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"A Great Investment"
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6)
"We smiled," said Hazel M. Woodruff, "when a young mother took her three-week-old son to church, 'so that he would always be in the habit of going to church.' Forty years later, when we saw him assisting in the Communion, we remembered his mother's words."
When a thoughtful child was asked why a certain tree in the garden was crooked, he answered, "I spose somebody must have stepped on it when it was a littl fellow." We need to be careful about stepping on little fellows. It is claimed that training is a greater factor than heredity in character development. However that may be, it is primary parental duty. Someday God will ask us, "Where is the flock that was given thee, thy beautiful flock?" (Jeremiah 13:20).
In a meeting in London years ago Lord Shaftesbury stated that he had learned from personal observation that nearly all the adult male criminals of that city had fallen into crime between the ages of eight and sixteen' that if a young man lived an honest life up to te age of twenty, he had forty-nine chances to one of living an honorable life.
The governor of Massachusetts not many years ago declard that the average age of six hundred of the seven hundred inmates of the State prison was less then twenty-one. "These," he said, "are not good men fallen after good training, but mostly young men who never were trained."
The apostolic command is, "Bring them {your children} up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4). Things of God are to be taught "diligently" to our children. We are to talk of them in the house, out of doors, and everywhere (Deuteronomy 6:7-9). In order to train a child aright, we must ask God, "How shall we order the child, and how shall we do unto him?" (Judges 13:12).
MEDITATION PRAYER: "O God, thou hast taught me from my youth: and hitherto have I declare thy wondrous works" (Psalms 71:17).
