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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

`Behold, I and the children which God hath given me,’ Heb. 2: 13.

These words were originally used by the prophet Isaiah: `Behold, I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel.’ The prophet and his family were to be God’s witnesses to certain great truths which God wanted His people not to forget. In the Epistle to the Hebrews, these words of the Holy Spirit are put into the mouth of Christ as His confession of His relation to those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. They are words which the Holy Spirit still uses as the language of the believing parent who presents himself with his children before the Lord, in the consciousness of that wonderful unity of the Spirit in which the family is one before God. As we draw our meditations to a close, these words invite us to gather up all that the Word has taught us of the Purpose and the Promise of our God, of the work of Love committed to us, and the abounding Hope in which we may look to the fulfilment of what God has led us to expect.

`Behold, I and the children which God hath given me!’ let this be the language of a deep and living faith, as we think of the wonderful ground of our unity. I am one with my children in virtue of God’s eternal purpose, when He created man and instituted the family. He meant the parent to beget children in his own likeness, to impart his own life and spirit to them, to have one life with them. When sin entered, the promise and the covenant were given to restore the blessing that had been lost; again, the parent was in faith to receive for the child, and communicate to him, the grace God had bestowed. In virtue of that promise I am one with my children, and my children are one with me, in the enjoyment of the love and the life that comes in Jesus. In that faith I present myself before the Father with that same ‘Behold!’ with which Jesus called the Father to look upon Him and His, and I say also, ‘Father! behold, I and the children You have given me.’ You have given them me, with a Divine giving, to be inseparably and eternally one with me. God has given them me, in the power of the complete redemption of His Son, with the sure and full promise of Your Holy Spirit for them as for me. God has given them me to keep and train for Him, and then present before Him as mine and His too. In this faith I want day by day to look upon my little God-given flock, to believe that they are one with me in the possession of all the promises and blessings of the covenant, of all that the love of my God can give. As often as the thought of the corruption of their evil nature or the sight of its out-bursting comes up, when for a time it may appear as if they are not growing up as one with me in Christ, my faith will still say, ‘Behold, I and the children You have given me.’ And even when the thought of past sin and neglect in my training makes me fear lest my guilt is the cause of their being unconverted, I will still say, looking to the blood sprinkled on the doorposts of my home, the precious all-availing blood, that cleanses all my sin too: ‘Behold, I and the children You have given me. We are one, we must be one through Your grace, we shall be one to all eternity.’

In Jesus Christ nothing avails but faith working by love. `Behold, I and the children God has given me:’ when spoken in loving faith, the words become the inspiration of love for the work God has committed to it. The bond between a parent and child is a double one — there is the unity of life and of love. What has apparently become two lives love voluntarily and joyfully links together and makes to be still one. This love in nature cares for and rears and nurtures the child. It is this love that God takes possession of and sanctifies for His service. It is this love that becomes the strength for the difficult and yet delightful work the parent has to do.

Love is always self-surrender and self-sacrifice. It gives itself away to the beloved object; it seeks to enter into it, and become one with it; true, full love has no rest apart from perfect union with the beloved; all it has must be shared together. God calls His redeemed ones thus as parents to love their children, to identify themselves with them, to seek and claim their salvation as much as their own. And as the Spirit of Christ takes possession of the heart, the parent accepts the call; and in the unity of a love that cannot think of itself without the children, that is ready to sacrifice everything to make them partakers of its own blessedness, the parent learns to say with a new meaning, Behold, I and the children which God has given me.

I and the children! I, the author of their life, the framer of their character, the keeper of their souls, the trustee of their eternal destiny. I, first blessed that I may bless them, first taught how my Jesus loved me and gave Himself for me, that I may know how to love and how to give myself for them. I, having experienced how patient and gentle and tender He is with my ignorance and slowness and wilfulness, now set apart not to think of my ease or comfort, but in the meekness and gentleness and long-suffering of Christ to watch over and to bear with their weakness. I, made one with these children, that in the power of love I may be willing to study what they need, and how I may best influence them; to train myself for the work of ruling well, and training them to self-rule. I, walking in the obedience and the liberty of a loving child of God, and guiding them in the happy art of an obedience to authority that is always free, and a freedom that is always submissive to law. Yes, I and the children! the consciousness grows upon me that, in the unity of love, what I am the children may and will be. And the more tenderly my love to them is stirred up, the more I feel that I but need first myself to be wholly and only the Lord’s, entirely given up to the Love that loves and makes itself one with me; this will fill me with a love from which selfishness shall be banished, and which gives itself in a Divine strength to live for the children that God has given me.

