A Child's Inalienable Right
What we are in life depends to a large degree on the environment in which we are reared. Physical health is endangered by exposure to filth and to communicable diseases. Good morals are corrupted by constant associations with those impure in heart and mind. Solomon said that a companion of fools would be destroyed. If one runs with the dogs, he will soon learn to bark. If he lies down with the dogs, he will get up covered with fleas. Paul summed it all up when he said, "Evil companionships corrupt good morals."
Unless the proper spirit prevails in the home, unless the right attitude toward truth and righteousness is implanted and developed there; disastrous and eternal consequences are certain to result.
A Parent's Obligation
Every child is entitled to be well born, to descend from parents whose physical, mental, moral, and spiritual powers have not been depleted or impaired by sinful living. We care not how fine parents may be physically, mentally, and morally, however, they are still unfit to do what is right for their children unless they are Christians. A child has the right to Christian parents. One reared in such a home has an infinitely better chance of overcoming the world's temptations which the years bring to us all. Fortunate, indeed, is that child who, like Timothy of old, grows to manhood or womanhood under the influence of a godly mother and a pious grandmother.
Children are natural born imitators. Parents must recognize this fact; and must use it to help the child to the right kind of life and attitude. Children learn far more from their parents' example than they do from their words. Unconsciously they imitate the habits, speech, the very gestures their parents employ. This is at once a glorious opportunity and a dangerous pit-fall for parents. It is an opportunity in that it gives them the chance to mould their children in the right pattern; it is a danger in that they may unthinkingly impress all their own weaknesses and short-comings on the receptive mind of the child.
Influence Of Home
There are many relationships in this life—some of them are worthwhile; some are useless; and some are positively evil and dangerous. The oldest and most universal relationship is the home. It furnishes the material and the primary preparation for every other relationship in life. The extent to which people make good members of all other organizations in life depends largely upon how they are brought up in the home. As the kind of seed sown determines the plant, so the kind of home from which people may come determines in a large measure the kind of people they are going to be.
In a Christian home the children are taught respect for proper authority. The spirit of obedience prevails there. With this principle firmly fixed in their minds, they will respect all rightful and proper authority when they come to maturity, whether that authority be of men or of the Lord. It is during the impressionable years of childhood that their attitude toward all authority is developed. It is an attitude either of respect for authority, or of disrespect. If the former, they make good citizens and good Christians; if the latter, they are obedient neither to the state nor to God.
We hear much talk these days about universal peace. Men and nations are trying desperately to work out some formula which will head off another world-wide war. The principles of pure and undefiled religion, the principles of right and justice are the only panacea for the ills this world. But those principles cannot suddenly been effective in society and between nations unless they have first been taught and developed in Christian homes. It is here, and not in pretentious and important "peace" conferences that the start must be made.
Home And Church
No institution is more vitally affected by the influence of the home than is the church of our Lord. Children growing up in Christian homes will almost naturally come members of the church when they reach the age of accountability. They have been taught respect for rightful authority; when they realize the authority of God and know his commandments, they want to obey Him.
If we want to improve the church, let us begin first with the homes within the church. When we improve homes, we will largely have solved the problems of local congregation.
To begin that sort of program, it is indispensable that the husband and wife love each other and belong exclusively each to the other. That is what God said in the very beginning, "Therefore shall a man leave his father at his mother and shall cleave unto his wife; and they be shall be one flesh." But though they cleave wholly one to the other, they still are not fit parents unless they both cleave unto the Lord. Young people may give themselves to one another in marriage with no reservations whatsoever; but their marriage stands a good chance of failure unless, above and beyond their commitment to each other each of them is first committed to the Lord.
Now what are the results of parents' cleaving to Lord? There will be no serious family quarrels; the divorce evil simply will not exist. For it is as unthinkable and as impossible for a truly Christian mate to forsake or be untrue to the other as it would be for him or her forsake the Lord and abandon the church.
Children reared in an atmosphere like this will themselves come to marriage with the right attitude. They will expect their marriages to be happy and successful; the will have none of the frustration and bitterness that develops in children growing up from an experience broken homes and selfish parents.
Every child born into the world has a right to the kind of home. Parents who deny their child that right robbing him of something for which no gold or money can ever compensate; they are denying him a blessing which God intended the child to have. For that injustice and that wrong there is no way they can ever reimburse their child. There is no substitute for a Christian home.
—O—
Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it every day and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann
—O—
You may have heard that drunkenness drowns sorrow; that is a mistake, it only irrigates it.