point parents often err; they often say that to develop the will of the child the will must be left free, and the child left to decide for himself. They forget that the will of the child is not free — passion and prejudice, selfishness and ignorance, seek to influence the child in the wrong direction. The superior judgment, the calmer deliberation, the fuller experience of the parent, are to decide for the child whose will has been entrusted to his care.

But are we not in danger of repressing the healthy development of a child’s moral powers by thus demanding implicit submission to our will? By no means. The true liberty of the will consists in our being master of it, and so our own masters. Train a child to master his will in giving it up to his parents’ command, and he acquires the mastery to use when he is free. Yielding to a parent’s control is the path to self-control; and self-control alone is liberty. The child who is taught by a wise parent to honor him and his superior wisdom will acquire, as he gives up his own way, the power over his will, as he never can who is taught to imagine that he need do nothing unless the parent has first convinced him of the propriety of the act, and obtained his consent. The New Testament says very distinctly, ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.’ Not because the child approves or agrees, but because the command is given by a parent: this is the true reason for its being obeyed. In obedience, the parent is to be honored.

In all his disposition and conduct, too, the child is to be trained to honor the parent. Familiarity breeds contempt; in language and carriage and conduct, parents often tolerate an easygoing familiarity, which, however it may be miscalled by the name of love or kindness, destroys those sentiments of respect and reverence in which true love has its strength and its real happiness. Manners are of more importance than many think; the neglect of good manners not only reveals a want in the disposition of those sentiments of respect and courtesy to which life and intercourse owe so much, but it reacts on the heart, and fosters the selfishness and indifference that cares little for others’feelings. Locke has said that next to religion and virtue, manners are the most important thing in education, more so, he thinks, than learning. Let parents remember that in taking trouble to train their children to show them due honor and respect, even in apparently insignificant things, they are forming habits and breathing principles into them which will afterwards repay all their labor. `Him that honoreth Me, I will honor,’ is God’s law, which has its reflection in the life of earth too. None have received higher honor on earth than those who have learnt to honor all men, to honor the poor and needy.

And now, it is the parent who is to cultivate and develop this sentiment in the child. The young child is guided, not by reflection or argument, but by feeling and affection. He cannot yet realize and honor the unseen God. He cannot yet honor all men, the wretched and unworthy, for the ideal, the unseen worth of their creation in God’s image. The child can only honor what he sees to be `worthy of honor.’ And this is the parent’s high calling; always so to speak and act, so to live in the child’s presence, that honor may be spontaneously and unconsciously rendered. This can only be where, in quiet self-recollection and self-control, the parent lives as in God’s fear and presence, and walks worthy of this calling, as one who has been placed in the home, at the head of a family, to be not only its prophet, priest, but king too. Yes, a king receives honor; let the parent as a king reign and rule in love and the fear of God, his honor will be given him.

Above all, let parents remember that honor really comes from God. Let them honor Him in the eyes of their children, and He will honor them there too. Let them beware of this sin, honoring their child more than God; it is the sure way to grief for parents and children together. But from parents, who in everything seek to honor God, children will learn to honor God and them together; the parent who teaches his child to obey the fifth commandment has guided his feet into the way of all God’s commandments. A child’s first virtue is the honoring and obeying his parents.

O my God! I come again to You with the prayer to open my eyes and give me fully to realize the place of the family in the purposes of Your grace, and the parent’s holy calling to train his child for all that You would have him be. I ask of You especially to reveal to me in Your own light the full import of the fifth commandment, that I may teach my child to fulfil it according to Your will. Fill my own soul, I pray You, with such honor and reverence of Your holy majesty, that both I and my child may learn what honor is. Teach me to claim honor of my child with the holy aim of leading him to honor You above all. May honoring his parents and honoring his God work in him the spirit of humility, which will gladly render to all their due. And may, above all, I be kept from the terrible sin of ever honoring my child more than God.

O Lord! I look to You, for grace to secure the keeping of this, the children’s, commandment in my home. Oh! grant that I may always live in it worthy of all honor. And may the holy power of training young souls to keep Your commandments, to honor and serve You, be the fruit of Your own Spirit’s work in me. I ask it, my God, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

`This is the commandment which the Lord your God commanded to teach you, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep all His commandments, which I command thee, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son, all the days of thy life. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ Deut. 6: 1, 2, 5-7.

‘Thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son,’ with these words in the second verse, Moses gave expression to the thought that God’s purpose in giving His commandments to His people was not limited to the individual or to a single generation, but had in view the people, through its whole existence. This purpose of God’s has therefore to be the law of individual duty: each one who received the commandments of God was to strive not only to keep them himself, but to hold himself responsible for their maintenance among his children. `These are the commandments which the Lord commanded to teach you, that thou mightest fear the Lord thy God, to keep his commandments, thou, and thy son, and thy son’s son,’ In the following verses (5, 7) this idea is brought forward more prominently and enlarged upon. In verses 20 and 21 the duty is afresh inculcated of expounding to the children the ground of that wondrous relation in which God’s people stood to Him, and by virtue of which they had been favored with the Divine Law, even the mercy and faithfulness of God that had redeemed them from the land of Egypt. All concentrating in the one important and blessed truth, that the fear and faith of God must be seen in family religion, as domestic piety. The grand means for maintaining and extending the fear of God among His people are the faithful performance of parental duty, in harmony with His purpose that His service and blessing should descend from son to son. The special aspect in which God’s will is here set before us, is parental instruction, and we are taught in the words we meditate on, how hearty, how diligent, how unceasing this ought to be.

