REV. J. TALLACH, Oban.
THE Scriptures must be read and studied by our young people, because it is through them alone that the Holy Spirit makes known to us the Word Incarnate, and it is only through the Spirit’s blessing upon the Word that we are changed and made fit for Heaven. If parents wish a happy eternity for their children, they should ponder this question well. Occasional and sentimental thoughts and words about their children and Heaven are not enough. Something much more definite, deliberate and decisive is required. As God brings children into the world, and hands them over to the keeping of their parents, the most conspicuous direction and responsibility laid upon such parents along with the child is this: “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” To withhold this word from a child, to refrain from encouragement to “eat” the Word, to neglect to provide “meals” of the Word, to relegate the Word and a parent’s responsibility under it, to some subordinate place, is surely to be chargeable with aiding in the spiritual starvation and ultimate suicide of our offspring. “I have now finished making use of this book; it has been the means of bringing me to my Saviour, the means he has used to keep me to himself in this evil world, and the means by which he has prepared me for meeting with him now. Soon I shall be with him and so will require the Book no longer. What it has done for me it can do for you, Mapupo. Take it, read it, listen to it, follow it. I have finished.” So said a dear girl in our Ingwenya Mission, as she handed her beloved Bible to her younger brother, just shortly before she entered into glory to meet with its Author. The aim of all memory work, reading and searching must never fall short of the grand discovery. “We have found the Messias, which is being interpreted, the Christ.”
(2) The bestowal of the Sacrament of Baptism on a child, lays parents under solemn obligations to encourage children to study the Word of God.
The Scriptures reveal God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and it is to the God of that great name that children have been given over in Baptism. Let us notice, the strong language used by the Shorter Catechism in setting forth the relationship between God and the child in this Sacrament. The terms are chosen with care and they can hardly be less binding: “Our engagement to be the Lord’s.” How often do these words come to the ears of an anxious parent with challenge and encouragement. Behind these words are the Scriptures in support of them, and these are the bands, merciful, gracious, loving, tender and powerful, which reach out and draw the child near to the Word and to God. Who can tell what useful living, what glory to grace and what enjoyment of Heaven are in the fruition of this bond of engagement. The deepest and most precious meaning is in the form of a secret—a secret through covenant between Christ and the Child thus bound to him. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will manifest his covenant to them.” This secret is of the Holy Spirit, and is always conveyed through the Word.
Let us teach our young people that the Word bears news from God to them, of a covenant arrangement, and that in a way most close, intimate and personal, God has in this ordinance bound every engagement of theirs to be his own. These engagements, in number and in nature, can be known only through study of the Word. It is thus that these three meet in the Word, a young person’s soul, a covenant of grace which ensures its salvation and an ordinance calculated in a way most solemn and impressive, to introduce the young person to the God of the covenant. Let us say, once more, it is in the Word alone that these three meet. Only through the Word can young people learn how high and holy is the status of that calling, wherewith God in Christ extends to them a place among the Sons and Daughters of the Lord God Almighty.
A baptised child who is left “Wordless” by his parent is an abnormality and a monstrosity, yea he is in danger of becoming one of those abominations which shall in no wise enter into life. Dear parents, do not regard the baptism of your child as merely an interesting and impressive item which must pass rapidly into the past of both parent and child and then disappear. As your eyes fall on that Bible on shelf or table, I tell you that the engagements of that solemn hour, when you gave your child up to the seals of the Covenant, are things of unageing importance. Take the Word into your hands, with a prayer in your heart, and with a vision of a Saviour who says, “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not,” before your eyes, begin with new interest and aim, to seek for your child, that engrafting unto Christ and that engagement which is the Lord’s and which, by the Holy Spirit is effected by the Word only.
(3) God commands meditation and study of his Word by our young people and on that account we must insist on it.
