Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
To train a child means to direct, educate and develop him from the beginning in the good, righteous and holy way he should go, for both this life and the life of faith. That training must begin in earliest infancy, while the mind is open and easily impressed, before wrong habits take root and harden into character. The direction then given generally lasts, growing stronger with age into maturity and old age, whether for good or for harm. Parents are entrusted by God with this work in the home as the first school, and cannot hand it off to teachers, schools or ministers, but must learn the way themselves through surrender, prayer and the Word. Faithful training combines loving example, firm yet tender discipline, instruction in Scripture, obedience, self-control, industry, temperance and kindness, aiming to fit children for usefulness here and for heaven.
Meaning of Train and Way
To train up a child is to direct, educate, and develop him in a particular way from the beginning, shaping character for both earthly life and religious life. The way he should go is what is good, virtuous, righteous, and holy, including temperance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love to God and to others. That way is more than book learning, requiring balanced attention to physical, mental, moral, and religious education. It calls for the balanced development of physical, intellectual, and moral powers, including duty to self, to neighbor, and to God, educating children physically, mentally, and morally for a useful life and for heaven with regard for the laws of health.
The child may be trained in either direction, for the service of sin or for the service of righteousness, so the way must be rightly chosen. The direction given in youth shapes the later course, for habits formed then generally remain in mature life and grow stronger with age. Training in the wrong direction can likewise set a person on a wrong path and leave lasting harm.
Children are young, helpless, ignorant, and inexperienced, brought into the world without choice, and do not know the way by themselves. They therefore need wise, careful guidance to keep their feet from straying into forbidden paths and over the boundary to the side of the enemy, with minds, hands, and hearts consecrated to the service of God. That guidance is to be given with wisdom, tenderness, patience, and unselfish love, and with a large supply of grace, wisely, tenderly and yet firmly, by example and gentle dealing and by patient, untiring instruction, binding them to Christ and bringing them up in His fear. It includes shaping the influences and associations around them, since they do not naturally choose the education that prepares them for practical life, training them to habits of neatness, usefulness, and purity, giving them the time and attention that belongs to them, and uniting with the Lord while His Spirit impresses their minds, for their characters are being molded for eternity. They may chafe under restraint and faithful watchcare while inexperienced, but later in life they will be grateful for firm guidance, for very young children are susceptible to divine influences and under special care, and when brought up in nurture and admonition they become a help and not a hindrance.
Training Must Begin Early
Training must begin in the earliest years, from infancy and babyhood and the cradle, and continue through maturity with lessons suited to age. From infancy the child's temper and spirit can be encouraged or restrained, so right habits and discipline must be formed early rather than left to take their own course. Patient instruction and correction train the will and temper to obey, shape character and the whole religious experience, prepare the child to become a child of God, and guard against evil principles, while neglect makes later submission to God's requirements a severe struggle. The mother is the principal teacher in this work in the home, and the steady, affectionate discipline of a well-ordered home school guides development from the cradle through maturity. When foundations of righteous character are laid in those earliest years, adult life can develop into a beautiful temple for the Lord.
The first three years are especially important, for education begins while the child is in the mother's arms, when temper and spirit can be encouraged or repressed. Neglect, indulgence, or harsh and inconsistent discipline in that period can shape harmful habits and bring sorrow later. Parents are therefore to examine and guide their own conduct by God's Word, seek His wisdom and grace at every step, and work together to keep children from temptation and raise them in the Lord's way, with faithful, prayerful effort working with the influence of heaven.
The mind is especially open to influence as reason awakens, so early lessons strongly shape character and leave impressions that are difficult, nearly impossible, to erase. When those first lessons are good and are continued with patient perseverance as the child grows, they help shape earthly and eternal destiny, so that in old age the child will not depart from that way. Youth is especially open to instruction and is the time to establish virtuous habits, practical knowledge, and self-control, with good habits generally guiding toward reverence for God and what is right. The mind in the first years is open to good or evil impressions that help direct later life, so children must be carefully guided, including in reading that builds sound knowledge, love and fear of God, and knowledge of Christ rather than harmful habits and thoughts.
Parents have the first and most favorable opportunity while minds and hearts are still teachable and easily impressed and shaped. Neglecting discipline then and letting children follow their own will allows them to become hardened in an evil course. Sending them to college later cannot undo that early failure, and teachers cannot be expected to do the work parents should have done at home. The direction given through careful, tender training shapes later life, for habits formed in youth usually remain in adulthood and grow stronger, so children should be trained in the right direction from the beginning.
Neglect gives wrong habits and sinful tendencies time to take root and makes them difficult to remove, so the heart needs continual cultivation to subdue its natural sinful inclinations. Wrong habits in little ones must be crossed early instead of left alone on the excuse that they will outgrow passionate outbursts and anger, untruthfulness and lying, meddling, indolence and laziness, and selfishness. Training begins while children are very young by correcting stubbornness and restraining evil tempers and passions instead of indulging them, because unchecked faults are strengthened as children grow. If the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear, for Satan sows seeds of anger and hatred, selfishness and pride that quickly spring up to bear a harvest parents reap with bitter regret. The foundation of character is laid during the early years by instruction and training, and lessons learned at the mother's knee determine future experience; the wrong done by neglect can never be wholly undone, for even if the child by patient, untiring care is at last won to the Saviour, the character will always bear its marks, while children left to themselves grow up selfish, exacting, unlovable and discontented.
Lasting Influence Into Old Age
The direction given in youth shapes the later course, for the disposition, tastes, self-control, principles and habits formed in childhood and youth persist into mature life and generally grow stronger with age, almost certainly determining later life and destiny. Training in the right direction from the beginning sets the person on a right path, while training in the wrong direction can likewise leave lasting harm and set the person on a wrong path. Proper training of the young in this way can prevent the crime and corruption caused by intemperance and lax morals.
As a young tree bent as it grows continues in that direction, and as a bent twig inclines the tree, so a child trained in a right or wrong course is likely to continue in that direction for good or for harm, with results enduring into later life. Early instruction in the first years bends character and has lasting influence, shaping usefulness and duty so that children can bless themselves and others. Both indulgence and harsh, rigid rule violate this direction, for true training requires obedience with firm purpose but not harshness, teaching with love and with the child's present and eternal good in view, preparing for useful service and a happy home. This solemn responsibility must be made a priority and cannot be neglected without guilt, and its lasting results will be revealed in eternity.