Parental instruction must be from the heart. We all know how little influence commands or instructions exercise, when given by a listless or uninterested teacher. It is only the heart that gains the heart, the loving warmth of interest and affection that can waken corresponding emotions in the bosom of the pupil. God would secure all the influence of parental love to gain access for His words and will to the youthful and susceptible hearts of the children of His people. He therefore says, ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and these words shall be in thy heart: and thou shalt teach them to thy children.’ How easy and how blessed the work, so often sighed over, if not neglected, to those who listen to God’s guidance. As is thy duty and thy blessedness, love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. If thou lovest Him, love His words too; let them live in thy heart, let them have a place in thy affections. And, the heart filled with God’s love and God’s words, how easy to have them in thy mouth too, and to teach them to thy children. Let holy love to God and His words mingle with all thy fond and tender love to thy little ones; and it will be a sweet and happy work to win the beloved on earth, to the Father beloved in heaven. As often as the work of instructing the children upon earth threatens to become a burden or a weariness, you may be sure it is a token of something wrong within: the love to God in heaven, or the delight in His word, has been fading. As often as you seek for fresh vigor to perform thy work hopefully and joyfully, you have but to turn to the words, that reveal the secret of a godly education, and you will experience that, as for your children so for yourself, there is an unspeakable blessing in the wisdom that has so inseparably connected the heart’s secret love with the mouth’s spoken words: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart. And these words shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them to thy children.’ Oh! that we might remember that this is the Divinely appointed ministry and means for the salvation of our children — parental love elevated and strengthened by the love of God, guided and inspired by His own Holy Word.

The parental instruction must likewise be diligent and earnest: `Thou shalt diligently teach them unto thy children,’ or, as it reads in the original, ‘Thou shalt sharpen them unto thy children.’ The word is used of the sharpening of weapons, as arrows and spears, to make them penetrate deep. It must be no cold declaration of His will that we communicate, no mere intellectual knowledge. It profits little that the dart be cast or the arrow shot from the bow, unless they have been sharpened — to pierce the heart of the enemy. And so the godly parent must use diligence to consider how he can best find access to the heart for the words that he speaks. He does this by carefully considering how he can best gain both the child’s understanding and affections: by seeking to avail himself of the best opportunities for securing his interest; by studying the art of speaking in the spirit of love, and not without the preparation of prayer. He does it by striving to make his whole life an attractive example of what he has taught, because there is nothing that does so drive home the word of instruction that has touched the heart, as the confirmation of a consistent and holy life. Above all, he seeks to do it by waiting for that Holy Spirit who alone can make the word sharp as a two-edged sword, but with whose aid he may experience how true it is: `The words of the wise are as nails fastened by the masters of assemblies, which only are given from one shepherd.’ God’s promise is sure: from earnest, painstaking, and prayerful effort the blessing of the Spirit will not be withheld.

And to this end the parental instruction must be persevering and continuous. ‘Thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and thou shalt talk of them, when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ The entrance of Divine truth into the mind and heart, the formation of habit and the training of character, these are not attained by sudden and isolated efforts, but by regular and unceasing repetition. This is the law of all growth in nature, and of this law God seeks to make use in the kingdom of grace, in dependence upon and subservient to the power of the Holy Spirit. This is the principle that is so beautifully applied by Moses to parental duty. The instruction he had enjoined was not to be by means of set times, and stated formal lectures; the whole life with all its duties has to be interwoven with the lessons of God’s presence and God’s service. With a heart full of God’s love and God’s word, the ordinary avocations of daily life were to be no hindrance, but helps to lead the youthful hearts heavenwards. The children were to feel that it was no matter that could be done for the day, in the moments of morning or evening prayer; the continued and spontaneous outburstings of the heart in the language of the lips was to prove that it was a life and a joy, that God’s presence and love were a reality and a delight. Sitting in the home, or walking by the way — now in quiet rest, then in the labors and duties of the way — now with the Bible of God’s grace, and then with the books of God’s glory in nature — home retirement and wayside intercourse were equally to afford opportunity and material for recognizing the goodness and rejoicing in the service of the ever-present One. Lying down and rising up — from early morning and its freshness to evening weariness and its repose — the whole of the day and the whole of life was to be the occasion of an uninterrupted fellowship with the Holy One, and of the pointing of the little ones to the unseen and ever near Father in heaven. And lest the objection should be made that all the speaking would but weary and estrange: an objection often made with terrible truth against mere speaking in religion, while heart and life deny it; an objection that is as often, alas! the excuse for a heart that knows no fervent love: lest this objection should be made, we point once more to what is the source and center and secret of all: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart. And the words shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.’ Such a wholehearted love and such a loving piety! Ah, how would it receive wisdom from on high, and be guided by Divine love to know when and how to speak: how it would influence children’s hearts with the flame of its own zeal, and find a willing and a loving ear when others could only weary! And how surely it would.