The ability to read finds its highest end in providing a fitness to search the Word of God. This applies to all, but it requires to be emphasised among our young people, for this is an age when every child reads much. “Come here, my girl. You go to school do you not? There you learn about letters and words. I want to be able to read, but I shall never be able to go to school. I want to know how to read the Bible and you are going to be my teacher. Each night on your return from school you will teach me the letters and I too will be able to read.” Thus spoke an old African Christian friend of mine. Yes and he succeeded in learning to read too. I want to be able to read, but only for the purpose of reading God’s Word. This was my friend’s chief interest in his home tuition. “Teach them to thy sons and thy sons’ sons, specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together and I will make them hear my words, and they shall learn to fear me all the days they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach them to their children.” The enactments of Horeb were solemn and fitted to impress parents with the solemn work of making their children, “children of the Word,” but the enactments of Calvary with “the veil taken away in the reading,” are still more solemn. The ability to bring the eyes into the service of the Word of God in reading, increaseth our responsibility to our children beyond all reckoning. We must put the matter simply like this: “What is man’s chief end in learning to read?” “To enable him to search God’s Word so as to know his will for our salvation.” Our children read in preparation for examinations, but what will be their position on the day of the great Examination? They read for profit, but are we to remain unconcerned while by the loss of their souls they lose their all? Oh, eternity, how many from your deepest bosom shall find, in their ability to read, the sharpest of all their worms which die not.
(4) Following on the above, we must teach our young people to study the Bible so that they may become children of the One Book.
What I mean by that is soon told. I knew a man who while in his “teens” went to live in lodgings. With kindly remark, his landlady pointed to a bookcase, and told him that she had placed it there for his books. “My books,” he exclaimed. “Why, it is far too big, I am a boy of one book.” As he spoke he took a book from his case and placed it in the bookcase. For long it was the only book there. Solitary it stood there—the Bible supreme. Yes, and he continued to be a “boy of one book” all his days. I knew him when he was 70 years old, and he still got up early enough to have an hour’s Bible study before engaging in the affairs of life. He had been a successful man of business, and so in his time he must have read many books, but in the supreme place it occupied in his life, the Bible was the One Book for him. There it stood in his old age; one part of it a staff in support of “the life that now is his,” the other half pointing hopefully towards “the life which is to come.”
The Word of God must be supreme in our hearts. If its sovereignty is to be such, that all other voices are to be dumb before it, if in all the decisions in life its teaching is to be the final authority, if it is to be given its true and proper place as sole arbiter between God and our young peoples’ consciences, then in their youth they must learn to set it on high, and to yield to it that respect and reverence which is due to God alone. In short, if “their latter end is to be peace,” as is the desire of this Book, then in their lives they must be a people of one book. The non-supremacy of the Word means the non-supremacy of God himself. God will not take a lower place in the affairs of men than that place he made for himself. In point of authority, His Word will have all—or nothing, and the tender years of men’s lives are surely the time, through study, to encourage that respect and reverence wherewith they are afterwards to enthroned the Word in their lives. Only one life to live, and only one Book to live it by.
(5) I think that if our children are to grow up sound, solid and sturdy Free Presbyterians, they must be students of the Word.
Here we have a sad fact to face. When they leave home, many young Free Presbyterians give up attending their own church, and there is reason to suspect that the number of those disloyal youths increase each year. Covetousness claims a number. In order to make more money they take on Sabbath work, and as they know that this is directly against the will of their church they hold to the work and leave the church. Pride takes its toll. Many young people resent their being thought old fashioned through their connection with a church which holds to the old paths, and gradually they cast off its bands and disown its authority over them. A desire for sinful liberty moves others. A religion which permits them to carry the name “Christian” into every phase of worldly pleasures, and satisfactions suits them, and the church which offers this Christless liberty becomes the church of their choice. It is true that a number of young people are persons of conviction so deep that they will leave their church for no person; even in marriage they take over their partners with them to their own church, and to all such we readily say, “Well done.” Too often, however, the matter does not work that way, for in some natural affection is stronger than love for the truth. Blind, natural affection is of itself an argument strong enough to make purity of doctrine and practice stand aside, and without much trouble there are those who soon settle down in the church of a loved one. Just because they lack the moral courage to resist the crowd, numbers of our young people are induced to follow it, even when its direction is away from their church. Let the crowd be large enough, let it speak often and loudly enough, and all that parents, ministers and teachers have taught over a long period of years loses weight and becomes in time so light that it is no heavier than a vaguely disturbing memory.
All this is very humbling, but who is to deny the truth of it? To recall that many of those in their younger days had no intention of leaving their church, only adds to the difficulty. These were the days when there was no test. Now the test has come. For a year or two, or perhaps for no longer than a month or two, they stand, but whatever strength they possessed quickly leaves them just when they need it most. What is lacking? What was lacking in the kind of strength they did have? Was it no more than the following, in the presence of their parents, the church of their fathers? Following of that kind relies on borrowed strength and no wonder it fails so often. What was lacking in the kind of strength they did have? I think that is easily answered. From the purely human side this was lacking—conviction by the truth in depth.