Correct, virtuous habits formed in youth usually remain part of character, while unwise instruction, evil influences and evil associations can leave an impression and mark on mind and character that later effort cannot erase. Lessons learned and habits formed in infancy and childhood shape character and direct the course of life more than instruction received in later years, and the habits and principles then formed strongly determine later life. This is seen in Napoleon, Hume, and Voltaire, whose early training and associations shaped their later lives, in contrast to the very different course shaped by training a child in the spirit of the Gospel.
The foundation of character is laid by early instruction and training, especially lessons learned at a mother's knee, which determine future experience. Wrong habits in little ones — passionate outbursts and anger, untruthfulness and lying, meddling, indolence and laziness, and selfishness — must be crossed and not left alone on the excuse that children will outgrow them. If the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear, for harmful seed quickly springs up to bear a harvest reaped with bitter regret. The wrong done by neglect can never be wholly undone, for even if the child by patient, untiring care is at last won to the Saviour, the character will always bear the marks of that seed-sowing, while children left to themselves grow up selfish, exacting, unlovable and discontented. Hurtful habits take firmer hold when acquired early and become harder to break, weakening intellect and spirituality, whereas youth is especially open to instruction and is therefore the time to establish virtuous habits, knowledge for daily practice, self-control and reverence for God and what is right. The seed sown and the choices planted in youth determine the harvest in this life and the life to come.
Faithful training does not work automatically and cannot save a child by itself, for each child must personally choose to develop Christian character and make the best use of guidance received, including guidance in religious experience for heaven. Even judicious discipline does not erase the moral traits and physical appetites a child may inherit from the mother before birth. Yet early knowledge of the way can guide one back after straying, as when a father's effort gave knowledge of the right way that drew the son to try to regain it after seafaring life had led him away. Habits formed in youth are seldom essentially changed later, though a firm, steady course with patient instruction, practical lessons, steady discipline, care, teaching, education, correction of wrongdoing and prayer can still improve children who have been badly trained or left to follow their own will, bringing some who went astray back to their senses to overcome, please Jesus and become a blessing to others. Leaving a child to follow his own will causes serious harm and lasting errors and squanders capacities, while a mother's care and influence can direct children toward virtue and honor or toward vice and disgrace, enduring beyond her life.
Parents Entrusted With Responsibility
Parents and guardians in their place are answerable to God for directing the children entrusted to them onto the right path, and faithful work done with the help of the Spirit will bear lasting fruit toward purity of thought, word and deed. That home instruction is often neglected, yet it calls for patience to teach and wisdom to guide and control, rather than letting custom and fashion shape the young, which leaves them easily swayed and corrupted. Deliberate training from the earliest years must direct the developing mind and form habits and character, including care for physical health to build sound minds and strong moral power able to resist temptation, and parents must learn how to guide wisely instead of following custom.
This sacred charge over physical, mental and moral training cannot be passed to teachers, schools, Sabbath school teachers or ministers, nor set aside for business, farm work or worldly pursuits. Teachers cannot be expected to do at school or college what should have been done at home while minds and hearts were teachable, for neglect lets children follow their own will and harden in an evil course. Neglect that overlooks wrongdoing makes parents accountable for its results, but those who have failed should humble themselves, seek God's forgiveness, guidance and discernment to see and correct their mistakes, and then promptly guide children to what is right by firm influence shaped by kindness and love rather than oppression or harshness.
Both father and mother share the duty, with the mother as principal teacher in the home from the cradle through maturity, especially through lessons given at the mother's knee and through steady, affectionate discipline in a well-ordered home school. Early instruction leaves impressions that remain for life, as seen in Moses, whose later influence and destiny reflected his mother's formative guidance toward Christian character. Careful religious training by a praying Christian mother forms steadfast principles and integrity for a life of useful service, while ignorance and neglect in this duty can contribute to later failures and crimes.
The home is the first school, a church and place of spiritual education, prayer and service where children as younger members of the Lord's family are educated for heaven and for useful earthly life. There parents serve as under-teachers while Christ himself is chief instructor, giving children in small portions as young minds can receive the lessons learned from Him and little by little opening to them the beauty of heavenly principles. This God-given duty and privilege begins in infancy, continues at school in cooperation between parents and teachers, and continues through life, preparing the child for the responsibilities of this life and the honors of immortal life; it teaches practical responsibility, household work, patience, kindness, self-control and nurture in the Lord, overcomes inherited tendencies to wrong under God's blessing, helps prevent and remedy inherited evils, and its daily fidelity in the fear of God forms a life record able to stand the test of judgment.
Proper training can be given only by those who themselves know the way through surrender to God and learning obedience to His will. Because children copy the tones, conduct and spirit of their parents, fathers and mothers must study each child's disposition, work together, set a self-controlled example, govern with care and consistency, and after faithfully doing their duty ask God to accomplish what they cannot. They must study the Bible to know how to care for their children, pray for wisdom and the direction of the Holy Spirit to discern and correct defects in their methods, turn from wrong practices, keep their children near divine mercy, and shape the home by the religion of Christ toward holiness; they themselves must be converted and shaped by grace in order to labor for their children's conversion and to form youth to fear God, do right, develop moral independence, work for Jesus and bear responsibilities in His cause.
Early Christian parents lived out this rule by educating their children at home to foster the fear of God and limit exposure to corrupting influences, so that wholesome domestic tastes were formed and the children became earnest, consistent workers in the church as adults. For what the young are taught shapes their course: the company kept, associations formed and principles adopted stay with them through life, while pernicious teaching implants insubordination in those naturally impatient of control and feeds lawlessness in society. Remembering that children belong to God, parents should place them under the care of people who will faithfully train and educate them from their earliest years, when character is being shaped.