`As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ Josh. 24: 15.

In God’s dealings with Noah and Abraham, with Israel in the Passover and at Mount Sinai, we have repeatedly noticed the deep meaning of the united mention of father and children in His commands and promises. `Thou and thy house,’ `thou and thy seed,’ `ye and your children,’ `thou and thy son.’ Such is ever the language of the Covenant God. In the words of Joshua we have the response from earth, `as for me and my house.’ The principle of the Divine dealing is accepted; the parent boldly vouches for his family as well as himself; the covenant engagement of the Father in heaven is met by the covenant obligation of the father on earth. Joshua is to us here the very model of a godly parent, and in him we can see what parental religion ought to be.

Let it be a personal religion. `As for me and my house’: he began with himself. We cannot too strongly press the truth that for a godly education the first and the most essential requisite is personal consecration. It is good to reflect on our responsibility, to study our duties and the best way of fulfilling them, to speak with our children, and to pray much for them but all these may be called accessories. The first thing on the part of the parent is a life devoted to God and His service. It is this that creates the spiritual atmosphere the children are to breathe. It is this that gives our performance of duty and our dealings with our children their spiritual influence. It is this that gives our praying and our working its value with God. `As for me’ there must be no hesitation or half-heartedness in the consciousness or the confession of devotion to God’s service. As often as the prayer for God’s blessing on the children comes up, it must be in the spirit of David: ‘Thou, Lord God! knowest Thy servant. Therefore now let it please Thee to bless the house of Thy servant.’ With God and men, in the home and out of it, as well as in the hearts of parents themselves, it must be a settled thing: `As for me, I will serve the Lord.’

But let yours be as distinctly a family religion. Take your stand for all who belong to you: `As for me, and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ There are pious parents who do not understand that this is their duty and their privilege. They know not what God has put in their power. They imagine they honor God by thinking that the religion of their children is dependent on God’s will apart from their instrumentality. They are so occupied, either with the engagements of their calling in this life, or it may even be with religious work, that they cannot find the time for speaking out and acting out the grand decision: ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ Or, perhaps, the father leaves the religion of the children to the care of the mother, and the mother thinks that the father as head is more responsible; they hesitate or neglect to come to a clear and definite understanding, and the religious education of the children does not take the prominent place it ought to in the intercourse of parents with each other. Let each believing parent take Joshua’s words, first, in the depth of his own soul, then in fellowship with partner and children. The more we speak it out in prayer and conversation — our house is and must be holy to the Lord, our children must be trained first of all for God and His service — the more mightily will the power of the principle assert itself, and help us so to guide the house, that it too serves the Lord.

The words of Joshua teach us more. Let yours, like his, be a practical religion, `we will serve the Lord.’ There are many parents with whom the whole of religion consists in salvation, not in service. They pray most earnestly that all their children may be saved; they comfort themselves, if they see them spend their lives in the service of the world, that they will yet be brought in before they die. No wonder that their education for this life has been a failure: they never understood the truth, and never trained their children under its guiding influence, that salvation is subservient to service, that to train for God’s service secures the fullest salvation. Did we not hear God say of Abraham, `I have known him, to the end he may command his children and household after him, that they may keep the way of the Lord; to the end that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He hath spoken of him?’ Do we not remember in connection with Israel’s deliverance from Egypt the words of God, `Let My people go that they may serve Me;’ and of Pharaoh, `Go ye, serve the Lord; let your little ones also go with you.’ Has not the Holy Ghost spoken, `How much more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience to serve the living God’? All redemption is for service. God wills not that He should be worshiped without being served. The glory of heaven will be that `His servants shall serve Him.’ Let our lives and our homes be consecrated to serving God: let obedience to His will, the carrying out of His commands, the doing His work, devotion to the interests of His kingdom, give family life its nobility.

And then let yours be a confessed religion. It was in presence of tens of thousands of the children of Israel, with the first symptoms of the falling away that came after his death already beginning to show themselves, that Joshua witnessed this good confession, ‘Choose ye this day whom ye will serve; as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ His was not to be the religion of the nation or the religion of neighbors: all might reject God, and he be left alone; still the Lord Jehovah would be his God. As with Abraham leaving his father’s house, and Israel leaving Egypt, his too was to be a religion of decision and confession; a coming out and being separate — one of a peculiar people unto the Lord. This is the religion we want in our family life, where not the example or authority of pious people, not inclination or pleasure, but God’s own holy and blessed will, revealed in the leading of the Holy Spirit, is sought after as the law of the house. Oh! how often one hears it said: It can be no harm to dance, or to play cards, there are so many religious people, there are such earnest ministers, in whose houses it is done. How often parents, where early married life was marked by decision and earnestness, have afterwards become conscious of declension and coldness, because they gave in to the desire to gratify their children or their friends. Oh! let us believe that though at first sight it may appear hard to be peculiar, yet, if we trust God for His guidance, and yield ourselves to His personal friendship and love to walk with Him, the blessing of separation will be unspeakable to ourselves and our children too.

