`And all wept and bewailed her. But Jesus said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth.’ Luke 8: 52.

In God’s great school of tribulation there are many classes. In the department where God trains parents, there is one room which all greatly fear to enter. Many, as they are led into it, are seen struggling and murmuring. As its darkness closes in over them, they almost refuse to believe that God is love. Many pass through it, and come out of it, with hardly aught of the Divine comfort or holiness the chastisement was meant to bring, because they knew not why they were there, and were not silent to wait for the teaching and the blessing Jesus gives. Others, again, who entered trembling, can testify that the chamber of death — for of this we speak — was to them the gate of heaven; it was the death of a little one that first led them truly to know Jesus. As truly as to Jairus with his dead daughter, the child’s death was the parent’s life.

Let us see how Jesus meets the sorrowing parent in the chamber of death. The first thing He asks is silence and solitude. Jesus comes to the house, and finds `the crowd making a great tumult.’ At once He puts out the crowd, and goes in alone, with the parents and the three disciples. One of the things that most effectually hinders the blessing of affliction is that it is too much spent in the relationships with men, and comfort sought in their sympathy. One of God’s great objects in chastisement is, by clouding the light and the brightness of visible things, to draw the soul to Himself and the Unseen. `My soul is silent unto God;’ `I will hear what God the Lord will speak:’ such is the disposition God would fain have in those whom He visits. He has lessons, often difficult lessons, to teach the parents whose little one death has taken away; it is only when there is the teachableness that really looks to God Himself, and waits on Him, that the trial becomes fruitful in blessing.

What the lessons are in the dying chamber of a child it is not difficult to say. The parent is led to ask, Have I loved my child in the Lord, or looked upon it and treated it too much as my own possession? Has the spirit of my life and my home been truly an educating of my children for heaven and its holiness? Is there not worldliness, selfishness, sinfulness, of which this affliction must remind me? Has it indeed been, in all I seek for my family, `the kingdom first’? Affliction never can profit without heart-searching; and heart-searching is impossible except in the holy stillness of soul that is found in separation from man and meeting with God. Oh, let parents beware, in their time of trial, of the dissipation that comes from too much seeing of friends, from seeking and finding comfort in their company. God wants to see us alone; without this He cannot bless or comfort us. Jesus waits to reveal Himself in the power of His great salvation as the Surety of the parental covenant too — the Redeemer in whom the parent will find all the grace and blessing the covenant God has promised; but He cannot do it except the crowd is put out. He takes His three disciples with Him, that all His servants may learn in their ministry to remind us that by the bedside of a dying or a dead child Jesus wants to be alone with the parents. Even His ministers are only to come in as they come with Him, and point to Him.

And now that He is alone with the parents, now comes the comforting. `Weep not,’ He says. Jesus does not condemn weeping. He wept Himself; weeping ever touched His heart. And yet He says, `Weep not.’ `Woman, why weepest thou?’ was His very first resurrection word. It is as the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, leads His redeemed, that all tears are wiped away. Jesus came to dry our tears. He says, `Weep not.’ Weeping is often self-indulgence, a nursing of our grief, the fruit of being too absorbed in ourselves, the object we mourn, or the suffering we endure. Weeping often hinders the voice of God being heard, hinders altogether the blessing the affliction was meant to bring. We are only occupied with what we suffer, and God would have us think of the cause of the suffering, the sin with which we have made Him suffer. By taking away a child, God meant to take us away from ourselves, and to make room in the heart for Himself. Weeping often only fills us with ourselves. God would have us in the affliction learn to bear, and love, and worship His will. Weeping is often the homage, yea, the adoration, of our own will.

Beloved mourner! hear the voice of Jesus say, `Weep not.’ He does not say it without a reason. It is not enough that the tumult of the crowd outside is put away, and that there is silence in the room; the tumult of thought and feeling must be hushed too, within the soul there must be silence. At the bidding of Jesus the gush of tears must be restrained, and the heart must turn to Him, to ask who this is who thus, with authority, bids us cease our weeping, and what He has to say to justify His injunction. Obedience to the command is the path to the comfort He brings.