How to Train Faithfully
Faithful training means close, watchful care over inexperienced children, with patient and untiring instruction by example and gentle dealing, giving them the time and attention that belongs to them. It is done in cooperation with God, whose Spirit impresses their minds when sincere, unselfish effort is united with bringing them up in His fear, and after duty is faithfully done He is asked to accomplish what parents cannot. Children may chafe under restraint, but later they will be grateful for firm guidance and careful oversight.
Parents are to deliberately guide children in the right way, examining their own conduct by God's Word, seeking His wisdom and grace at every step, working together to keep children from temptation, and studying each child's disposition. Giving children closer parental watchcare makes it possible to guide and train them more effectively. Such thoughtful, consistent government lays a lasting foundation that leads the child to remain in that way when older.
Children copy the tones, conduct, and spirit of their parents, so training requires a self-controlled example as well as careful governing. The father's conduct should model strength, integrity, honesty, and industry, and both parents should model pure, holy love, mutual respect, kindness, politeness joined with firmness, uprightness, and reverence for God. From the first moments children learn through what they see and hear, so patient companionship and a meek example, with training in useful work, kindness, and Christian courtesy, give character its right mold. All children are to be treated tenderly and without partiality as belonging to Christ, and children trained to worship God are likely to continue serving Him, prepared for the future immortal life and the society of heavenly angels. By home instruction and example parents lay the foundations of habit and character for obedience and righteousness or for transgression and sin, forming their children's future.
Discipline is to be firm, straightforward, prompt, and conscientious according to God's standard of righteousness, yet shaped by kindness and love rather than oppression, harshness, or anger. Obedience is to be required with firm purpose but not harshness, for indulging passion and leaving disobedience uncorrected is not true love, and training should neither spoil nor abuse the child. Wrongdoing is not to be ignored but promptly met with a firm influence of kindness and love that draws the child close, guiding toward self-restraint through love and worthy motives. Harshness, scolding, threats, force, impatient punishment, and fault-finding work against the desired result, provoke resistance, give a wrong mold, and can make matters worse. Necessary correction is to be given in love, with spiritual help at home, teaching children to choose good and resist evil, praying with them and teaching them to pray, welcoming Christ's Spirit into their hearts, which also makes the benefits of schooling greater. Neglect of this faithful discipline leaves parents accountable for its results, and those who have failed should seek God's forgiveness, guidance, and discernment.
Correction should teach obedience from principle rather than compulsion, through clear instructions and kind, judicious discipline, with counsel, instruction, restraint, and prayer. Children should be helped to recognize their faults before discipline is used, and sin should not be excused. When calm is lost, angry scolding or punishment harms the child and misshapes character, so parents should correct calmly in a calm spirit with sound judgment, explain how the wrong has grieved the Holy Spirit, watch their own example and their children's habits, and keep children with them until they can distinguish right from wrong. Harsh scolding, anger, injustice, and broken promises damage trust and hinder the work, while kindness and affection joined with firmness against wrongdoing build it, since indulging harmful habits is not true love. Punishment is to be used only as a last resort, with active interest in the children, patient and steady teaching toward industry rather than idleness, and cultivation of kindness, self-denial, gratitude, faithfulness, and generous service, seeking God's wisdom for difficult moments. When parents indulge children instead of restraining them wisely and from principle, the resulting character reflects that lack of proper training. Faithful efforts to guide children can bear good fruit, though children are not free from faults, and parents should work with teachers to reinforce good habits and support their children's salvation, since neglect can leave children vulnerable and faithful early training prepares them to serve God and share the reward of the faithful.
Teaching is to be done with love and with the child's present, eternal, and useful good in view, preparing the child for useful service and for cooperation in making a happy home. Like a twig bent while young, a child is given direction by early instruction in the first years of life. Patient, thoughtful instruction gives developing minds and wills their direction, and it must be given at the right time with wisdom and love, with salvation and inward character as the highest concern, because decisions at critical moments can affect eternal destiny. Raising children for heaven requires patient, continuing effort shaped by tender affection and love as well as discipline and justice, strict without being harsh, making the home a loving, peaceful place. Treatment is to be patient and loving rather than fretful and impatient, since impatient commands can drive children away and weaken love and affection, while speaking tenderly shapes their minds and can lead them to become believers.
Parents remain responsible for their children's souls and should continue care and guidance throughout life, with the home as a church and place of spiritual education, prayer, praise, and service where children learn practical responsibility, household work, care for others, patience, kindness, and self-control in the Lord's nurture and instruction. Leaving children to grow up in ignorance neglects the duty of patiently and faithfully educating them to form characters fit for heaven and puts their salvation at risk. When children reject instruction and discipline, parents should not remove every difficulty caused by negligence or rebellion but let them learn through experience what they would not learn from instruction, so they may come to value their privileges.
What Training Must Include
Training in the way includes teaching the Bible, God's law, commandments, statutes and claims, the fear of the Lord, trust in His Word, prayer, and the love of Jesus. It brings those truths into everyday life so that they shape obedience and character, instructs in self-denial and respect for parental authority, and guides young hearts to give themselves to God, to revere Him, and to live in friendship with Jesus. Daily instruction about the Saviour and His love belongs to this work, with discipline that is patient and tender rather than angry or humiliating, and with guarding children from influences opposed to Christ and keeping them close to His mercy.
It must form obedience to parents and to God, self-denial, self-control, self-reliance and self-government. It restrains temper, passion, selfishness, anger, stubbornness, evil desires and self-will, shaping the will and impulses according to Christ's example and God's requirements and governing appetite and will by calm reason. Children taught to yield their wishes to parents more readily yield to God and submit to the Spirit of Christ, while children left to train themselves, to form habits of their own choosing, or to remain undisciplined carry wrong habits and dispositions into adulthood that make wholesome discipline harder, strengthen faults with growth, and hinder acceptance of God's discipline. Kind, steady discipline from the beginning teaches service to others and dependence on God in daily life, builds moral strength with sound minds and healthy bodies for resisting temptation, and keeps open the purpose of life to glorify God, live usefully and enjoy eternal life.