We must so teach our children, the great and grand truths of the Bible, that the separate and distinct witness of their church will appear most natural and necessary to them. The necessity of our church’s standing and witness must grow out of a conviction forced on their consciences under the power of truth. When the truth taught by our church becomes the life-blood of our young peoples’ souls, we may then expect a healthy and intelligent independence such as characterised our fathers. Further, it is only when the truth of God becomes the sole judge in their consciences that our youth will be better able to appreciate the historical movements which influenced and which continue to influence the conduct of our church to-day.
If we think that conviction in a child’s conscience is something less potent than that in an adult, and if on that account we are tempted to pay small attention to the matter, then let us notice the large interest God’s Word has in the child. You have not read God’s Word with attention if you have failed to see the large place it has in its heart for the young people. Further observe. The Word sets its appeal more often to the heart than to the head, and it speaks of the heart as being the seat of conviction. Briefly the truth would seem to be, that as a child’s conscience is more tender than an adult’s, so too, above the adult, must it be open to stronger and deeper conviction. Conviction by the truth and through the truth in their youngest possible days is what is most needed by our youth.
It was the truth working from within them that sent our fathers outside a corrupt church. There, in sight of those who hated them; there, in the grace of meekness; there, on the firm ground of a mighty conviction and in the splendour of unyielding truth, did they unfurl their banner. It is our hope and expectation that in their own day our children, without fear, shame or apology, will continue to display that same banner. Our mere wish and hope is not enough, however. Something much more serious must be considered. It is this. In regarding the movement and stand made by our fathers, our youth must never before their own consciences find reason for shame or apology. The testimony must always be in the form of a challenge, and for that there must be deep, strong and constant conviction from the truth. God’s Word must be overlord, and in order to that, the Scriptures must be thoroughly taught and fully understood by our young folks.
I am convinced that the future will show that those who shall remain true to their church, who shall be most thankful to God for the stand made by our fathers, who shall be most vigorous in defence of that stand, and who shall be most careful to maintain a sanctified aloofness from corrupt churches, will be those who have been convinced from the Scriptures of the rightness of our fathers’ stand. Yea, I will venture to go further. The conviction which by grace will work out in their continued separation, will be that which was built up in them by the Holy Spirit, through the truth, for most, in the days of their youth.
Let no person mistake me. We owe a great debt to those who continue to set before us the events leading up to and covering the setting up of our church. In a word: Church History and its lessons must be taught to our young people. Of this kind of teaching our youth cannot have enough. But if these events are presented as no more than several naked items of a momentous time, we cannot expect our youth to be greatly impressed by them. Certainly we cannot expect to experience that intensity of feeling and depth of conviction which was the sore lot of those who passed through the heat and travail of those days. Historical events, which were once so potent that they entered into the very soul of a people, come to mean very little in a succeeding generation. They now represent no more than the trappings, the odds and ends, the bits and pieces of what was once an imposing array. Under the clamour of a new generation; the roar of defiance and the shout of victory are now no more than an indistinct echo of a conflict, which in some vague way interests the children because it involved the fathers. The impressions felt by the way and extent in which the fathers were involved, tend thus to become fainter and fainter, until finally they cease to have any influence in determining the attitude of the children to their father’s church. Historical items can be revitalised, however. The History is of the past, but the truth which gave rise to that history is ever living. Illumination from the truth carries conviction, and when conviction is yoked to past events, then these become alive. Re-charged by living truth, these events never age. Let us, therefore, teach present truth so that, for our children, it becomes the interpreter of the past actions and the present standing of our church.
And so we will hope that our present youth, walking in a new generation, and under the power of these self-same truths as brought their fathers out from a corrupt church, again like their fathers shall be able to discern corruptness, and under the conviction of truth avoid all contact with the evil thing. So, too, shall we hope to see them glorifying in the truth, which both in their fathers’ days, and now in their own, continues to be to them “The lively Oracles of God.”
(6) We must encourage our children to study the Bible in their young days, because the day is not far off when of themselves they will require to make decisions earlier in life and with greater independence than we older people were accustomed to make in our young days.
