p. 12 | Educating a Child

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 3, 1902

Educating a Child

An ancient physician, on being asked the time when a child's education should begin, replied, “Begin twenty years before it is born, by training the mother.” The witty Frenchman said, “The way to civilize a man is to begin by civilizing his grandmother.” But the question arises, whether it might not also be well to begin this system of education by training the father and the grandfather of the child, and then let the child be trained under their faithful care.

A child left to himself brings shame both to his father and to his mother. The way men go to ruin may be stated in a word, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way.” This is enough to ruin any one; for when a man has “his own way,” it is usually the worst way he can have. Children inherit evil passions and dispositions. Born with unregulated impulses, they “go astray as soon as they are born, speaking lies;” and if they are to be useful here or happy hereafter, they need to be trained, brought up, educated, guided, and transformed by the renewing of their minds.

To secure successful training of children

there should be example, instruction, restraint, and prayer. Said the Lord of Abraham, “I know him, that he will command his . . . household after him.” Eli advised his sons; Abraham commanded his: and the merits of the two methods were manifest in the outcome. In Abraham and his seed all the nations of the earth have been blessed, while the sons of Eli made themselves vile, and he restrained them not, until his family was blotted out beneath the curse of God. As parents, we are to train our children in the right way, and one of the surest methods of leading children in the right way is for parents to walk in that way themselves, and lead their families with them.—The Common People.