It includes habits of industry, neatness, order and usefulness, with practical household work suited to age and strength and with patient industry and generous, noble principles. Parents are to guide children's energy into duties that interest them and fit their powers, teaching them to help carry household responsibilities, to reason from cause to effect, to obey nature's laws, to use their powers constructively, and to resist temptation. Discipline received at home in the early years shapes the future, and its lessons are seeds planted in childhood that later bear good fruit in knowing Christ and doing God's will. Neglect leaves children under harmful influences and forms habits of avoiding useful work and duty, while idleness leads toward corrupt habits and continual favoring, excusing and relieving of the child fixes avoidance of responsibility.
It requires care for physical health and temperance, forming simple habits and sound minds with strong moral character so children can resist temptation. It teaches resistance to wrong habits and control of inclinations by principle, cultivating self-control from childhood and right views of life and its responsibilities for upright Christian character and useful lives. Indulgence of appetite and stimulating food shapes tastes toward stronger stimulants, contributing to later drunkenness, dependence on tobacco, intemperance and loss of usefulness, so temperance reform and training in fidelity and self-denial must begin at home.
It cultivates kindness, courtesy, gratitude, patience, thoughtfulness, consideration for others and friendship with Jesus, aiming at balanced character. It strengthens weak traits and restrains wrong or overly strong ones, encouraging what is deficient and checking vanity and selfishness lest they grow into pride and moral failure in adulthood. Parental acts, example, attention given or withheld, and patient instruction plant habits, principles and ways of thinking that bear fruit later for good or evil, shaping present and future well-being, usefulness and respect in society, and moral fitness for the society of the pure and holy.
It shapes the influences and associations around inexperienced children, who do not naturally choose the education that prepares them for practical life, so their desires and preferences must be guided by sound views of God and truth. This includes choosing reading, letters, religious reading and good books that build sound knowledge, love and fear of God, and knowledge of Christ rather than harmful habits and thoughts. Ordinary daily duties done faithfully in the fear of God also belong to training, since each act strengthens habits and forms character and prepares a life that can pass the test of the Judgment. Family worship uniting the household in prayer and praise, with parents working together to require obedience with firm purpose but not harshness, belongs to the same work, since indulgence of passion and uncorrected disobedience are not true love.
Examples and Eternal Aim
Moses shows what early training can do, for God-fearing parents taught him principles of truth in childhood that stayed with him and safeguarded him for life. Those lessons bore fruit when he stood at court, where he held fast to God, refused Egyptian idolatry, and chose to identify with his Hebrew brethren even under pressure and threats. The formative influence, especially his mother's, shaped his later character, mission, and power for service, proving how impressions made at home can determine influence and destiny.
Training children for Christ is itself true work for God, as genuine as a minister's work in the pulpit, and a mother's faithful raising of her children is service to God in the fullest sense. The converted parent's first missionary field is the home, a little church where the most important work is to place the younger members of the Lord's family on the Lord's side. Fathers and mothers are charged to rescue their children from Satan's power and bring them safe into the fold, never letting them become hostile to the Saviour, but training them with patient, untiring effort to serve, honor, and obey Christ. That means dealing with them tenderly yet firmly when they err, teaching them to unite with their parents against the evil that would destroy soul and body, taking them into the Lord's service, and giving them a share in the secret of the cross as sanctification, redemption, and eternal victory. Faithfulness in this home work gains a victory which, joined with labor for those around, results in thousands of souls saved.
Faithful training looks to both worlds, preparing children for useful lives now and for eternal life hereafter rather than for present gratification and this world alone. From the beginning it directs habits and character into a good path, making habit a force for good and laying the foundation for a healthy, happy life. It forms habits and tastes in childhood and youth, corrects what is wrong, develops self-control, and orders life by God's will and the good of others, which prepares for a harvest in this life and beyond the grave. So trained, children gain moral strength to resist temptation and courage and strength to meet life's problems, to honor God, bless the world, serve in the church, and enjoy eternal life. This work calls for vigilance, perseverance, and the attention and care God requires, and faithful effort in it may expect the divine blessing.
Its results reach far beyond the home into society and eternity, for right training of the young can prevent the crime and corruption that come from intemperance and lax morals and can help bring reform. Children taught from their earliest years to resist temptation, like a bent twig inclining the tree, grow into persons useful and respected in society and morally fit for the society of the pure and holy and for fellowship with angels. Each act of daily duty done faithfully in the fear of God strengthens habit, forms character, leads toward Christ and service in saving others, and prepares a life that can stand the test of the Judgment. Neglect leaves the child open to evil, vice, dissipation, selfishness, and loss of self-control and usefulness, so that the purpose of life to glorify God and enjoy eternal life is lost and harm spreads to others and to succeeding generations.
The eternal destiny of the household is in most cases decided by parental example and teaching, for in the future life children will be what their parents have made them. As a sapling is bent, discipline forms character into deformity or into symmetry and beauty, strengthening either transgression and sin or obedience and righteousness, and the lasting results endure into later life and are revealed in eternity. Parents are therefore accountable to God for how they shape their children, and neglecting the duty to guide them in religion at home is a wicked course that brings God's frown. Both indulgence and harsh, rigid rule violate the Bible's direction; training should instead prepare children for usefulness and duty so they can bless themselves and others. Where parents indulge rather than train, children are left undisciplined and become conceited, self-willed, deceitful, domineering, and regardless of others, to the dishonor of God and the harm of the child and others.
Neglect sows a bitter harvest, for if the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear because Satan sows anger and hatred, selfishness and pride that quickly spring up. The foundation is laid in the early years at the mother's knee, where wrong habits in little ones must be crossed rather than left alone on the excuse that they will outgrow passionate outbursts, untruthfulness, meddling, indolence, and selfishness. Children left to please themselves and follow their own wishes grow selfish, exacting, unlovable, discontented, stubborn, and disrespectful, ruled by perverted appetites and passions and easily swayed and corrupted when custom and fashion become their guide. Even if such a child is at last won to the Saviour by patient, untiring care, the character will always bear marks of that seed-sowing, so the wrong of neglect can never be wholly undone and parents reap with bitter regret. Faithful guidance and restraint, teaching children to submit while young, to know God, respect His claims, obey Him, and cultivate truthfulness, honesty, and trust, prepares them to serve God, while neglect and indulgence allow harmful traits to develop, pass from generation to generation, and end in moral ruin and sorrow.