And what is the comfort Jesus gives? He leads from the visible to the invisible; where we only see death, He speaks of life; He comes to rouse us to faith, and to it He reveals Himself as the Living and Lifegiving One. `Weep not: she is not dead, but sleepeth.’ With these words Jesus draws near to the lifeless form of each little one over whom a mother’s bursting heart is weeping, to remind her that death has been conquered,and that the loved one is not dead, in the terrible meaning which sin gave that word, but truly sleeps, in the deep and blessed sense which that word now has in His mouth.

Your little one is not dead. Judge not by sight. There is a better life than the life of this earth — the eternal life in which God dwells. In that eternal life there is a sleep provided for those who are in Christ Jesus, the blessed waiting time till He comes to gather all His own. As the life itself, and the glory in which it shall be fully manifested, is something that has not entered the heart to conceive, so this sleep, too, is something that passes knowledge. We only know for certain that it is a most blessed rest, rest in the bosom of Jesus. And Jesus asks if this is no comfort, to know that your little one, whom with yourself He took into His covenant before it could know Him, or your child, grown up and trained in the faith of the covenant, is now resting with Him. He took it that He might draw you heavenward. He took it that He might empty your heart, to make more room for Himself. He took it that you might be drawn to Him in your need, and be prepared for receiving the new revelation He has to give of His power, of His love, of Himself as your life.

It is Jesus Himself who comes to you to speak of all this. As in the Old Testament it was the God of the covenant who came to one believing parent after another with His promise of what their children should be; so in the New it is Jesus, the Surety of the children, in whom the parent will find the grace for all he needs to train a seed for God. Jesus said, `Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.’ In the incarnation of Jesus all that God of old had promised of blessing to parents and children is now fulfilled. If we but learn to know Jesus aright, to believe on Him fully, to live in the faith of Him, our home and family life will be holy to the Lord. No sacrifice is too great, if we only learn to know Jesus aright. It was in the chamber where Jairus’ daughter lay dead that her parents learnt to know Jesus.

Weeping parents! this is God’s one purpose and desire, this is God’s one great thought of blessing and comfort: in His Son Christ Jesus He has come near to bless and take possession of you. Let this your time of affliction not pass without a hitherto unknown experience of what Jesus is as the parents’ Friend, their Teacher, Comforter, and Sanctifier. And so the loss you have sustained will be restored tenfold in the blessing it is made to yourself and the children still left you. Or even if it were the only one, in the power and blessing which this new knowledge of Jesus, the Living One, the parent’s and the children’s Friend, will enable you to bring to others, you will yet be led to confess how that death has become your greatest gain. The presence and the power and the love of Jesus can more than compensate for the absence and the loss of the child.

Blessed Lord! in this my hour of deep sorrow I come to You, my Savior and the Savior of my little one. Condescend, I beseech you, to come in with me, my Lord, to the chamber of death, where Your weeping child waits for You. Oh, come in and be Yourself my Comforter and my Teacher. Put out, I pray You, the tumult of the crowd, all the sad thoughts and uncontrolled feelings that keep me from hearing Your voice. Speak Yourself; say to the storm, Be still! and let Your presence be the great calm. O my Savior! speak: I desire to hear.

Speak, Lord, if it pleases You, of Your holy will, and Your right to do with Your own even what pleases You, and teach me to say, `Thy will be done.’ Speak, as You see it is needful, of my sin and wandering from You, of my love of the creature, of my lack of love to You and delight in Your fellowship, and make me see how this chastisement of Your love was what I needed to make me partaker of Your holiness. Speak, Lord! and teach me.