If this page be read by a father or a mother, or by father and mother together, who are conscious that their own and their house’s service of God has not been as marked and clear as God and they would have it, let me venture a word of advice. Speak with each other of it. Say it out what you have often felt, but each has kept to himself, that it is your united desire to live as entirely for God as grace can enable you to do. If your children are old enough, gather them too, and ask if they will not join in the holy covenant, `We will serve the Lord.’ Let that covenant from time to time be renewed in a distinct act of consecration, that the conviction may be confirmed: We do want to be a holy family, a house where God does dwell and is well pleased. Ours must be a home wholly consecrated to God. And be not afraid that strength will not be given to keep the vow. It is not we who have to do the work, and then bring it to God. It is with the Father in heaven, calling and helping and tenderly working both to will and to do in us, that we have to work. We may count upon Him as the inspirer, to accept and confirm, and Himself carry out the purpose of our heart, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’

O Lord my God! I thank You for what I have seen this day, Your servant Joshua, the leader of Your people Israel into Canaan, in his faithfulness to You as father in his own home. I humbly ask You to give me grace to say as distinctly and as publicly as he did, `As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’

Lord! may mine be a personal religion. O my Father! let Your love to me, and my love to You, be its inspiration and its joy. May my children see that it is with my whole heart I serve You, that it has become a delight and my very nature.

And may mine be a family religion, exercising its influence on my home, gaining and training all to walk with me. Lord! remove every inconsistency and all weakness that might hinder anyone from being wholly Yours. May mine be a truly consecrated home.

May mine, too, be a practical religion, serving You day and night. Let the knowing and the doing of God’s will, the working for His kingdom, the seeking His glory, be the one desire of our hearts.

May thus our home be a blessing to others in encouraging them to take a stand for You. Lord God! let Your Spirit work mightily in the homes of Your people, that everywhere this confession may be heard ringing out: `As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ Amen.

‘And Manoah said, Now let thy words come to pass: how shall we order the child? and what shall we do unto him?’ Judg. 13: 12.

An angel of the Lord had appeared to Manoah’s wife, to predict the birth of a child, who should be a Nazarite unto God from his birth, and a deliverer of God’s people. The first feeling of Manoah, on receiving the tidings from his wife, was that, to train such a God-given child for God’s service, God-given grace would be needed; he therefore entreated the Lord, and said, `O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send come again to us, and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall be born.’ And when in answer to his prayer the angel came again, his one petition was, `How shall we order the child? and what shall we do unto him?’ Let us consider the prayer, the answer, and the attendant blessings.

1. Mark the deep sense of responsibility and unfitness for the holy work of training a child as a Nazarite unto God. The angel had already given Manoah’s wife the needful instruction; but Manoah is so deeply impressed with the holiness of their calling as parents of this child, that he must needs ask for the angel to come again and teach them. What a contrast to the thoughtless self-confidence with which, in these gospel days, many Christian parents undertake the training of their children. How little effort is made to realize the importance and solemnity of the work! How little real prayer for the preparation of the Spirit to fit them for it! How little true surrender to a life for God as the only fitness for training a child for God! What would be thought on earth of a man offering to manage a bank or to navigate an ocean steamer who had no training to fit him for either? And what must be said of the presumption that feels no fear in taking charge of an immortal spirit of such priceless value, and undertakes to guide it through the temptations and dangers of life? Would God that all Christian parents might learn from Manoah to feel and confess their ignorance, and, like him, to set themselves at once to seek and obtain the needed grace.

We note, further, how Manoah’s sense of need at once found expression in prayer. He believed in God as the living God, as the Hearer of prayer. He believed that where God gave a charge or a work, He would give the grace to do it right; that where God gave a child to be trained for His service, He would give the wisdom needed to do so aright. Instead of the sense of unfitness and feebleness depressing him, or the sense of his obligation setting him to work in his own strength, he simply prayed. Prayer to him was the solution of difficulties, the supply of need, the source of wisdom and strength. Let Christian parents learn from him. Each child is a gift of God as truly as Manoah’s, and has as much as his to be trained for God and His service. Like him, we may count most confidently on the Father, who has entrusted the child to us, to give the grace to train. Let us only pray, pray believingly, pray without ceasing, at each step of our work; we may depend upon it, God hears prayer, and no prayer more surely than of a parent seeking wisdom to train his child.