To train a child means to direct, educate and develop him from the beginning in the good, righteous and holy way he should go, for both this life and the life of faith. That training must begin in earliest infancy, while the mind is open and easily impressed, before wrong habits take root and harden into character. The direction then given generally lasts, growing stronger with age into maturity and old age, whether for good or for harm. Parents are entrusted by God with this work in the home as the first school, and cannot hand it off to teachers, schools or ministers, but must learn the way themselves through surrender, prayer and the Word. Faithful training combines loving example, firm yet tender discipline, instruction in Scripture, obedience, self-control, industry, temperance and kindness, aiming to fit children for usefulness here and for heaven.
Meaning of Train and Way
To train up a child is to direct, educate, and develop him in a particular way from the beginning, shaping character for both earthly life and religious life. The way he should go is what is good, virtuous, righteous, and holy, including temperance, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love to God and to others. That way is more than book learning, requiring balanced attention to physical, mental, moral, and religious education. It calls for the balanced development of physical, intellectual, and moral powers, including duty to self, to neighbor, and to God, educating children physically, mentally, and morally for a useful life and for heaven with regard for the laws of health.
The child may be trained in either direction, for the service of sin or for the service of righteousness, so the way must be rightly chosen. The direction given in youth shapes the later course, for habits formed then generally remain in mature life and grow stronger with age. Training in the wrong direction can likewise set a person on a wrong path and leave lasting harm.
Children are young, helpless, ignorant, and inexperienced, brought into the world without choice, and do not know the way by themselves. They therefore need wise, careful guidance to keep their feet from straying into forbidden paths and over the boundary to the side of the enemy, with minds, hands, and hearts consecrated to the service of God. That guidance is to be given with wisdom, tenderness, patience, and unselfish love, and with a large supply of grace, wisely, tenderly and yet firmly, by example and gentle dealing and by patient, untiring instruction, binding them to Christ and bringing them up in His fear. It includes shaping the influences and associations around them, since they do not naturally choose the education that prepares them for practical life, training them to habits of neatness, usefulness, and purity, giving them the time and attention that belongs to them, and uniting with the Lord while His Spirit impresses their minds, for their characters are being molded for eternity. They may chafe under restraint and faithful watchcare while inexperienced, but later in life they will be grateful for firm guidance, for very young children are susceptible to divine influences and under special care, and when brought up in nurture and admonition they become a help and not a hindrance.
Training Must Begin Early
Training must begin in the earliest years, from infancy and babyhood and the cradle, and continue through maturity with lessons suited to age. From infancy the child's temper and spirit can be encouraged or restrained, so right habits and discipline must be formed early rather than left to take their own course. Patient instruction and correction train the will and temper to obey, shape character and the whole religious experience, prepare the child to become a child of God, and guard against evil principles, while neglect makes later submission to God's requirements a severe struggle. The mother is the principal teacher in this work in the home, and the steady, affectionate discipline of a well-ordered home school guides development from the cradle through maturity. When foundations of righteous character are laid in those earliest years, adult life can develop into a beautiful temple for the Lord.
The first three years are especially important, for education begins while the child is in the mother's arms, when temper and spirit can be encouraged or repressed. Neglect, indulgence, or harsh and inconsistent discipline in that period can shape harmful habits and bring sorrow later. Parents are therefore to examine and guide their own conduct by God's Word, seek His wisdom and grace at every step, and work together to keep children from temptation and raise them in the Lord's way, with faithful, prayerful effort working with the influence of heaven.
The mind is especially open to influence as reason awakens, so early lessons strongly shape character and leave impressions that are difficult, nearly impossible, to erase. When those first lessons are good and are continued with patient perseverance as the child grows, they help shape earthly and eternal destiny, so that in old age the child will not depart from that way. Youth is especially open to instruction and is the time to establish virtuous habits, practical knowledge, and self-control, with good habits generally guiding toward reverence for God and what is right. The mind in the first years is open to good or evil impressions that help direct later life, so children must be carefully guided, including in reading that builds sound knowledge, love and fear of God, and knowledge of Christ rather than harmful habits and thoughts.
Parents have the first and most favorable opportunity while minds and hearts are still teachable and easily impressed and shaped. Neglecting discipline then and letting children follow their own will allows them to become hardened in an evil course. Sending them to college later cannot undo that early failure, and teachers cannot be expected to do the work parents should have done at home. The direction given through careful, tender training shapes later life, for habits formed in youth usually remain in adulthood and grow stronger, so children should be trained in the right direction from the beginning.
Neglect gives wrong habits and sinful tendencies time to take root and makes them difficult to remove, so the heart needs continual cultivation to subdue its natural sinful inclinations. Wrong habits in little ones must be crossed early instead of left alone on the excuse that they will outgrow passionate outbursts and anger, untruthfulness and lying, meddling, indolence and laziness, and selfishness. Training begins while children are very young by correcting stubbornness and restraining evil tempers and passions instead of indulging them, because unchecked faults are strengthened as children grow. If the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear, for Satan sows seeds of anger and hatred, selfishness and pride that quickly spring up to bear a harvest parents reap with bitter regret. The foundation of character is laid during the early years by instruction and training, and lessons learned at the mother's knee determine future experience; the wrong done by neglect can never be wholly undone, for even if the child by patient, untiring care is at last won to the Saviour, the character will always bear its marks, while children left to themselves grow up selfish, exacting, unlovable and discontented.
Lasting Influence Into Old Age
The direction given in youth shapes the later course, for the disposition, tastes, self-control, principles and habits formed in childhood and youth persist into mature life and generally grow stronger with age, almost certainly determining later life and destiny. Training in the right direction from the beginning sets the person on a right path, while training in the wrong direction can likewise leave lasting harm and set the person on a wrong path. Proper training of the young in this way can prevent the crime and corruption caused by intemperance and lax morals.
As a young tree bent as it grows continues in that direction, and as a bent twig inclines the tree, so a child trained in a right or wrong course is likely to continue in that direction for good or for harm, with results enduring into later life. Early instruction in the first years bends character and has lasting influence, shaping usefulness and duty so that children can bless themselves and others. Both indulgence and harsh, rigid rule violate this direction, for true training requires obedience with firm purpose but not harshness, teaching with love and with the child's present and eternal good in view, preparing for useful service and a happy home. This solemn responsibility must be made a priority and cannot be neglected without guilt, and its lasting results will be revealed in eternity.
