^ A. Maoleod.
ST. MARK 245
of domestic life. Husband and wife, for example, learn, as the
years go on, to repose the most absolute trust in one another. In a word, the bonds of trust which bind society together are forged in the first instance in the home.^
^ I cannot tell you how much I owe to the solemn words of my good mother. It was the custom on Sunday evenings, while we were yet little children, for her to stay at home with us ; and then we sat round the table, and read verse by verse, and she explained the Scripture to us. After that was done, then came the time of pleading; there was a little piece of AUeyn's Alarm, or of Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and this was read with pointed observations made to each of us as we sat round the table; and the question was asked how long it would be before we would think about our state, how long before we would seek the Lord. Then came a mother's prayer, and some of the words of a mother's prayer we shall never forget, even when our hair is grey.2
(2) By want of Religious Education and Influence, — Among the problems of the age none is more difficult than that involved in the question, " How shall the Church best succeed in reaching the masses of the people and bringing them to Christ ? " What- ever else may be included in the solution of this problem, we shall come nearest to success when we have discovered how to lay hold of the children. The all-impelling motive by which the Church needs to be animated in its work among the young is supplied by the fact that the children belong to Christ. " Of such is the kingdom of God." Think what that truth implies. If these children — and not these only, but all children every- where— are Christ's, the work of training their young souls for Him is not one to be performed just anyhow or anywhere or by any means. Our Master has laid upon us individually a heavy responsibility in regard to these His little ones. Some of them are the children of God-fearing parents ; but are those parents doing all they can to " bring them up in the nurture and admoni- tion of the Lord " ? Some of them, we believe, already cherish in their hearts a love for the Saviour and a yearning after goodness which they themselves cannot express, and are almost too young to understand. What are we doing — are we doing anything — to develop that " soul of goodness " in them ? Are we taking them by the hand to lead them to Jesus ? Many of the children
' D. J. Vaughan. • C. H. Spurgeon.
246 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
around us are already learning lessons of evil from their associations at home and in the street. Are we hasting to eradicate these noxious weeds and to replace them by the good seed of truth and virtue ? If we would reclaim the world for Christ, we must begin with the young ; and alike as a stimulus to duty and as an encouragement to our toil, we are reminded that the children belong to our Lord and Master. " Of such is the kingdom of God,"
•[[ A childhood without reverence, a childhood without any upward affection, a childhood to which nothing is mysterious, and therefore nothing sacred, a childhood with no heaven, with no encircling world about it save that of the men and women who minister to its wants ; with a spiritual imagination wholly undeveloped; a childhood discontented, wearied, and without interest, satisfied with nothing, not even with self, though with no guide or hope towards improving that self — what picture so sad as the material crime that follows an unreligious youth.i
^ We are told that once in the course of a conversation with Madame Campan, Napoleon remarked, " The old systems of in- struction seem to be worth nothing ; what is yet wanting in order that the people should be properly educated?" "Mothers," replied Madame Campan. The reply struck the Emperor. " Yes," he said, " here is a system of education in one word. Be it your care, then, to train up mothers who shall know how to educate their children." Have we not there a striking testimony to the power of home influence, to the degree in which those who watch over a child's earliest years mould and direct his after life ? It is more than a genealogical notice, it is a testimony to character, when in the Books of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah and Israel we read of such and such a king, " and his mother's name was so-and-so, and he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord." The memory of the prayers which he had learned by his mother's knee saved, so he himself tells us, a great American statesman from atheism. " The older I grow," says Thomas Carlyle, "and I am now upon the brink of eternity, the more comes back to me the first sentence of the Catechism which I learned when a child, and the fuller and deeper its meaning becomes, ' What is the chief end of man ? To glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever.' " ^