The Christian Training of Children.
I. Man has enemies enough within; corruption of many kinds is deeply rooted in the human heart, and, sooner or later, springs up and manifests itself in various forms, according to different natural dispositions. And it is a comparatively rare thing that sinful tendencies show themselves for the first time in mature life. All the evil tendencies in a child's nature will have shown themselves very unmistakably before he has exchanged his father's house for the great stage of the world. If dispositions like our own have been found in our children, it was the effect of our hurtful example; the sin of the old called forth that of the young. Or, if they have opposite faults from ours, it is generally resistance of the wrong with which our faults threaten them that rouses theirs to activity. It is not unusual with us parents, when we grow weary of the struggle, to give up all godly training, and leave the children to their own way. If we only guard our children against being distrustful of us, everything is put right, but if we have got into that unhappy condition, it involves ruin and loss in our whole relations with them.
II. Consider what, according to God's appointment, the young are to be to us. It is only the children, joyous and free from care, who can diffuse around us the atmosphere of oblivion of the world that is so needful for us. It is they who, when we come back to the home circle, see in our faces nothing but our joy in being there again, and themselves feel only that they have been missing us, and now have us back once more. This happiness is, of course, lost for him in whose home the young hearts have been embittered; for he finds awaiting him at home only more painful difficulties than those he has left behind. When we provoke and estrange our children, both they and we lose the best of our life together. And as they, on their side, can best guard against any growing bitterness by respectful obedience, according to the first commandment with promise, let us, on our part, be unremitting in that self-denying love to them, which seeks not our own pleasure and advantage, but theirs, and which has its direct reward in the brightness and peace which the companionship of the young so naturally brings when there are no jars and misunderstandings.
F. Schleiermacher, Selected Sermons,p. 146.
References: Colossians 3:23; Colossians 3:24. G. Salmon, Gnosticism and Agnosticism,p. 243.Colossians 3:24. Spurgeon, Evening by Evening,p. 348; Ibid., Sermons,vol. xx., No. 1205.Colossians 4:1. W. Braden, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 140. Colossians 4:2. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 2; Ibid., Sermons,vol. vii., No. 354.