Correct, virtuous habits formed in youth usually remain part of character, while unwise instruction, evil influences and evil associations can leave an impression and mark on mind and character that later effort cannot erase. Lessons learned and habits formed in infancy and childhood shape character and direct the course of life more than instruction received in later years, and the habits and principles then formed strongly determine later life. This is seen in Napoleon, Hume, and Voltaire, whose early training and associations shaped their later lives, in contrast to the very different course shaped by training a child in the spirit of the Gospel.
The foundation of character is laid by early instruction and training, especially lessons learned at a mother's knee, which determine future experience. Wrong habits in little ones — passionate outbursts and anger, untruthfulness and lying, meddling, indolence and laziness, and selfishness — must be crossed and not left alone on the excuse that children will outgrow them. If the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear, for harmful seed quickly springs up to bear a harvest reaped with bitter regret. The wrong done by neglect can never be wholly undone, for even if the child by patient, untiring care is at last won to the Saviour, the character will always bear the marks of that seed-sowing, while children left to themselves grow up selfish, exacting, unlovable and discontented. Hurtful habits take firmer hold when acquired early and become harder to break, weakening intellect and spirituality, whereas youth is especially open to instruction and is therefore the time to establish virtuous habits, knowledge for daily practice, self-control and reverence for God and what is right. The seed sown and the choices planted in youth determine the harvest in this life and the life to come.
Faithful training does not work automatically and cannot save a child by itself, for each child must personally choose to develop Christian character and make the best use of guidance received, including guidance in religious experience for heaven. Even judicious discipline does not erase the moral traits and physical appetites a child may inherit from the mother before birth. Yet early knowledge of the way can guide one back after straying, as when a father's effort gave knowledge of the right way that drew the son to try to regain it after seafaring life had led him away. Habits formed in youth are seldom essentially changed later, though a firm, steady course with patient instruction, practical lessons, steady discipline, care, teaching, education, correction of wrongdoing and prayer can still improve children who have been badly trained or left to follow their own will, bringing some who went astray back to their senses to overcome, please Jesus and become a blessing to others. Leaving a child to follow his own will causes serious harm and lasting errors and squanders capacities, while a mother's care and influence can direct children toward virtue and honor or toward vice and disgrace, enduring beyond her life.
Parents Entrusted With Responsibility
Parents and guardians in their place are answerable to God for directing the children entrusted to them onto the right path, and faithful work done with the help of the Spirit will bear lasting fruit toward purity of thought, word and deed. That home instruction is often neglected, yet it calls for patience to teach and wisdom to guide and control, rather than letting custom and fashion shape the young, which leaves them easily swayed and corrupted. Deliberate training from the earliest years must direct the developing mind and form habits and character, including care for physical health to build sound minds and strong moral power able to resist temptation, and parents must learn how to guide wisely instead of following custom.
This sacred charge over physical, mental and moral training cannot be passed to teachers, schools, Sabbath school teachers or ministers, nor set aside for business, farm work or worldly pursuits. Teachers cannot be expected to do at school or college what should have been done at home while minds and hearts were teachable, for neglect lets children follow their own will and harden in an evil course. Neglect that overlooks wrongdoing makes parents accountable for its results, but those who have failed should humble themselves, seek God's forgiveness, guidance and discernment to see and correct their mistakes, and then promptly guide children to what is right by firm influence shaped by kindness and love rather than oppression or harshness.
Both father and mother share the duty, with the mother as principal teacher in the home from the cradle through maturity, especially through lessons given at the mother's knee and through steady, affectionate discipline in a well-ordered home school. Early instruction leaves impressions that remain for life, as seen in Moses, whose later influence and destiny reflected his mother's formative guidance toward Christian character. Careful religious training by a praying Christian mother forms steadfast principles and integrity for a life of useful service, while ignorance and neglect in this duty can contribute to later failures and crimes.
The home is the first school, a church and place of spiritual education, prayer and service where children as younger members of the Lord's family are educated for heaven and for useful earthly life. There parents serve as under-teachers while Christ himself is chief instructor, giving children in small portions as young minds can receive the lessons learned from Him and little by little opening to them the beauty of heavenly principles. This God-given duty and privilege begins in infancy, continues at school in cooperation between parents and teachers, and continues through life, preparing the child for the responsibilities of this life and the honors of immortal life; it teaches practical responsibility, household work, patience, kindness, self-control and nurture in the Lord, overcomes inherited tendencies to wrong under God's blessing, helps prevent and remedy inherited evils, and its daily fidelity in the fear of God forms a life record able to stand the test of judgment.
Proper training can be given only by those who themselves know the way through surrender to God and learning obedience to His will. Because children copy the tones, conduct and spirit of their parents, fathers and mothers must study each child's disposition, work together, set a self-controlled example, govern with care and consistency, and after faithfully doing their duty ask God to accomplish what they cannot. They must study the Bible to know how to care for their children, pray for wisdom and the direction of the Holy Spirit to discern and correct defects in their methods, turn from wrong practices, keep their children near divine mercy, and shape the home by the religion of Christ toward holiness; they themselves must be converted and shaped by grace in order to labor for their children's conversion and to form youth to fear God, do right, develop moral independence, work for Jesus and bear responsibilities in His cause.
Early Christian parents lived out this rule by educating their children at home to foster the fear of God and limit exposure to corrupting influences, so that wholesome domestic tastes were formed and the children became earnest, consistent workers in the church as adults. For what the young are taught shapes their course: the company kept, associations formed and principles adopted stay with them through life, while pernicious teaching implants insubordination in those naturally impatient of control and feeds lawlessness in society. Remembering that children belong to God, parents should place them under the care of people who will faithfully train and educate them from their earliest years, when character is being shaped.
How to Train Faithfully
Faithful training means close, watchful care over inexperienced children, with patient and untiring instruction by example and gentle dealing, giving them the time and attention that belongs to them. It is done in cooperation with God, whose Spirit impresses their minds when sincere, unselfish effort is united with bringing them up in His fear, and after duty is faithfully done He is asked to accomplish what parents cannot. Children may chafe under restraint, but later they will be grateful for firm guidance and careful oversight.
