It is well to remember the general truth that all life can be trained. Dead substances cannot be trained. The higher you rise in the scale of life the more wide is the scope and the possibility of training. (2) Children are not only capable of training, but they will be trained in spite of us. And if we do not take them in hand, and with a very definite end in view, which we pursue with inflexible purpose and unflagging constancy an end not lower than heaven, not narrower than eternity, and not meaner than their salvation another process will assuredly be going on which will ere long fill us with dismay. We must know that children are always at school, even when they seem to be away from it. What is meant by training up a child in the way he should go? It may be said to consist in four things true teaching, discipline, example, and prayer.
I. True teaching, or, if you will, the teaching of the truth which concerns it, in its relations to God and man. Store children's minds with truth. Let them know all that it is right to do, both with respect to God and man, that they be not destroyed for lack of knowledge.
II. Example. To tell a child what is to be done is a very valuable thing, but to show how it is done is far more valuable. The precept is then seen to be more than a merely cold and perhaps impracticable injunction. The power of one's example is the power of character.
III. Prayer. You are not left to this work alone. There is none in which you may more certainly calculate on the help of God, if you seek it, than in the endeavour to guide your children in the way that leads to heaven. He Himself is concerned for the welfare of your children. They are His gifts to you, and are meant to be, not curses, but blessings. He may seem for a season to delay His answers, but even while He delays He may be, in fact, working out the very results you have so earnestly sought.
E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment,p. 52.
References: Proverbs 22:6. Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 248; E. Blencowe, Plain Sermons to a Country Congregation,2nd series, p. 268; W. Arnot, Laws from Heaven,2nd series, p. 209; C. J. Vaughan, Memorials of Harrow Sundays,p. 210.