As surely as Pharaoh’s daughter said to Moses’ mother, “Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages” (Exodus xi. 9), so the Most High says, though in different language, to every mother to whom He gives the great and precious gift of a new-born child:—”Train up a child in the way it should go; and when he is old he will not depart from it,” and “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Ephesians vi. 4). The child should be prayed for that it would be “a proper child,” and the “training in the way he should go” should commence with the presenting of the child alive. Parents should henceforth seek for the child, first and foremost, “the Kingdom of God and His righteousness,” divinely promised and assured that, all other necessary and secondary things shall be added. “But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” (II Timothy, iii. 14-15). “And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.” (Deuteronomy vi. 7).
It is amazing how some professing Christians neglect the religious training of their children in view of the repeated emphasis laid upon this subject both in the Old and New Testament Scriptures. Let us consider two further important examples:—(Genesis xviii. 19) “For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him.” What a blessed man was Abraham to have received such Divine approval, and what an example to others, in this connection he set, till the end of time. The other instance is in Deuteronomy, 4th Chapter, 9th and 10th verses:—”Only take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life: but teach them thy sons, and thy sons’ sons; specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, ‘Gather Me the people together, and I will make them hear My words, that they may learn to fear Me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.'” Let the reader read in the light of the foregoing the first eight verses of the seventy-eighth psalm, and let us recall our solemn baptismal vows. “I will pay my vows unto the Lord now in the presence of all His people.” (Psalm cxvi. 18).
As we live in days when various youth organisations abound, both outside and inside the professing church, it is interesting and instructive to observe that so far from the much-talked-of juvenile delinquency having simultaneously diminished, the evil has actually increased considerably. How is it that such youth organisations as the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Bands of Hope, Boys Brigades, and various others, have not contributed to the diminishing of recalcitrance among the youths of our generation? We have no hesitation in tracing the cause to the fact that all these organisations are fertile sources in destroying the most potent influence in Church and family life—the family pew. Even the Sabbath-school, which has been an influence for good in many a young life, is not a substitute for the family pew, but, on the contrary, in many important particulars, it is too often an unfortunate necessity. For instance, where parents have either not the ability to impart religious instruction to their children, or will not do so through sheer disinclination, the Sabbath-school has often proved a useful, and, in some cases, a blessed, alternative, but still all this only emphasises the incomparableness of parental instruction, and the unrivalled influence for good of the family pew. The family is the fundamental unit of society.
It still holds true, to a great extent, that “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world,” and next to being in the Kingdom of grace oneself, the greatest privilege under Heaven, is to have a truly God-fearing mother. Scriptural parental instruction, reinforced by the example of a godly home, together with the moulding power of the family pew, under a faithful Gospel ministry, constitute character-forming influences second to none.
It has often been objected, with more superficial plausibility than truth and reality, that as church services are long, and the preaching expository and doctrinal, full of the solid meat of Scripture, what can the child make of it all? Is it not beyond him, and would he not be as well running about in the open spaces for all the good he gets? The superficiality, apart from the un-Scripturalness, of this irresponsible objection is at once apparent when one considers that all the time the child’s subconscious mind, in spite of himself, is registering and retaining the outstanding phrases and illustrations. As one who was thus trained left it on record:— “The favourite texts of the preacher, the habitual sentences and the continual application of the whole discourse stick to him like burrs; and they become his permanent possession.” The same writer continues:—“In after years the child was quite convinced that the ground and framework of all his theology and his knowledge of Bible truth were received in the sanctuary, and his subsequent reading and study have only been a matter of filling in the details. I value Sabbath schools, and yet, I am old-fashioned enough to assert with all the force I can give it, the best of all training grounds for boys and girls is the ordinary worship of the sanctuary.” He concludes:—“One of the deepest tragedies of the situation to-day is that boys and girls are not being brought to the ordinary services of the Church as they used to be, either through sheer laziness and indifference of the parents, or through some mistaken notion that the Church is not for young folks. The Church, and all that it stands for, are as much the heritage of the boys and girls as of the older people.” “Holiness for ever, Lord, thine house becometh well.”
It is right and proper that parents should be as concerned for the spiritual condition of their prospective sons-in-law and daughters-in-law as of their own family, for, as the Rev. John Brown of Haddington put it, in his dying advice to his family:—“How dreadful for your own souls, and for those of your children, if you take unto your bosom an unconverted lump of wrath! For the Lord’s sake, let no beauty, no affability, no wealth, decoy any of you into this dangerous snare, which may exclude the grace of God from your family till the end of time. If the Lord gives you families and children, bring them up for God.” If Scotland is to be restored to pristine Christianity as a nation, the importance of the family pew must be re-emphasised.
In conclusion, let me emphasise that however natural it may be for unconverted parents to be satisfied with equipping their children to “get on in the world,” God-fearing parents should manifest that the spiritual welfare of their children is their first and chief concern. How sadly different the views of many parents to those of the saintly Rev. Robert M. McCheyne, who declared that if he had twelve sons, a figure he afterwards raised to twelve thousand sons, he would plead with the Most High to make Gospel ministers of every one of them. It is, consequently, little wonder that, in these days, the true, faithful, and sincere labourers are so few in view of the plentiful harvest. We must not, however, be regarded as advocating, or, for a moment, countenancing, a man-made, or bursary-made, ministry—a great curse in our day.