Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

the succession of years. Finally, but not least, pray for your boy. Do the best you can; commit all you cannot do Never despair, for no one knows what is in a

God hears prayer. to God, and hope. boy."

But your girl does not need attention less because your boy, perhaps, needs it more.

"One of the most common defects in the training of girls," writes a mother who has proved her right to be counsellor in this important work, "is that they are not brought up to live alone, 'to stay at home in their own minds.' From babyhood they are watched, tended, noticed, guarded, never let alone. Even young infants are not so much as permitted to think out the mysteries of a door-knob; but are tossed up, their little trains of thought interrupted, their solitude continually invaded. Let a little girl be left to herself hours of every day, near to loving friends who have some other occupation than watching and advising her, and she will invent boundless resources, and be never so happy. Solitude is a necessity to the formation of character."

"I have more than once noticed," says a German author, "that girls who have grown up in the deepest retirement and in the simplest circumstances, when Providence leads them into the great world, maintain their position with such elegant tact and behavior that high-born ladies who are brought into contact with them cannot be sufficiently astonished at it."

Teach your children love of the beautiful. "Place a young girl under the care of a kind-hearted, graceful woman, and she, unconsciously to herself, grows into a graceful lady. Place a boy in the establishment of a straightforward, thorough-going business man, and the boy becomes a self-reliant, practical business man. Children are susceptible creatures, and circumstances, scenes, actions, always impress. As you influence them, not by arbitrary rules, nor by stern example alone, but in a thousand other ways that speak through beautiful forms, pretty pictures, so they will grow. Teach your children, then, to love the beautiful. Give them a corner in the garden for flowers, encourage them to put it in the shape of hanging baskets, allow them to have their favorite trees, teach them to wander in the prettiest woodlets, show them where

they can best view the sunsets, rouse them in the morning, not with the stern time to work,' but with the enthusiastic, 'see the beautiful sunrise! Buy for them beautiful pictures, and encourage them to decorate their rooms each in his or her own childish way. Give them an inch and they will take a mile. Allow them the privilege and they will make your home beautiful.”

Think what your home would be without the children.

"Oh, the weary, solemn silence
Of a house without the children;
Oh, the strange, oppressive silence,
Where the children come no more!
Ah! the longing of the sleepless
For the soft arms of the children!
Ah! the longing for the faces

Peeping through the open door-
Faces gone for evermore!

"Strange it is to wake at midnight
And not hear the children breathing,
Nothing but the old clock ticking,
Ticking, ticking by the door.
Strange to see the little dresses
Hanging up there all the morning;
And the gaiters-ah! their patter,
We will hear it never more
On our mirth-forsaken floor.

"What is home without the children?
'T is the earth without its verdure,
And the sky without its sunshine;
Life is withered to the core!
So we'll leave this dreary desert,
And we'll follow the good Shepherd
To the greener pastures vernal,

Where the lambs have 'gone before'
With the Shepherd evermore!

"Oh, the weary solemn silence

Of a house without the children;
Oh, the strange, oppressive stillness
Where the children come no more!

Ah! the longing of the sleepless

For the soft arms of the children!

Ah! the longing for the faces

Peeping through the opening door-
Faces gone for evermore!"

Prohibit bad language from your home. Compel necessary economy. Provide every possible attraction for your children. Remove everything repulsive. Allow proper pastimes and pleasures. Let the sunshine in, the clouds will come of themselves.

Don't crush your child's curiosity, but give it direction, and at the proper period such satisfaction as you are able. The best way to study the bent of your boy's mind is in the questions he asks. Instruct him yourself, or evil companions will. Heed the mandate: "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The training belongs to you; it is your duty, your responsibility. The issue is God's; he will take care of

that.