Speak, Lord! and comfort Your child. Reveal Yourself to me as the Resurrection and the Life, the Shepherd who has taken His lamb into His bosom. Reveal Yourself as my Shepherd! who will see to it that the blessing of the affliction is secured, by coming nearer to me with Your abiding presence. Reveal Yourself as from henceforth more than ever the house-Friend, making Yourself at home with us, to sanctify our family life more than ever into the blessed experience of Your care for the homes of Your people. Come in, Lord Jesus! come in to me in the chamber of death, and, as You have taken my child to Yourself, take me and my beloved home, and make us entirely Yours. Amen.

`There was carried out one that was dead, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And when the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.’ Luke 7: 12, 13.

Any attempt to set forth the teaching of Scripture on the education of children would certainly be incomplete, if it had nothing to say on what always is so sad and difficult, and yet often has been so blessed and successful a work — a widow’s training of her orphan children. There are few sights which so claim and attract sympathy, both human and Divine. It is indeed one of the sorest trials that can befall a woman. The husband for whom she left her father’s home, on whom she counted, and leant as her guide and guardian, in whom her life and her love found their joy, to whom she looked as her help and strength in the training of her children — her husband is taken from her, and she is left alone and desolate. The stricken heart seeks in vain for the object of its affection; in temporal prospects there is perhaps nothing to which to cling, and the sight of the beloved little ones still left her, instead of being a treasure to which her love now clings, at first only gives new bitterness to the trial. It is not only the heart of man that is touched by this thought: the heart of God too. Throughout Scripture, from the repeated commands in the law of Moses down to James’s testimony that pure religion teaches us to visit `the fatherless and widows’ in their affliction, God never forgets the widow. `A Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows, is God in His holy habitation;’ `He upholdeth the fatherless and the widow;’ `Leave thy fatherless children, I will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in me’ (Ps. 68: 5, 146: 9; Jer. 49: 11): Such words reveal to us the very heart of God.

And now, when Jesus came, how could He fail of showing in this too, that He was the Father’s image, that God was in Christ. It is as if the picture of the Master’s life would be incomplete without the story of the widow of Nain. In what He said of the widow’s mite, we see how His eye watches over a widow’s poverty, and values, what men would call, her little deed of love. At Nain we see Him as the Comforter of widowed motherhood. Let us go to Nain, the sacred spot to which so many a widow has resorted to find in Jesus her Friend and Lord, to learn what Jesus, the Friend and Savior of our children, has to say to a widow weeping over her child. Not only when the tears are those of sorrow over one taken away, but those of anxious love or sad distress at the sight of those still left behind, Jesus meets us with His, Weep not.

Weep not, widowed mother, as you look at your little ones, and the heart almost breaks at the thought of their being fatherless. Weep not, but come, follow me, as we seek Him who has been anointed `to comfort all that mourn.’ Weep not, as you tremble to think of how you are to train and educate them all alone in your feebleness. Let your soul for a little be silent unto Him who came from heaven to say to the widow, `As one whom his mother comforteth, will thy God comfort thee;’ weep not.

Weep not! And may the wounded heart not have at least the comfort that the unrestrained flow of its tears does often bring? Just think for a little moment. As little as the widow of Nain knew why Jesus spoke thus, do you know it yet. But let it be enough that Jesus says it. All the other parents, whose children Jesus blessed, came and asked for help; He speaks to the widow without being asked. Her widowhood is her sufficient plea: `When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, ‘Weep not.’ Jesus is looking on you; do not let your tears keep you from looking and listening to Him. Be sure that if it could have been, He would have spared you that cup; that now that it has come, He is looking on you in compassion, waiting to comfort and to bless; in the tenderest love, but with the voice of authority Jesus says, Weep not.

But Jesus was not one who comforts only with words; His words were always followed by deeds.

And so, if you will look up and see, He will show you what He will do. To the widowed mother at Nain He gave back the dead son, who had been to her in the place of a husband. And His believing people know that, though it may last a little while, the departed ones who have died in the Lord will be given back to them, in glory and forever. Look up to Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, weeping widow! and believe; them which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him. The resurrection, the meeting again, the being ever with the Lord, are realities, as real; more real, more mighty than the separation and the sorrow; look up in faith, it is Jesus who speaks, Weep not.

