Teach your Children by J. C.

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 11, 1858

Teach your Children

By J. C.

In the house, and by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. Show them that you are anxious for their salvation. Let them see that their eternal interests are very near your heart. Get them interested by first being interested yourself. Pray for them until your heart runs over with love and anxiety for them. Read the Bible until you find something applicable to their case. Notice the little affairs which interest them until you can sympathize in their little ideas, and stoop to their childish capacities. Then cheerfully, prayerfully, feelingly show them the way, illustrate truth by familiar images to their young minds. Do this often, patiently. Don't fret when they gape or run wild after their childish vanities, but persevere as God has borne with us. Hope, love and labor on, trusting that the seed watered with the dews of the spirit of grace will ere long spring up. Then nurse and nourish the first signs of good fruit: "first the blade," &c. Persevere: let the first word in the morning and the last at night, be of the things of God, always spoken with love. Thus you will avoid much evil. Thus your home will be made in some degree like Paradise, and thus you will win the little ones to be stars in your crown; but neglect this, and God will neglect you.

J. C.