There is one thing more we must specially observe in regard to Manoah’s prayer: it was after his wife had told him of the injunctions the angel had given that he thus asked for guidance. He longed to hear them himself, to have full certainty and perfect clearness. As parents, we have in God’s Word plain and full directions as to the training of our children; our own experience or that of others may have supplied us with much of great value to aid us in our task; all this does not diminish, it only increases the need of prayer. With each child, and each of its separate needs, we always need renewed wisdom direct from above; daily renewed prayer is the secret of training our children for God.

2. And now the answer. Let us learn the lesson Manoah’s story teaches here: God loves to answer a parent’s cry. The angel had nothing new to communicate above what he had previously said to the woman; and yet God sent him, because He would not leave His child, who seeks to know His will fully, in the dark. The fact of the angel having come once was what had encouraged Manoah to hope he might come a second time. Just they who have already had communications with God, and have had Divine teaching about their children, will be those who desire more, and pray for it most earnestly.

The answer to Manoah’s prayer contained no new revelation; it simply pointed back to the instruction previously given: `Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware; all that I commanded her let her observe.’ In answer to our prayer, it may be that no new truth will be revealed, perhaps even no new thought impressed. But the answer to the prayer may be something better. As the Holy Spirit leads us back to what the Lord has already spoken, to study more carefully and adopt more unreservedly the principles laid down in Holy Scripture for the training of our children, we shall realize as never before how our children are the Lord’s, and must be kept holy for Him; how parents are God’s ministers, in whose holy life the children are to be blessed.

It is this last thought that comes out with special clearness. What were the commandments that had been given, and were now renewed? The angel had only spoken of the life of the mother before the birth of the child: the Nazarite child must have a Nazarite mother. The giving up of the fruit of the vine, the sacrifice of the stimulus and excitement and enjoyment of the world and the flesh, the not eating any unclean thing, separation to special purity and holiness — this was God’s secret of parental duty. Education consists not so much in anything we do or say, but most of all in what we are; and that not only when our children are of an age to see and judge, but long before, even before their birth. In that holy time of mystery, when mother and child are still one, and influences from a mother’s spirit pass into the child, God says, `Of all that I said unto the woman let her beware; all that I commanded her let her observe.’ It is a life of moderation and self-denial that does not ask how far and deep it may go into the world to enjoy all that is not absolutely forbidden, but that willingly gives up whatever is not helpful to entire consecration and fellowship with God; it is a life of purity and obedience that is the preparation for a mother’s and a father’s work. God’s answer to the prayer, `How shall we order the child?’ is, As you live, you train: live a Nazarite, holy to the Lord, and your child will be a Nazarite unto God, a deliverer of His people Israel.

3. The blessing that attended Manoah’s prayer was something more than the answer. There was the blessed revelation of God Himself, and the wonderful knitting together of the hearts of the parents. Ere he left them, the angel of the Lord so revealed himself that Manoah felt, We have seen God. When he asked the angel’s name, he might not know it; his name was WONDERFUL. And the angel did wondrously. And this is still the name of the parent’s God, WONDERFUL. It is as with Manoah we pray, and wait for, and accept His Divine teaching, and then ask Him to wait that we may bring Him an offering, that our eyes will be opened to see wondrous things, and to fall down and worship Him. Wonderful in His love, wonderful in His ways, wonderful in His work, wonderful in what He does for us as parents, and wonderful in what He does through us for our children; oh, let us worship the Lord, the parent’s God, whose name is WONDERFUL! And let our prayer, like Manoah’s, end in praise and worship, in faith and truth.

And how rich was the blessing this revelation brought to the praying couple. What a picture the chapter gives us of the way in which father and mother are lovingly to help each other in all that concerns their children. Manoah’s wife gets the message from the angel; immediately she tells her husband. He prays at once for more light and fuller teaching. The angel comes again to her; she runs to tell Manoah, who follows her. He hears again what his wife had been told. When the sacrifice was offered, and the angel did wondrously, Manoah and his wife looked on together, and together fell on their faces to the ground. And when Manoah was afraid, and spoke, `We shall surely die because we have seen God,’ she comforted him, and strengthened his faith.

Blessed fellowship of love and faith, of prayer and worship between husband and wife, to which the coming and the training of a child can lead! Oh, it is not only parents who are to be a blessing to their children; no, but children to their parents too. As they talk together of God’s promises and His commands, as each tells the other what has been revealed to him, as they unite in seeking to know and carry out God’s will, as they now pray in presence of each other, and then fall down in worship before Him whose name is WONDERFUL, as they unburden their fears, and encourage each other to trust and hope, they experience that the home school is as much for training parents themselves as their children, and that there is nothing that opens the fountains of Divine love and of each other’s love more than the prayerful desire to know how to order the children God has given them for His service and glory.

Blessed Lord! as those whom You have joined together to train children for Your holy service, we bow in united worship before You. Make us by Your Holy Spirit to be so of one heart and mind, that all You reveal to the one may at once be witnessed to the other. Grant that in our conversations and our prayers, in our weakness and fear, in our faith and our worship, we may feel what blessing and help there is in Your having sent us two and two to each little flock of children to be tended.