But oh, the desolation that meantime fills the heart and the sense of utter feebleness and unfitness to fulfil my charge with these boys, these girls, who still live, and who do so need a father’s wise, firm, loving rule. Dear mother! when Jesus says, Weep not, He never speaks without doing; He gives what can dry the tears. What think you? if Jesus were to take the place of the father to these children, would not this make you smile and sing even through the tears. If, as a living reality, Jesus would undertake the responsibility of educating those children, of being your Adviser and your Strength and your assurance of success in your work, would this not be enough to stay those tears? And just this is what He comes to do. What God spoke of old, `Leave thy orphans to me, and let thy widows trust in me;’ `The Lord upholdeth the fatherless and the widow,’ Jesus comes in human tenderness, and in the nearness of the Holy Spirit, to fulfil. You may trust your fatherless children to Him; He will preserve them; He will, in a Divine fulness and power of meaning, be the father of the fatherless.

It may be that a widowed mother reads these words, to whom they have but little meaning. Though a Christian, she has so little yet learned to live by faith, to count the unseen things of faith surer and clearer than the things of sight, that the promise appears all vague and distant. She hardly dares hope that it ever will become a reality, that she may be quite sure that Jesus will do it for her. She does not feel as if she is good or holy or believing enough, that her children should receive such a wonderfully special and Divine guidance.

My sister! would you learn what Jesus would have of you, that you may with confidence depend upon your children being preserved and blessed by Him, and your tears pass away in the sunlight of His love and care, come and listen. Of a widow He asks but one thing — ‘Let thy widows trust in me:’ `She that is a widow indeed trusteth in God, and continueth in supplication and prayer night and day.’ Trust me! this was what He claimed from the widow of Nain; this is what He asks of you. Trust Jesus! this is the message I bring you this day in your weeping, anxious widowhood. Trust Jesus! trust Him for yourself. Let each thought of your departed one lead you to say, I have Jesus with me — I will trust Him. Let the consciousness of sin and shortcoming, of unfitness for your mother’s work, awaken the prayer, Jesus! I will trust You, to make me what I should be. Trust Him with your children, with their temporal and their eternal interests. Only remember, the life of trust just needs a life of undivided, of simple, childlike surrender. Be wholly His, and He will prove Himself wholly yours. Tarry in prayer and supplication, in the silent, restful committal of every care and fear to Him. Really trust Him; in every prayer make this the chief thing. I have now entrusted my need to Him, I trust Him with it; I am confident He is mighty and faithful to keep that which I have committed unto Him. Trust Him wholly; they who wholly trust Him, find Him wholly true.

And if ever the double trial of the widow of Nain should be yours, and you have to mourn the loss not only of a husband, but an only son, oh, remember that there is still Jesus, the Comforter of the widow doubly desolate! This will be the time in which you will find Him become doubly precious, and you will have grace to say, My flesh and my heart fail; but God, but Jesus, is the strength of my heart, and my portion forever.

Blessed Lord Jesus! how shall I praise You for that thoughtful love which would not give us the record of Your life without the story of the widow of Nain. Blessed be Your name for the revelation of the special place the widow has in Your heart, and the tenderness of that compassion which drew near to her before ever she knew that she might look to You! Lord Jesus! for every widowed mother we now pray to You. Teach her to come to You with her fatherless children. We bless You that there are thousands of widowed mothers who have proved how wonderfully You can bless the feeble, and how richly You have blessed their children.

