TEXT: EPH. vi. 4.
IN making special mention of our children in our prayers, as we have done to-day, what we have chiefly in our thoughts is not merely to commend their earthly life and welfare, with all that affects it, to God’s gracious care; we are much more concerned to obtain a blessing on the unfolding of their spiritual faculties, that it may be carried on in a right way, well-pleasing to God. This prayer is prompted in the first place by the humble conviction that if our manifold cares and painstaking for our children, which fill up so large a part of our life, are to prosper according to our heart’s desire, the Holy Spirit must work in them; and further, we are encouraged to offer the prayer by the devout confidence that this is so. It is just in this confidence that we present our children in their tender infancy to be received by the heavenly Father into the Christian Church, that is, into the fellowship of His Spirit, by the sacrament of baptism; and as often as we take part in such an act we anew acknowledge this conviction and profess this confidence. It is reasonable, therefore, to sup pose that we should be agreed as to the kind of influence we exercise on the young, and that in the hands of all Christians this important work should take one and the same direction. For if the Spirit of God is at work in the hearts of our children, what can we desire but to be His instruments? For Him alone, and in His name, not for ourselves, can we expend our cares on them. To try to make out of the rising generation either a profit to their elders or an exact copy of them, is an aim which we must leave to those who think first and most of themselves, because they lack this glorious faith in a divine Spirit who works in man, and with that, necessarily, the faith that there can be any progress in all that makes man’s true dignity. But for us, let our one aim in the training of our children be the honour of God; they are the fairest portion of the vineyard which He has set us to cultivate. The essential point in all Christian training of children is to make them susceptible to the influence of the Spirit who is promised to them as well as to ourselves. We are to aim at this by trying to check the earliest symptoms of whatever might afterwards interfere with or oppose that influence, and striving by word and deed to awaken in them longings for what they can attain to only by the Spirit’s help we are to do it by helping them to judge clearly of every human model that appears to them worthy of imitation, and making them quick to see what is to be rejected. Thus they will be prepared for receiving and retaining the image of the Saviour; and this is the aim and spirit that should characterize both our general inter course with the young, and all the special loving cares that we bestow on them. And the less of selfishness there is in this love, the less these efforts depend merely on natural feeling and impulse, the more possible and right it is for the whole of us as a community to participate in both. We can receive all the little ones without distinction, as the Lord said, in His name, for they are all represented to us by that child whom He set before the disciples; and while it is a most precious blessing from God to be directly entrusted with the care of a portion of the younger generation, there can be no object more worthy of the exertions of those who have not been thus privileged, than the furthering of this great work by every means in their power, despising no part of it that may fall to their share. In this sense of brotherly and common interest, therefore, let us pursue our meditation on this subject to-day, and may God grant us His blessing.
In this passage we find another precept added to that which I lately took as our subject of discourse from another epistle. That first exhortation was meant to set before us that which, according to the mind of the apostle, we ought most carefully to avoid in the training of children; this further counsel is meant, I might say, to include everything that ought to find a place in our intercourse with them, in order to their being brought up in the discipline and admonition of the Lord. It may indeed seem at first sight as if the apostle’s direction were partial and insufficient. When we remember on how many different things we expend labour and pains in the education of the young, and how we all, without exception, have it in view not merely that they should turn out pious and Christian people, but that they should be thoroughly fitted for every worldly business they may engage in, and should develop every pleasing and estimable quality of mind and heart, this thought may very naturally arise. But the apostle’s own feeling was certainly not that he was speaking of some single part of the work, incidentally selected, but that he had hit on a counsel which included everything. Let us then see if we cannot find in these words the basis of all training such as God approves, And to this end we must inquire what is implied in doing everything for the young, first with a view to discipline, and secondly for a purpose of admonition.