It is true that the Holy Spirit alone can give spiritual life to our households; but we can mould the character and fit the temple for the Divine Presence. We can "build the altar and lay the sacrifice in order, and then wait in confident assurance for the promised blessing from heaven. We can train our children up in the right way; seek to bind their will to submission to the Divine will; cultivate filial and confiding communion with them about everything; train them to believe in him, to fear him, to love him with all their heart and mind and soul and strength, to worship him, to give him thanks, to put their whole trust in him, to call upon him, to honor his holy name and word, and to serve him all the days of their life." A family thus trained to devoutness is almost sure at length to receive the benedictions of heaven and the reward of eternal felicity.

Take your children to church. Do not tell them to "Go!" but take them by the hand and say, "Come!" A valuable feature of your own discipline as a parent is in the example you set for your children. What those who are under your care see will more than counteract what they hear. "Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?"

A life inconsistent with good counsel may

prove your children's curse. Walk with your sons and daughters to the Lord's house, and encourage them to listen while the minister tells the story of Jesus and his love. A sermon will not be less interesting to yourself if it benefits your children also. Spurgeon tells of a man who used to say to his wife, "Mary, go to church and pray for us both." But the man dreamed one night that when he and his wife got to the gate of heaven Peter said, “Mary, go in for them both." He awoke and made up his mind that it was time for him to become a Christian.

It will answer no better for us to say to our children, “Go to church! Be good!" We must lead the way.

"Of one thing," truthfully observes Rev. Dr. Thomas Smyth, “you may be sure you cannot save your children, but you may destroy them. You cannot make them Christians, but you can throw insuperable obstacles in the way of their becoming such. Would you then have your child a Christian, you must be one, and live one. It will not be enough to talk and profess and seem to be a Christian; you must be a Christian. You must think, and feel, and love, and live a Christian. Your children will be what you are, not what you seem. They will feel, if they cannot discern, your real character. They will do as you in heart do, not as you say and pray and preach. If you are worldly, covetous, money-making money-hoarding, penurious, inactive, then by irresistible instinct they will be moulded by your character. It will be daguerreotyped by invisible secret processes upon their hearts. Your will, your heart, will impress themselves upon theirs."

Mothers have a special charge in the religious instruction of their little ones. It is a work which cannot be delegated to others. No friends, however near, no outside Christians, however true, can do for your offspring what you, mothers, can accomplish. It is within your province and power to write lessons on those tender hearts that will never fade away. John Randolph once declared: "I should have been an atheist if it had not been for one recollection-and that was the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hands in hers, and taught me to say, 'Our Father, which art in heaven.'" Let not mothers allow any other work or care or pleasure to displace these responsible duties. There can

be no excuse. Discharge while you attend to other matters if you have not leisure for them alone. "I thank God," once observed a visiting brother, "that I have lived a few months in the family of a Christian woman. I learned more about religion from that Christian mother as she went about her duties and bore up under the trials of life than I did from all the preachers I ever heard."

Be not afraid that your words and work, your cares and prayers, will be lost. Some one recounts how, in 1861, a terrible gale raged along the coast of England. In one bay (Hartlepool) it wrecked eighty-one vessels. While the storm was at its height the Rising Sun, a stout brig, struck on Longrear Rock, a reef extending a mile from one side of the bay. She sank, leaving only her two topmasis above the foaming waves.

The only

The life-boats were away, rescuing wrecked crews. means of saving the men clinging to the swaying masts was the rocket apparatus. Before it could be adjusted one mast fell. Just as the rocket bearing the life-line went booming out of the mortar the other mast toppled over.

Sadly the rocket men began to draw in their line, when suddenly they felt that something was attached to it, and in a few minutes hauled on to the beach the apparently lifeless body of a sailor boy. Trained and tender hands worked, and in a short time he became conscious.

With amazement he gazed around on the crowd of kind and sympathizing friends. He looked up into the weather-beaten face of the old fisherman near him, and asked:

"Where am I?"

"Thou art safe, my lad."

"Where's the cap'n?"

"Drowned, my lad."
"The mate, then?"
"He's drowned, too."

"The crew?"

"They are all lost, my lad; thou art the only one saved."

The boy stood overwhelmed for a few moments; then he raised both his hands, and cried in a loud voice,

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »