Wise words to help
you with your children's upbringing, comprised
from The Duties of Parents by J.C. Ryle:
"...The world is old and
we have the experience of nearly six thousand years to help us. We live
in days when there is a mighty zeal for education in every quarter. We
hear of new schools rising on all sides. We are told of new systems and
new books for the young, of every sort and description. And still for all
this, the vast majority of children are manifestly not trained in the way
they should go, for when they grow up they do not walk with God. Now how
shall we account for this state of things? The plain truth is, the Lord's
commandment in our text is not regarded and therefore the Lord's promise
in our text is not fulfilled.
"Let everyone ask himself
the question, 'Am I in this matter doing what I can?' A child knows not
yet what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for
his body. You do not let him decide what he shall eat and what he shall
drink and how he shall be clothed.
"Train up your child with
all tenderness, affection and patience.
I do not mean that you are to spoil him, but I do mean that you should
let him see that you love him. Love should be the
silver thread that runs through all your conduct. Kindness, gentleness,
long-suffering, forbearance, patience, sympathy, a willingness to enter
into childish troubles, a readiness to take part in childish joys, these
are the cords by which a child may be led most easily, these are the clues
you must follow if you would find the way to his heart. Few are to be found,
even among grown up people, who are not more easy to draw than to drive.
There is that in all our minds which rises in arms against compulsion;
we set up our backs and stiffen our necks at the very idea of a forced
obedience. We are like young horses in the hand of a breaker: handle them
kindly and make much of them and by and by, you may guide them with thread;
use them roughly and violently and it will be many a month before you get
the mastery of them at all. Now children's minds are cast in much the same
mould as our own. Sternness and severity of manner chill them and throw
them back. It shuts up their hearts and you will weary yourself
to find the door. But let them only see that you have an affectionate feeling
towards them, that you are really desirous to make them happy and do them
good, that if you punish them, it is intended for their profit and that,
like the pelican, you would give your heart's blood to nourish their souls;
let them see this, I say and they will soon be all your own. But they must
be wooed with kindness, if their attention is ever to be won. And surely
reason itself might teach us this lesson. Children are weak and tender
creatures and as such, they need patient and considerate treatment. We
must handle them delicately, like frail machines, lest by rough fingering
we do more harm than good. They are like young plants and need gentle watering
often, but little at a time. We must not expect all things at once. We
must remember what children are and teach them as they are able to bear.
Their minds are like a lump of metal not to be forged and made useful at
once, but only by a succession of little blows. Their understandings are
like narrow necked vessels. We must pour in the wine of knowledge gradually
or much of it will be spilled and lost.
Isaiah
28:9,10 "Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make to understand
doctrine? them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts.
For precept must be upon precept, precept
upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a
little."
"Line upon line and precept
upon precept, here a little and there a little, must be our rule. The whetstone
does its work slowly, but frequent rubbing will bring the scythe to a fine
edge. Truly there is need of patience in training a child, but without
it nothing can be done. Nothing will compensate for the absence of this
tenderness and love. Just as you must set before your children their duty,
command, threaten, punish, reason, but if affection be wanting in your
treatment, your labour will be all in vain. Love is one grand secret of
successful training. Anger and harshness may frighten, but they will not
persuade the child that you are right and if he sees you often out of temper,
you will soon cease to have his respect. A father who speaks to his son
as Saul did to Jonathan.(1Samuel
20:30).need
not expect to retain his influence over that son's mind. Try hard to keep
up a hold on your child's affections. It is a dangerous thing to make your
children afraid of you. This produces reserve and constraint between your
child and yourself and this will come in with fear. Fear puts an end to
openness of manner; fear leads to concealment; fear sows the seed of much
hypocrisy and leads to many a lie. There is a mine of truth in the Apostle's
words to the Colossians:.Colossians
3:21 "Fathers, provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged.".Let
not the advice it contains be overlooked.
"We are made what we are
by training. Train your children with an abiding persuasion on your mind
that much depends upon you. Character takes the form of that mould into
which our first years are cast. God gives your children a mind that will
receive impressions like moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the
starting-point of life to believe what you tell them and to take for granted
what you advise them and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. He
gives you, in short, a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that
the opportunity be not neglected and thrown away. Once let slip, it is
gone for ever.
"If you love your children,
think often of their souls. No interest should weigh with you so much as
their eternal interests. No part of them should be so dear to you as that
part which will never die.
"Soul love is the soul of
all love. To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was
all he had to look to and this life the only season for happiness to do
this is not true love, but cruelty. It is treating him like some beast
of the Earth, which has but one world to look to and nothing after death.
It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he ought to be made to learn
from his very infancy, that the chief end of his life is the salvation
of his soul.
"Train your child to a knowledge
of the Bible. You cannot make your children love the Bible,
I allow. None but the Holy Ghost
can give us a heart to delight in the Word. But you can make your children
acquainted with the Bible. A thorough knowledge of the Bible
is the foundation of all clear views of the knowledge of God. He that is
well grounded in it will not generally be found a waverer and carried about
by every wind of new doctrine.(such
as the idiot religion of evolution).
