In this simple way, by God's grace, a living testimony for truth is always to be kept alive in the land. The beloved of the Lord are to hand down their witness for the gospel to their heirs, and these again to their next descendants.
This is our first duty, we are to begin at the family hearth. He is a bad preacher, who does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched but home has a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord's arrangements.
To teach our children is a personal duty. We cannot delegate it to Sunday School Teachers, or to the church. These can assist us but cannot relieve us from the sacred obligation. Mothers and fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the Most High God.
Parental teaching is a natural duty. Who is so fit to look to after child's well-being, as those who are the authors of his actual being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than brutish!
Family instruction is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots, atheism is covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction of children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved to be an accepted work, for God has often saved the children through the parents' prayers and admonitions.
May every house into which this counsel shall come, honor the Lord in this matter and receive His smile!
[Charles H. Spurgeon]
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Deuteronomy 6:6-9 … And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: 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. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.
Ephesians 6:4 … And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.
Joel 1:3 … Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.❤
