^ You are a part of God ! You have no place or meaning in this world but in relationship to Him. The full relationship can be realized only by obedience. Be obedient to Him, and you shall
* C. Jordan, Messages to the Children, 40. »
PROVERBS XX. 27 307
shine by His light, not your own. Then you cannot be dark, for He shall kindle you. Then you shall be as incapable of burning with false passion as you shall be quick to answer with the true. Then the devil may hold his torch to you, as he held it to the heart of Jesus in the desert, and your heart shall be as un- inflammable as His. But as soon as God touches you, you shall burn with a light so truly your own that you shall reverence your own mysterious life, and yet so truly His that pride shall be impossible. What a philosophy of human life is that ! " 0, to be nothing, nothing ! " cries the mystic singer in his revival hymn, desiring to lose himself in God. " Nay, not that ; O to be something, something," remonstrates the unmystical man, longing for work, ardent for personal life and character. Where is the meeting of the two? How shall self-surrender meet that hifh self-value without which no man can justify his living and honour himself in his humanity ? Where can they meet but in this truth ? Man must be something that he may be nothing. The something which he must be consists in simple fitness to utter the Divine life which is the only original power in the universe. And then man must be nothing that he may be some- thing. He must submit himself in obedience to God, that so God may use him, in some way in which his special nature only could be used, to illuminate and help the world.^
^ Long ago one could have seen, in not a few churches, upon Christmas Eve, two small lights, symbolizing the Divine and human natures, being gradually brought together until they blended in one brilliant flame. This truth was also typified in the cloven tongues of fire that hovered over the disciples' heads upon the day of Pentecost. So with the restoration of the vital connexions between man and God through Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit shall commingle with our spirit, intensifying the holy flame, so that it shall penetrate to the farthest reaches of life and character. Our moral vision shall be corrected, so that truth and error, right and wrong shall appear to us in sharply-defined contrast. He shall lead us into all truth.
Come, Light serene and still. Our inmost bosoms fill;
Dwell in each breast : We know no dawn but Thine; Send forth Thy beams divine, On our dark souls to shine,
And make us blest.^
^ P. Brooks, The Candle of the Lord, 17. « W. King.
The Training op Children.
309
Literature.
Clayton (J. W.), The Genius of God, 50.
Horton (E. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositor's Bible), 303.
Mackey (H. 0.), Miniature Sermons, 62.
Mellor (E.), The Hem of Christ's Garment, 52.
Miller (J.), Sermons, i. 137.
Murray (A.), The Children for Christ, 170.
Norton (J. N.), Old Paths, 479.
Rutherford (J. S.), The Seriousness of Life, 167.
Ryle (J. C), The Upper Room, 282.
Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 215.
Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 124.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. 341 (H. Jones).
3»
The Training of Children.
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And even when he is old he will not depart from it. —Prov. xxii. 6.
The text may have originated with Solomon. If so, it contains the judgment of the most observant and sagacious of men. More probably it was a proverb in Israel, and therefore expresses the general judgment of the race which has trained its children more admirably than any other which has yet appeared on earth.
It is the Scripture expression of the principle on which all education rests, that a child's training can decide what his after- life is to be. Without this faith there could be no thought of anything like education ; when this faith is elevated to a trust in God and His promises, it grows into the assurance that a parent's labour will not be in vain in the Lord.
The Pakents.
"The Lord hath given the father honour over the children, and hath confirmed the authority of the mother over the sons," says Ecclesiasticus. It is a rare opportunity which is given to parents. No sphere of influence which they may acquire can be like it; other spheres may be wider, but they can never be so intense or so decisive.
1. To govern their children, parents must first be able to govern themselves. A large part of parental discipline must consist in rewards and punishments. God's government is full of them. Every act of obedience u» His law is rewarded ; every act of disobedience is punished. But the Divine punishments are
312 THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN
administered without a tinge of passion. When parents punish children, it is often only bad temper at work, A child by his fretful ways makes the house a purgatory until his mother's patience is exhausted. Then she boxes his ears, and so makes him realize, not that she can govern him, but that she cannot govern herself,