Any system of training which does not make a knowledge of Scripture the
first thing is unsafe and unsound. Read the Bible to them and explain
it as best you can. Teach them it really
is the word of God, from God who inspired men to write what He wanted
humans to know about Him and about them. Tell them of sin, its guilt, its
consequences, its power, its vileness: you will find they can comprehend
something of this. Tell them of the Lord Emmanuel the Christ and His work
for our salvation in the atonement, the cross, the blood, the sacrifice,
the intercession.(these
are all in this site): you will discover
there is something not beyond them.(their
capacity
for
comprehension).in
all this. Tell them of the work of the Holy Spirit in humanity's heart,
how He changes and renews and sanctifies and purifies. You will soon see
they can go along with you in some measure in this. In short, I suspect
we have no idea how much a little child can take in of the length and breadth
of the glorious gospel. They see far more of these things than we suppose.
Fill their minds with Scripture. Let the Word dwell in them richly:.Colossians
3:16. Give them the Holy Bible, the whole Bible, even
while they are young. As to the age when instruction of a child should
begin, no general rule can be laid down. The mind seems to open in some
children much more quickly than in others. We seldom begin too early. There
are wonderful examples on record of what a child can attain to, even at
three years old.
"Train them to
pray. Find a good church and take them to it and be sure you have them
sit near you when they are there. Keep them involved with you in things
spiritual:.Acts
21:5. Tell them of the importance of hearing the Word preached and
that it is God's ordinance for converting, sanctifying and building up
the souls of men. Tell them how the Apostle Paulenjoins
us not."to forsake
the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is"....Hebrews
10:25,
but to exhort one another, to stir one another up. As they are under your
roof, it should be a rule of your house for every one in health to honour
the Lord's house upon the Lord's day.(Sunday).and
that you reckon one breaking this rule to be a murderer of his own
soul. To go to church is one thing, but to behave well at church is
quite another. And believe me, there is no security for good behaviour
like that of having them under your own eye. The minds of young people
are easily drawn aside and their attention lost and every possible means
should be used to counteract this.
"Train them to a habit of
faith.
I mean by this, you should train them up to believe what you say. You should
try to make them feel confidence in your judgment and respect your opinions,
as better than their own. You should accustom them to think that, when
you say a thing is bad for them, it must be bad and when you say it is
good for them, it must be good; that your knowledge, in short, is better
than their own and that they may rely implicitly on your word. Teach them
to feel that what they know not now, they will probably know hereafter
and to be satisfied there is a reason and a needs be for everything you
require them to do.
"Who indeed can describe
the blessedness of a real spirit of faith? Or rather, who can tell the
misery that unbelief has brought upon the world? Unbelief made Eve eat
the forbidden fruit. She doubted the truth of God's words:."You
shall surely die.".Unbelief
made the old world reject Noah's warning and so perish in sin. Unbelief
kept Israel in the wilderness, it was the bar that kept them from entering
the promised land. Unbelief made some Jews crucify the Lord of glory. They
believed not the voice of Moses and the prophets, though read to them every
day. And unbelief is the reigning sin of man's heart down to this very
hour, unbelief in God's promises, unbelief in God's threatenings, unbelief
in our own sinfulness, unbelief in our own danger, unbelief in everything
that runs counter to the pride and worldliness of our evil hearts. Reader,
you train your children to little purpose if you do not train them to a
habit of implicit faith, faith in their parents word, confidence that what
their parents say must be right. I have heard it said by some, that you
should require nothing of children which they cannot understand that you
should explain and give a reason for everything you desire them to do.
I warn you solemnly against such a notion. I tell you plainly, I think
it an unsound and rotten principle. No doubt it is absurd to make a mystery
of everything you do and there are many things which it is well to explain
to children, in order that they may see that they are reasonable and wise.
But to bring them up with the idea that they must take nothing on trust,
that they, with their weak and imperfect understandings, must have the
"why" and the wherefore made clear to them at every step they take, this
is indeed a fearful mistake and likely to have the worst effect on their
minds. Reason with your child if you are so disposed, at certain times,
but never forget to keep him in mind.(if
you really love him).that
he is but a child after all, that he thinks as a child, he understands
as a child and therefore must not expect to know the reason of everything
at once. Set before him the example of Isaac, in the day when Abraham took
him to offer him on Mount Moriah..(Genesis
22:1-13).He
asked his father that single question "Where is the lamb for a burnt-offering?"
and he got no answer but this, "God will provide Himself a lamb. How or
where or whence or in what manner or by what means, all this Isaac was
not told, but the answer was enough. He believed that it would be well,
because his father said so and he was content. Tell your children, too,
that we must all be learners in our beginnings.
"Train them in obedience.
Train them in fairness. Justice is fairness or should be. Train them to
be wise, strong, independent and with guidance from within. Show them where
society is missing the mark."