Parents are to deliberately guide children in the right way, examining their own conduct by God's Word, seeking His wisdom and grace at every step, working together to keep children from temptation, and studying each child's disposition. Giving children closer parental watchcare makes it possible to guide and train them more effectively. Such thoughtful, consistent government lays a lasting foundation that leads the child to remain in that way when older.
Children copy the tones, conduct, and spirit of their parents, so training requires a self-controlled example as well as careful governing. The father's conduct should model strength, integrity, honesty, and industry, and both parents should model pure, holy love, mutual respect, kindness, politeness joined with firmness, uprightness, and reverence for God. From the first moments children learn through what they see and hear, so patient companionship and a meek example, with training in useful work, kindness, and Christian courtesy, give character its right mold. All children are to be treated tenderly and without partiality as belonging to Christ, and children trained to worship God are likely to continue serving Him, prepared for the future immortal life and the society of heavenly angels. By home instruction and example parents lay the foundations of habit and character for obedience and righteousness or for transgression and sin, forming their children's future.
Discipline is to be firm, straightforward, prompt, and conscientious according to God's standard of righteousness, yet shaped by kindness and love rather than oppression, harshness, or anger. Obedience is to be required with firm purpose but not harshness, for indulging passion and leaving disobedience uncorrected is not true love, and training should neither spoil nor abuse the child. Wrongdoing is not to be ignored but promptly met with a firm influence of kindness and love that draws the child close, guiding toward self-restraint through love and worthy motives. Harshness, scolding, threats, force, impatient punishment, and fault-finding work against the desired result, provoke resistance, give a wrong mold, and can make matters worse. Necessary correction is to be given in love, with spiritual help at home, teaching children to choose good and resist evil, praying with them and teaching them to pray, welcoming Christ's Spirit into their hearts, which also makes the benefits of schooling greater. Neglect of this faithful discipline leaves parents accountable for its results, and those who have failed should seek God's forgiveness, guidance, and discernment.
Correction should teach obedience from principle rather than compulsion, through clear instructions and kind, judicious discipline, with counsel, instruction, restraint, and prayer. Children should be helped to recognize their faults before discipline is used, and sin should not be excused. When calm is lost, angry scolding or punishment harms the child and misshapes character, so parents should correct calmly in a calm spirit with sound judgment, explain how the wrong has grieved the Holy Spirit, watch their own example and their children's habits, and keep children with them until they can distinguish right from wrong. Harsh scolding, anger, injustice, and broken promises damage trust and hinder the work, while kindness and affection joined with firmness against wrongdoing build it, since indulging harmful habits is not true love. Punishment is to be used only as a last resort, with active interest in the children, patient and steady teaching toward industry rather than idleness, and cultivation of kindness, self-denial, gratitude, faithfulness, and generous service, seeking God's wisdom for difficult moments. When parents indulge children instead of restraining them wisely and from principle, the resulting character reflects that lack of proper training. Faithful efforts to guide children can bear good fruit, though children are not free from faults, and parents should work with teachers to reinforce good habits and support their children's salvation, since neglect can leave children vulnerable and faithful early training prepares them to serve God and share the reward of the faithful.
Teaching is to be done with love and with the child's present, eternal, and useful good in view, preparing the child for useful service and for cooperation in making a happy home. Like a twig bent while young, a child is given direction by early instruction in the first years of life. Patient, thoughtful instruction gives developing minds and wills their direction, and it must be given at the right time with wisdom and love, with salvation and inward character as the highest concern, because decisions at critical moments can affect eternal destiny. Raising children for heaven requires patient, continuing effort shaped by tender affection and love as well as discipline and justice, strict without being harsh, making the home a loving, peaceful place. Treatment is to be patient and loving rather than fretful and impatient, since impatient commands can drive children away and weaken love and affection, while speaking tenderly shapes their minds and can lead them to become believers.
Parents remain responsible for their children's souls and should continue care and guidance throughout life, with the home as a church and place of spiritual education, prayer, praise, and service where children learn practical responsibility, household work, care for others, patience, kindness, and self-control in the Lord's nurture and instruction. Leaving children to grow up in ignorance neglects the duty of patiently and faithfully educating them to form characters fit for heaven and puts their salvation at risk. When children reject instruction and discipline, parents should not remove every difficulty caused by negligence or rebellion but let them learn through experience what they would not learn from instruction, so they may come to value their privileges.
What Training Must Include
Training in the way includes teaching the Bible, God's law, commandments, statutes and claims, the fear of the Lord, trust in His Word, prayer, and the love of Jesus. It brings those truths into everyday life so that they shape obedience and character, instructs in self-denial and respect for parental authority, and guides young hearts to give themselves to God, to revere Him, and to live in friendship with Jesus. Daily instruction about the Saviour and His love belongs to this work, with discipline that is patient and tender rather than angry or humiliating, and with guarding children from influences opposed to Christ and keeping them close to His mercy.
It must form obedience to parents and to God, self-denial, self-control, self-reliance and self-government. It restrains temper, passion, selfishness, anger, stubbornness, evil desires and self-will, shaping the will and impulses according to Christ's example and God's requirements and governing appetite and will by calm reason. Children taught to yield their wishes to parents more readily yield to God and submit to the Spirit of Christ, while children left to train themselves, to form habits of their own choosing, or to remain undisciplined carry wrong habits and dispositions into adulthood that make wholesome discipline harder, strengthen faults with growth, and hinder acceptance of God's discipline. Kind, steady discipline from the beginning teaches service to others and dependence on God in daily life, builds moral strength with sound minds and healthy bodies for resisting temptation, and keeps open the purpose of life to glorify God, live usefully and enjoy eternal life.