When faith and love thus have spoken, hope will have courage to take up the song, and in full assurance to say, `Behold, I and the children which the Lord has given me!’ We are inseparably and eternally one. Hope is the child of faith and love. Faith is its strength for waiting and watching, love its strength for willing and working. Hope ever looks forward. It sees even in this life, when things are dark, the Unseen God coming through the clouds to fulfil His word. It sings the song of victory, when others see nought but defeat. Amid all the struggles through which it may see a loved child passing, amid all trials of faith and patience it speaks: `In His word do I hope: I will hope continually, and will praise You yet more and more.’ Through its own buoyant tone it inspires with hopefulness the children when discouraged in the fight with evil; it seeks to be the morning-star of the home. It looks forward to each one of the circle being not only a saved one, but a sanctified one, fit for the Master’s service here on earth. And as often as it looks for the blessed hope, the appearing of our Lord Jesus, and the glory that is to follow, it rejoices in the full assurance of an unbroken family circle in heaven. It even now trembles with joy as it thinks of the privilege that awaits it, when the Son has presented Himself with His brethren in His `Behold, I and the children God has given me,’ of also coming forward to fall down and worship and say likewise, `Father, behold! here am I too, and the children which You have given me.’ May God teach us to rejoice in this hope! `Now the God of hope fill your hearts with joy and peace in believing, that ye may abound in hope in the power of the Holy Ghost.’

Behold, I and the children which God hath given me:’ beloved fellow-believers, whom God has honored to be parents, shall we not seek to have the spirit of these words breathe through our whole home life? It is God who has given us the children; it is He who regards them as one with us in His covenant and blessing, and teaches us to regard them so too. It is His love which calls and fits for a life of self-sacrifice and unselfishness; it is His grace which will accept and give success to our efforts to be one, perfectly one with our children in the power of faith and love and hope. In God’s sight and promise we are one; in our life and love and labor let us be one with them too; we shall be one through the glory of eternity.

Our gracious Father! we do thank You for all the blessed teaching of Your Holy Word concerning our children. We thank You that it has set them before us in Your own light, as created by You, ruined by sin, redeemed in Christ, and now entrusted to us to keep and care for, while the Holy Spirit renews them to Your eternal life and glory. We thank You that You Yourself have come as our Teacher to fit us for teaching them. We pray to You for Your blessing on each word of Yours, that we may indeed become such parents as You would have us be.

O Lord, we pray to You to establish in our thoughts and hearts and lives all the wonderful truths that gather round the home life. We would count Your covenant and its promises as exceeding precious to us. Our faith would see the names You give to our children, children of the covenant, of the promise, of the kingdom, as written on their foreheads. We would treasure all the promises of Your Spirit and Your blessing as their sacred heritage. We would read of all Your dealings with Your saints in the birth of their children, and their upbringing for Your service, as the revelation of Your will with ours. We do accept all Your warnings and all Your instructions concerning children as the law of our home. O Lord! open our eyes, that we may ever have before us the picture of a believing home as Thou will it, and will to make it for us.

Above all, blessed Lord Jesus! let Your presence and Your love and Your joy, filling the parents’ hearts, be the power to fulfil the Father’s will, and to win our children’s love. It is in You all the promises are Yes and Amen; come Yourself, and accept our consecration to be wholly Yours; come Yourself, and let our home be the abode where You love to tarry. Then shall it be blessed indeed, and each of us say with never-ceasing gladness of hope, Behold, I and the child God has given me.

Even so, Lord Jesus. Amen.