“Sir, please send me my Bible, my life is not well without the Word.” This is the S.O.S. I received from a young African after he had gone to study in a large school. There among strangers and surroundings which might prove damaging to his faith, his call was for the Word of life. He had an early start from Ingwenya, and had left the Bible where he had last read it. His habit was to draw strength from it daily. Now in his altered condition’s he missed it very much. So will it be with our young people one day. They must leave home to attend High school, to live in hostels or lodgings. Some of them may have to leave home to work in large towns, and we do not forget the service due in army or navy when the boys are a little older. Away from the sympathy and interest of loved ones, they will find themselves surrounded by new influences, most of which will be discouraging to the good ways they were accustomed to walk in. Now will be the testing time. Now will be the time to prove how much or how little of the spirit of Daniel has been fed to them through acquaintance with the truth of Daniel’s God. If they have formed the habit of reading and studying the Word in their young days, they will find growing up along with them an independence which will not suffer them to be easily moved whatever people say, do or think. Now, in their youth is the time to fortify them against that solemn time of testing. Souls who are to stand tests must need have backbones in them, and the strength of almost all great Christians has been drawn from the backbone of solid truth which from youth grew up within them. A young person without the support of truth in his conscience presents himself as a temptation to the Devil to tempt him.
(7) Our young people must be taught to study the Bible because it is the most precious thing they possess, and they should be made to understand this.
My Bible is a beautiful volume, strongly bound, unsoiled and unimpaired. There are times, however, when I view it differently. As a kind Providence places it in my hands it reaches me bearing the toil and travail of centuries upon it; centuries heaving with agony and loud with the sound of conflict; centuries dripping with tears and blood; centuries seething with hate and cruelty. As I take it in my hands I cannot but note the marks such ages have left upon it. I mark the “holdfasts” of strong men’s hands upon it, and the more delicate imprint left by “young men and maidens too.” It comes to me smeared with the mud and clay of many a cave and gravel pit. It comes blackened with the reek and singed by the fire of many a martyr burning. Truly the price of human blood lies heavily upon it. “Its visage was more marred than any man.” Was it not fashioned in Gethsemane and perfected on Calvary? No Cross—no Bible. No Word Incarnate—no written Word. To me, sinner that I am; the outstanding witness that God has not forsaken me, is in this gift of his—The Word. There do I infallibly learn that God has no delight in the death of the sinner. There, too, with the same assurance, do I find that his delight is in mercy. Without mercy I am undone forever. Woe is to me, if I should forget him who was forsaken of his God, in order that this same God, should by this Word, abound towards me in a closeness of abundant compassion and comfort. Woe is to me if I should in any way undervalue that Word by which his Spirit conveys to me a communion so precious. What price are our children to set upon his Word? Oh, parents, remember that your responsibility in this matter is not measured by the value you set on his Word. No, nor on the value you teach your children to set on it. It is by the value God himself puts on his own Word that both you and your children are to be judged in this solemn matter. They must read, they must study, they must be blessed through and by this blessed Book. If not, one day they will stand in judgment and this same Word, of which I write, will be their sole judge. We began by noticing the provision of “meals” of the Word for our children, now we come to the close, and we see a child, having been starved by his parents of the Word of God now judged. The Word is living, in the yesterday of this life it witnessed that “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,” and now in the to-day of eternity it witnesses to the same truth. Death eternal through the neglect of the Word is the portion of millions from this land of the Bible. Death through neglect of feeding on it will be the death of many from this church of the Bible. What is neglect but a setting the Word at a low price. At what price are you to teach your children to value it? Here is an up-to-date example of how some people value the Word. As you know, missionaries in China have had to withdraw from the country as the Communists have taken over everything. The Lord is sifting the work of missionaries there, and some wonderful things are coming out of it. Some things are sad, but others give great pleasure. Here is one of the pleasurable kind. As the Communists arrived in their district, 200 Christian in one village determined to save at least the New Testament for themselves. This they did by committing every word of the New Testament to memory. Yes, and they succeeded in so doing before the Communists had opportunity to collect and remove their Bibles from them. “The promise is to you and your children and to all that are afar off. . . . We have also a more sure word of Prophecy whereunto ye do well that ye should take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn and the day star arise in your hearts.”