Lord God! we come to You now for wisdom for each child You have given us. Of each one we would say, What shall be the ordering of the child, and what shall we do unto him? Open our eyes to see the treasures of wisdom in Your Holy Word, in promise and instruction for parents and children. Especially reveal Yourself to us, we beseech You, as the God of the covenant and the promise, the parent’s God, whose name is WONDERFUL. Teach us in holy fear and reverence, in childlike trust and. joy, in purity of life and separation from the world, to walk before You, and so to train children that are Nazarites, holy to the Lord, prepared to fight for the kingdom, and to be the deliverers of the oppressed. Amen.

`For this child I prayed; and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him: therefore I also have granted him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he is granted to the Lord.’ 1Sam. 1: 27, 28.

The intercourse between the believing parent and the Lord in reference to his child has been set before us under different aspects. In Samuel’s story we have a new and very beautiful expression of the relation. Hannah has received a child from the Lord in answer to her prayer; the love and joy of her heart can find no better way of expressing themselves than in her giving her child to the Lord again, to be the Lord’s as long as he lives. In very deed just the thought that comes up into the heart of many a Christian mother as she looks on her first-born little one; a thought that has only to be considered carefully to open up to us some of the most precious lessons of parental faith and duty. Whether we think of God, of our child, of ourselves, there is every reason to say, ‘As long as he liveth he is given to the Lord.’

Or does not, so the mother speaks, the child belong to God? Was it not to bear His own image, as His servant, for His own glory, that He created man, that my child, too, has been born? God looks upon him as His; he has only been lent and entrusted to me to train. It is indeed not mine but the Lord’s. And because I am naturally so inclined to forget this, to love and treat the child as if it were altogether mine, I count it such a precious privilege, in a distinct act of surrender, to give it to the Lord for all the days of its life.

And God has not only a right to the child, but He needs him. The work He has to do upon earth is so great, and He has so arranged for each his work, that He would not miss one single one of His people’s children. I have so often heard or read of a mother joyfully sacrificing an only son, or all her sons, for her king or country; and shall I not count it an honor to give to my King the child which is His, and which He has lent me, with the privilege of loving and training and enjoying it? Do I not love Him, and have I not often asked what I can render to Him for His love to me? And shall I not delight to give what is my most precious possession upon earth to be His? Yea, to Him who gave His Son for me, to Him alone, all I am and have belongs; my child too I have given to the Lord as long as he shall live.

But it’s not only for God’s sake; for my child’s sake too I give it to the Lord. The more I love it, the more heartily I give it away to God. Nowhere can it be safe or happy but with Him. I do indeed love my precious little one, and yet how little I can do for it! I know it is born in sin, and has inherited from me an evil nature, which no care or love of mine can overcome. If I give it to God I know that He accepts of it, and takes it for His own, to make it His own. He will make it one with His beloved Son, cleansing it in the precious blood, and, in a second birth by His Spirit, giving it a new and holy nature. He, the great God, will adopt my child as His, and make it His here, taking it up to His own home through eternity. He will use me as His minister, giving me all the wisdom I need to train my child worthily as His. Oh, ask me not why I give my child to God! It is because I love it. Who would not give their child to such a God, for such blessings?

And for my own sake, too, I give it to the Lord, for — and this is so wonderful — the child I give to God becomes doubly my own. In the consciousness of the wonderful partnership between God and me, I feel that the child I give to God, and He then holds for me and yet gives back, I can love with an intenser and a holier love. I then possess it without the fear of sinning in loving it as my own, without the fear of ever losing it. Even if death were to come and take it from me here, I would know that it was still mine in the Father’s home, only taken from me for a time to serve in the King’s own palace. God gave it me; I gave it back to Him. God gave it once again to me; and once again I gave it back to Him; giving my child has become the link of a most blessed friendship and intercourse between God and me.

And if He leaves it with me on earth, having given it to Him and knowing that it is His gives the confidence that all the grace and wisdom I need for training it will be given. I need have no care; my child is now the Lord’s: will He not provide for all His child needs? If the parent would know to love and enjoy and train his child aright, let him give the child to God.

Such are some of the blessed grounds on which a parent gives his child to God. Let us now consider how this consecration of the child is to be maintained and carried out in education.

Let the parent use it as a plea with God in prayer. The grace promised for training a child, though most certain, is not given at once, but just as the grace for our own personal life, day by day. In the education of our children difficulties will often arise, in which it is as if God’s help does not come. Then is the time for prayer and faith. The power of sin may manifest itself in the child; in his natural character there may at times be more to waken fear than hope. Our own ignorance, or unfaithfulness, or feebleness may often make us fear that, though God be faithful, we may be the cause of our child’s not growing up the Lord’s. At such times, as at all times, God must be our refuge. Let us then maintain our consecration of the child, and plead it: we did give it to the Lord; we abide by it; we refuse to take it back because either we or the child are guilty; we plead for grace for the child that has been given by us and accepted by God. The more we do this, it will become in our souls a settled thing, definitely and finally settled, that what we gave God took, that it isHis now, and that we can leave it with Him. Such faith will give rest, and bring a sure blessing.