Teach the widow, we pray You, to put her trust in God and in You. You are able and You are willing to do what man dare not expect, what man counts impossible, if we honor You by trusting Your love. O Savior! help the feeble faith of every widow. Let her desolation and her sorrow and her feebleness compel her now wholly to cast herself with her children on You, to depend upon You alone. Draw Yourself near, O You compassionate One, and reveal Yourself. Speak into the depths of the sorrowing, anxious heart Your word of comfort: Weep not! Oh, let Your widowed child hear You speaking, see You come to take charge, and provide, and care for the education of her children. Teach her that her one work is to trust You, in separation from the world, in holy devotedness to You, to trust You for a more than human, a Divine guidance and blessing on her children. Let her continue in prayer and supplication, in daily communion with You the Unseen One, the portion of her children. Let her then fully know how truly You are the widow’s Friend, the Savior and the Friend of her children. Amen.

‘There was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum. He went unto Jesus, and besought Him that He would come down and heal his son; for he was at the point of death.’ John 4: 46, 47.

Here is an experience that almost every parent passes through. In the wonderful training of the parent through the child, God uses a child’s sickness as one of His special means of blessing. And in the parent’s training of the child, the sickroom has often been the place when the parent first fully found his way to the child’s heart, to guide it to Jesus and the distinct confession of faith in Him. Let us prepare ourselves for the children’s sickrooms by the lessons the beautiful story of the nobleman of Capernaum teaches us as to how sickness is to be met, to be healed, to be blessed.

How is sickness to be met? God’s great gift to sinful men is Jesus; in His Son He meets our every need. And the one great thing God asks of in us, as the spirit in which we are to meet Him in Christ, is, faith — the trustful surrender to let this blessed Jesus be to us all that the Father would have Him be. And because He has been given to us, not only as individuals, but as parents, for us to accept and to use on behalf of our children, until we can lead them to accept Him for themselves, the one thing that God asks of the parent is, faith — trust in Jesus. As faith in God was the one thing by which the saints of old pleased God, and did all that was pleasing to Him, and to which God therefore sought to train them, so faith in His Son is the one supreme grace by which the Christian parent can please God, and obtain His blessings on his children. And all God’s leadings and dealings have this one object and purpose, to make us strong in faith, giving glory to God.

When God allows sickness to come upon the child of one of His believing people, perhaps still young or an infant, and the parents’ hearts are agonized by the sight of its pain or the fear of losing it, the question comes with terrible force, Why God permits all this suffering? The answer Scripture gives is, for the trial and so for the purifying and the strengthening of faith. God’s one purpose with parent and child is to exercise and increase faith in them. By faith they become capable of receiving the revelation of God’s glory, and showing it forth again; by faith God can dwell in them, and work through them. God’s one desire is that they should more fully believe in His Son; and our one desire should be to meet the sickness by faith in Jesus.

This is the one great lesson the story of the nobleman teaches us — the growth and increase of faith in the dealing with Christ. It begins as a general faith in what he has heard of Christ’s compassion and power; this brings him into contact with Christ. He believes in Jesus as a healer. It becomes a distinct faith in the promise he received of healing: `the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him.’ He believes in Jesus as the Healer of his child. And then the faith in Jesus the Healer is perfected in the faith in Him as Savior and Lord: `himself believed and his whole house.’ This is God’s one purpose with sickness; let it be ours too. Let the chastisement discover to us our unbelief, and that fleshly and worldly spirit, that unholy life, in which unbelief has its root and its strength. Let us look from the hand that holds the rod to the face of Him whose is the hand; to see that face in truth makes trust easy and real.

How the sickness is to be healed? This is the second question our story suggests. The answer it gives is very simple: By the power of Jesus. In Matthew Christ’s healing work is spoken of as the natural result of His atoning work of which Isaiah had spoken (Isa. 53; Matt. 8) as a bearing of our sickness. He took upon Him our human nature in the flesh, and, having redeemed it, lifted it into the glory of the eternal life in heaven. When on earth, He delighted in healing the sick, as something His loving heart could do for them even when He could not save their souls. In His Word He left among the heritage of the exceeding great and precious promises which are the riches of His Church, the assurance that the prayer of faith would save the sick, because the prayer of a righteous man availeth much. He has a thousand times over by His Spirit led His children, applying the promise of an answer to believing prayer, the promise of His doing whatsoever we will if we abide in Him, to believe and receive the healing of a sick child. His great desire in sickness is to educate us into that simple, child-like faith, which, while it cannot give account of its assurance to reason, yet through the Holy Spirit has the assurance that its petition is granted, that it has what it asks. Let us but see that the lesson of the chastisement has been accepted, that the sin, or the want of entire harmony of our life with God’s will, has been confessed and pardoned, has been cast out and conquered; let us claim the life of the beloved sick one for God’s glory in him and in us as parents: the word of Jesus can come to us as real as to the nobleman: Your son lives.

