INFLUENCE OF EARLY TRAINING by Mrs. Mary J. Wooliever

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Nov 15, 1905

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 46.

INFLUENCE OF EARLY TRAINING.

By Mrs. Mary J. Wooliever

BY MRS. MARY J. WOOLIEVER.

"Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it." Prov. 22:6.

It is the duty of parents to train their children for the Lord, and He will hold them responsible if they neglect this all-important work.

God said He would judge the house of Eli forever, because his sons made themselves vile and he restrained them not. 1 Sam. 3:13. This impresses me with the idea that the duties of parents are not ended when their children are grown; but that they should ever strive to keep them in the right way. If parents realized this more fully and acted accordingly, they would not be so careless, so neglectful, of their children after they had grown up. The influence of the parents would have held them much more strongly than it has, and they would have been restrained from many crimes and much wickedness, and there would not be so many grief-stricken parents as there are to-day.

Of course, some children will depart from their training. The first children born into this world of ours were a proof of this painful truth. Cain and Abel were children of the same parents, so I presume they had the same training; and yet one was righteous while the other imbrued his hands in the blood of his own brother.

I believe if children are carefully and prayerfully trained, they can not go astray without feeling the strong restraining influence of early training, and that sometimes they will return to the training they received in childhood, and not depart from it.

How essential, then, that we train our children in the right way. In order to do this, we parents must be ourselves walking in the way of righteousness. May God help us to perform our whole duty.

Selma, Cal.