Let us use it as a plea with our child too. Let him, even if we do not often say so in words, feel that it is implied in all our intercourse with him, that he has been given away to God. Let him know that this is the reason we cannot give way to his will, or to allow sin in him — we have a charge from God to keep him for Him. Let him mark, in our holy gentleness and firmness, that this is not a profession, but a principle that really animates us. Let him realize it so that it gradually becomes a motive with himself; he has been given to God, and accepted by Him; how should he disobey or grieve Him? Let not our words, but the whole spirit of our life and prayer and education, make the child feel, I am the Lord’s.

Let us use it as a plea with ourselves, a motive to the faithful discharge of our duties. The pressing avocations of life, the spirit of the world all around us, the little help we receive from the Church in regard to the consecration of our children and a really consecrated education, makeseven godly parents grow unwatchful or negligent. And a really consecrated education needs a high tone of devotion in daily life, and that without ceasing. Let us from time to time look at our children in the light of this great transaction with God — I have given my child to the Lord — to stir ourselves to diligence, to faith, and to prayer. Let us very specially act under the influence of this motive as we think of the profession we educate our child for. God needs servants for His temple; let us ask Him what the place is He has for each child in His kingdom. If such a spirit animated each parent who has given his child to God, surely a far larger number of young Christians would grow up to work for God. If all the children professedly consecrated to God were really brought up as such, if we had consecrated parents as Hannah, and a consecrated education as Samuel’s, we should have no lack of men to stand up and take their place in the service of God’s temple. May God by His Holy Spirit teach us the full meaning and power of the words we use! I have given my child to be the Lord’s as long as he lives.

O Lord my God! hear, I pray You, a mother’s prayer, as I come to You with the child You have given me. O my God! I have heard that You do allow the mother to give her child back again to You, and that, having accepted and sealed it for Your own, You do entrust it to her again. O my Father! it is now Yours — and mine! My soul bows in the dust at the thought of this inexpressible privilege, this joint ownership in my child between God and me. I look to You for the grace to enable me to keep this treasure, to be given back to You with usury.

Teach me, I pray You, to love it with a holy love, and to train it for the service of Your temple. Teach me to speak to it of You and Your love so that its heart may early be won for You. May my whole life be to it an inspiration, inviting and helping to what is pure and lovely, to what is holy and well pleasing to You. And do You, of Your great goodness, cause my child early to hear the voice that called Samuel, and in childlike simplicity and reverence to answer, Speak, Lord, Your servant hears.

O Lord! You will not despise a mother’s prayer. You accept my surrender. By Your blessing we shall be a consecrated mother and a consecrated child. Amen.

`Thou honourest thy sons above Me; them that honour Me I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.’ 1 Sam. 2: 29, 30. `I will judge his house for ever, for the iniquity which he knoweth; because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not.’ 1Sam. 3: 19.

Some men are born to rule; it costs them no trouble, it is their very nature; they often do it unconsciously. Others there are to whom it never comes natural; they either shrink from it, or, even if they attempt it, utterly fail. They appear to be wanting in the gifts that fit them for the work; it is always a struggle and an effort. In ordinary life men can choose, or are chosen for, the situations they have to fill as rulers or commanders. In family life we see a strange and very solemn spectacle: every parent has to rule, whether he be fit for it or not. Nor does the fact of his unfitness take away his responsibility; the terrible consequences of his failure to rule are still visited upon himself and his children. The picture of feeble old Eli, faithful to God’s cause and ready to die for the ark of God, but unfaithful to his duty as parent, and unable to restrain his sons, suggests to us the very needful inquiry as to the causes, the consequences, and the cure of parental weakness.

1. We have spoken of natural incapacity for ruling as one cause. But this is never so absolute that determined effort could not to some extent remedy it, much less that the grace of God could not change it. We must therefore look for other causes. And of these the chief is the want of self-discipline. A Christian may not ask what is easy or natural, what he likes or what appears possible. His one question must be, What is duty? what has God commanded? There is wonderful strengthening, even for the weakest character, in giving itself up to the Divine ‘ought’ and ‘must’ of God’s will. The fear of grieving the Father, the desire of pleasing Him, the assurance of His strength to aid our weakness — such thoughts awaken and fortify the energies of the soul. The will wakes up, and nothing is so invigorating as the hearty effort to obey. It is because the Christian parent too little realizes, and is too little taught by the Church, that ruling his home well is a simple matter of duty, a command that must be obeyed, that so many children are ruined by parental weakness. Not to restrain the child is to dishonor God by honoring the child more than God, because the duty God has imposed is made to give way to the child’s will.

Closely connected with this is the good-natured weakness, misnamed kindness, which cannot bear ever to reprove, to thwart, or to punish a child. It is nothing but a form of sloth: it cannot take the trouble to rule and guide its feelings by God’s Word; it refuses the pain which punishing causes the parent. Alas! it knows not how it chooses the greater pain of seeing the child grow up unrestrained. No grace of the Christian life is obtained without sacrifice; this very high grace of influencing and forming other souls for God needs special self-sacrifice. Like every difficult work, it needs purpose, attention, and perseverance.