And we shall learn how sickness is to become a blessing. The Lord Jesus used it as a means of drawing to Himself; when it had done this He took it away, that the healing might bind to Himself. When the sickness had done its work, the healing perfected what had been begun. The sickness had brought the nobleman to Jesus in hope and expectancy; the healing left him a confirmed believer, with his household. There is a very prevalent opinion that sickness is better than health for true piety; in the life of Christ and in His work we see no token of this. Health obtained direct from Jesus in the prayer of faith, health received consciously as a gift of redeeming love, is one of the most wonderful spiritual blessings: a bearing in the body the mark of the hand of Jesus. Let each parent, whom our Lord leads into this school of sickness, realize this fully, that health, indeed asked and received in faith, may be a token of even more intimate contact with Jesus than the blessing of the sick-bed ever has been. As this is understood, we shall feel courage to make known our desire for a health in which there is to be power for God’s glory. The new revelation of the power and the love of Jesus may make us and our household believers as never before — full of faith and devotion to Him who has blessed us.

Parents! our sick children are God’s messengers to lead us to Jesus and to faith in Him. The sickness has a message and a blessing. It calls us to remember parental sin, and to confess it. It calls us to search the heart and life and home as to whether we have held our children wholly for God, trained them as holy to the Lord. It comes to make the heart tender and humble, and to draw it out to Jesus. Oh, let us beware lest in all the care or sorrow the sickness occasions, in all the means to which we flee to seek deliverance, in all the fear of losing our child, we miss God’s purpose. He wants to bring us, subdued and quiet, in faith and hope to Jesus. Let us pray God very earnestly that we may not miss the blessing of the sickness.

And, much more, let us accept the greater blessing of the healing. The exercise of faith honors God more than anything. The availing ourselves of our privilege, the trusting of Jesus’ word and power, the learning to know Him as indeed our Helper, the experience of His healing power in distinct answer to our faith — it is this that binds to Christ. We learn to know Him as the Living One. We have the token of the acceptance of our surrender and our trust. Our home has become the scene of the display of His kingly power. It has sealed afresh the parental covenant. We and our home become the Lord’s as never before.

Blessed Redeemer! we come to You to learn the lesson that sickness has but this one purpose — to draw us to Yourself. When You went on earth, the sickness of a child was one of the cords with which the Father drew men to You. And still He takes parents into the sickroom of their little ones, that there they may learn to seek and find You, to wait for and to receive the revelation of Your power and love.

Lord Jesus! teach us, we pray, in all the time of our children’s sickness to learn the blessed lesson of coming to You and trusting You. We may be most sure that You are watching over us to teach, to comfort, to sanctify, and to heal. Teach us especially that You are still the same as when on earth, mighty to bid the sickness depart, and to free from the power of death. To spare the life of a child for Your service, to gladden and sanctify a parent’s heart by Your grace, and for the Father’s glory, You are still ready to hear the prayer of faith and raise up the child. Oh, grant us this faith, that we may honor You, and not hinder You from proving with what compassion You hear a parent’s cry.

And grant, Lord, when You graciously have heard, and given back a child to the parent’s faith, that the blessed fruit may be that the parents with their whole house believe in You as never before. May all see that Jesus is now Lord and Master, the beloved Friend of the home. As the sickness leads to seek You, may the healing bind to You and Your blessed service. Amen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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