It includes habits of industry, neatness, order and usefulness, with practical household work suited to age and strength and with patient industry and generous, noble principles. Parents are to guide children's energy into duties that interest them and fit their powers, teaching them to help carry household responsibilities, to reason from cause to effect, to obey nature's laws, to use their powers constructively, and to resist temptation. Discipline received at home in the early years shapes the future, and its lessons are seeds planted in childhood that later bear good fruit in knowing Christ and doing God's will. Neglect leaves children under harmful influences and forms habits of avoiding useful work and duty, while idleness leads toward corrupt habits and continual favoring, excusing and relieving of the child fixes avoidance of responsibility.
It requires care for physical health and temperance, forming simple habits and sound minds with strong moral character so children can resist temptation. It teaches resistance to wrong habits and control of inclinations by principle, cultivating self-control from childhood and right views of life and its responsibilities for upright Christian character and useful lives. Indulgence of appetite and stimulating food shapes tastes toward stronger stimulants, contributing to later drunkenness, dependence on tobacco, intemperance and loss of usefulness, so temperance reform and training in fidelity and self-denial must begin at home.
It cultivates kindness, courtesy, gratitude, patience, thoughtfulness, consideration for others and friendship with Jesus, aiming at balanced character. It strengthens weak traits and restrains wrong or overly strong ones, encouraging what is deficient and checking vanity and selfishness lest they grow into pride and moral failure in adulthood. Parental acts, example, attention given or withheld, and patient instruction plant habits, principles and ways of thinking that bear fruit later for good or evil, shaping present and future well-being, usefulness and respect in society, and moral fitness for the society of the pure and holy.
It shapes the influences and associations around inexperienced children, who do not naturally choose the education that prepares them for practical life, so their desires and preferences must be guided by sound views of God and truth. This includes choosing reading, letters, religious reading and good books that build sound knowledge, love and fear of God, and knowledge of Christ rather than harmful habits and thoughts. Ordinary daily duties done faithfully in the fear of God also belong to training, since each act strengthens habits and forms character and prepares a life that can pass the test of the Judgment. Family worship uniting the household in prayer and praise, with parents working together to require obedience with firm purpose but not harshness, belongs to the same work, since indulgence of passion and uncorrected disobedience are not true love.
Examples and Eternal Aim
Moses shows what early training can do, for God-fearing parents taught him principles of truth in childhood that stayed with him and safeguarded him for life. Those lessons bore fruit when he stood at court, where he held fast to God, refused Egyptian idolatry, and chose to identify with his Hebrew brethren even under pressure and threats. The formative influence, especially his mother's, shaped his later character, mission, and power for service, proving how impressions made at home can determine influence and destiny.
Training children for Christ is itself true work for God, as genuine as a minister's work in the pulpit, and a mother's faithful raising of her children is service to God in the fullest sense. The converted parent's first missionary field is the home, a little church where the most important work is to place the younger members of the Lord's family on the Lord's side. Fathers and mothers are charged to rescue their children from Satan's power and bring them safe into the fold, never letting them become hostile to the Saviour, but training them with patient, untiring effort to serve, honor, and obey Christ. That means dealing with them tenderly yet firmly when they err, teaching them to unite with their parents against the evil that would destroy soul and body, taking them into the Lord's service, and giving them a share in the secret of the cross as sanctification, redemption, and eternal victory. Faithfulness in this home work gains a victory which, joined with labor for those around, results in thousands of souls saved.
Faithful training looks to both worlds, preparing children for useful lives now and for eternal life hereafter rather than for present gratification and this world alone. From the beginning it directs habits and character into a good path, making habit a force for good and laying the foundation for a healthy, happy life. It forms habits and tastes in childhood and youth, corrects what is wrong, develops self-control, and orders life by God's will and the good of others, which prepares for a harvest in this life and beyond the grave. So trained, children gain moral strength to resist temptation and courage and strength to meet life's problems, to honor God, bless the world, serve in the church, and enjoy eternal life. This work calls for vigilance, perseverance, and the attention and care God requires, and faithful effort in it may expect the divine blessing.
Its results reach far beyond the home into society and eternity, for right training of the young can prevent the crime and corruption that come from intemperance and lax morals and can help bring reform. Children taught from their earliest years to resist temptation, like a bent twig inclining the tree, grow into persons useful and respected in society and morally fit for the society of the pure and holy and for fellowship with angels. Each act of daily duty done faithfully in the fear of God strengthens habit, forms character, leads toward Christ and service in saving others, and prepares a life that can stand the test of the Judgment. Neglect leaves the child open to evil, vice, dissipation, selfishness, and loss of self-control and usefulness, so that the purpose of life to glorify God and enjoy eternal life is lost and harm spreads to others and to succeeding generations.
The eternal destiny of the household is in most cases decided by parental example and teaching, for in the future life children will be what their parents have made them. As a sapling is bent, discipline forms character into deformity or into symmetry and beauty, strengthening either transgression and sin or obedience and righteousness, and the lasting results endure into later life and are revealed in eternity. Parents are therefore accountable to God for how they shape their children, and neglecting the duty to guide them in religion at home is a wicked course that brings God's frown. Both indulgence and harsh, rigid rule violate the Bible's direction; training should instead prepare children for usefulness and duty so they can bless themselves and others. Where parents indulge rather than train, children are left undisciplined and become conceited, self-willed, deceitful, domineering, and regardless of others, to the dishonor of God and the harm of the child and others.
Neglect sows a bitter harvest, for if the heart is left uncultivated like an uncultivated field, weeds are sure to appear because Satan sows anger and hatred, selfishness and pride that quickly spring up. The foundation is laid in the early years at the mother's knee, where wrong habits in little ones must be crossed rather than left alone on the excuse that they will outgrow passionate outbursts, untruthfulness, meddling, indolence, and selfishness. Children left to please themselves and follow their own wishes grow selfish, exacting, unlovable, discontented, stubborn, and disrespectful, ruled by perverted appetites and passions and easily swayed and corrupted when custom and fashion become their guide. Even if such a child is at last won to the Saviour by patient, untiring care, the character will always bear marks of that seed-sowing, so the wrong of neglect can never be wholly undone and parents reap with bitter regret. Faithful guidance and restraint, teaching children to submit while young, to know God, respect His claims, obey Him, and cultivate truthfulness, honesty, and trust, prepares them to serve God, while neglect and indulgence allow harmful traits to develop, pass from generation to generation, and end in moral ruin and sorrow.