But the chief cause of parental weakness will be found deeper still — the want of a life of true devotion to God Himself. God is the great Ruler and Educator; the powers that be, the parents’ powers, too, are ordained of God; he who does not live under command to God in his own life has not the secret of authority and command over others. It is the fear of God that is the beginning of wisdom, of wisdom for the work of ruling too; it is the failure in personal godliness that is the root of parental failure.

2. And now the consequences of such parental weakness. There is one element in the law of consequences under which we live that makes it specially solemn and terrible. It is this, that ordinarily they are not experienced until it is too late to redress them. Our actions are seeds; no one who looks at the little seed could ever imagine what a great tree, what noble or what bitter fruit, could come from it. Consequences, as seen in those around us, somehow hardly affect us; self-interest flatters itself with the pleasing hope that, in our case at least, the results will not be so disastrous. Let me plead with parents, when conscience or experience tells them that they too have been guilty of consulting the will of their children more than the honor of God, to look at the picture of Eli and his home under God’s judgment. Let them ponder carefully what God says. Let them remember that throughout the universe there is no well-being but in harmony with the law of our being. In earth and heaven, in nature and grace, in the individual, the family, and the Church, obedience to the law under which God constituted a creature is the only possible path to happiness. To disobey that law is to court misery. And if the parents, destined of God to bear in the home the likeness of His own Fatherly rule, from ignorance or sloth give way to weakness, they must expect the natural results. It may not always become manifest in the same degree or with equal speed, but in the loss of power to their child’s character, in the loss of peace and happiness, in many cases in the loss of the soul forever, they must reap what they sow. God appointed parental rule in the family as the symbol of His own authority, in which parents and children alike are to honor Him; to dishonor Him is to lose His favor and blessing.

3. The cure of such weakness. In speaking of the causes, we have already indicated some of the remedies. The first one is this: the determined purpose, by God’s grace, to do God’s will. My duty is never measured by what I feel it within my power to do, but by what God’s grace makes possible for me. And I never can know fully how much grace can enable me to do, until I begin. It is only little by little that the evil habit will be conquered. But to him that has, more shall be given. Let the weak parent accept it as a God-imposed duty: he must rule his children. Let him remember that not to rule and restrain his children means that both parent and child dishonor God by not doing His will. Let him yield himself to the God of grace, with the purpose to do His will, however impossible it appear; the surrender will be accepted, and the grace not withheld. Step by step, amidst many a failure, the honest effort to do God’s will cannot remain without its reward.

Next to this, let the parent who has failed, study some of the simplest laws in the art of ruling. It is often owing to the entire ignorance and neglect of these that failure comes. Ruling, like any other art we are ignorant of, must be learnt. Some of these rules, as often given, are as follows: Do not give too many commands at once; begin if need be with only one. If you secure obedience to one, your own and the child’s consciousness of your power to rule is established. Do not command what you cannot enforce, or what the child has not the power to obey. Begin and prove your authority when it is easy for you to secure obedience and the child to render it; in all learning we proceed from the easy to the less easy. Let the command be given in quiet, deliberate tones, with full self-control; hasty, ill-regulated injunctions lead to disobedience. Self-rule is the secret of all rule; as you honor the law yourself in self-command, others learn to honor it too.

Above all, let the Christian parent who would rule well, remember God. He is God’s minister, doing God’s work. God loves the children, and wants them trained for Himself. He is your covenant-God; depend upon Him to be your help and strength. It is God who, through you, will rule your home. Yield yourself to Him. Pray not only for help, but believe most certainly it is given. Believe not only, but act in the assurance that it is given, and is beginning, little by little, to work in you. Say to your Father that you desire to do your duty at any risk, and to honor Him with your children. And, depend upon it, in the spirit of a quiet, restful assurance, that here, too, God’s strength will work in your weakness.

O my God! with fear and trembling would I bow before You, the righteous God, who will not give Your honor to another, nor suffer sin, even in Your servants, to go unpunished. Impress deeply upon my heart, O Lord, the solemn lessons You do teach Your Church by the terrible sight of Your judgment on the house of Eli Your servant.

Not to rule and restrain our children, to give them their own way, is to honor them more than You. Ere we think it, weakness becomes wickedness, in ourselves and our children too, You have made every parent after Your image, a king in his home, that he may rule his home well, and command his children in the way in the Lord. On his exercise of authority, and their rendering of obedience, You have made Your blessing dependent.

O God! have mercy upon us. Let the thought of Your command to rule our home, of Your judgment on disobedience, of Your promised grace to those who give themselves to obey, of Your blessing on a home ordered in Your fear, stir us with our whole heart to fulfil our holy calling in Your fear. And let us, above all, believe that as we and our children in this fulfil Your will, we are in the path of true blessing for this life and the life to come. Amen.