Motives For A Holy and Careful Education Of Children # 1

Motives For A Holy and Careful Education Of Children # 1

"Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4).

"Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with the rod, he will not die. You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from hell" (Proverbs 23:13-14).

Because the chief part of family care and government consists in the right education of children, I shall adjoin here some more special motives to quicken considerate parents to this duty.

Motive 1. Consider how deeply nature itself does engage you to the greatest care and diligence for the holy education of your children. They are, as it were, parts of yourselves, and those whom nature teaches you to love and provide for, and take most care for, next to yourselves; and will you be regardless of their chief concernments? and neglective of their souls?  Will you no other way show your love to your children, than every beast or bird will do their young, to cherish them until they can go abroad and shift for themselves, for bodily sustenance? It is not dogs or beasts that you bring into the world, but children that have immortal souls; and therefore it is a care and education suitable to their natures which you owe them; even such as conduces most effectually to the happiness of their souls. Nature teaches them some natural things without you, as it does the bird to fly; but it has committed it to your trust and care to teach them the greatest and most necessary things: and leave all the rest to nature, then they would not learn to speak; and if nature itself would condemn you, if you teach them not to speak, it will much more condemn you, if you teach them not to understand both what they ought to speak or do.

They have an everlasting inheritance of happiness to attain; and it is that which you must bring them up for. They have an endless misery to escape; and it is that which you must diligently teach them. If you teach them not to escape the flames of hell, what thanks do they owe you for teaching them to speak and go? If you teach them not the way to heaven, and how they may make sure of their salvation, what thanks do they owe you for teaching them how to get their livings a little while in a miserable world? If you don't teach them to know God, and how to serve Him, and be saved - you teach them nothing, or worse than nothing. It is in your hands to do them the greatest kindness or cruelty in all the world! Help them to know God and to be saved, and you do more for them than if you helped them to be kings or princes. If you neglect their souls, and if you have them in ignorance, worldliness, ungodliness, and sin, you betray them to the devil, the enemy of souls, even as truly as if you sold them to him! You sell them to be slaves to satan! You betray them to him who will deceive them and abuse them in this life, and torment them in the next.

So if you intend to train up your children in ungodliness, as if they had no God nor souls to mind, you may as well say, you intend to have them damned. And were not an enemy, yes, is not the devil more excusable, for dealing thus cruelly by your children, than you who are their parents, that are bound by nature to love them, and prevent their misery? It is odious in ministers that take the charge of souls, to betray them by their negligence, and be guilty of their everlasting misery; but in parents it is more unnuatural, and therefore more inexcusable.

Motive 2. Consider that God is the Lord and Owner of your children, both by the title of creation and redemption. Therefore in justice you must resign them to Him, and educate them for Him. Otherwise you rob God of His own creatures, and rob Christ of those for whom He died, and this to give them to the devil, the enemy of God and them. It was not the world, the flesh, or the devil that created them, or redeemed them, but God; and it is not possible for any right to be built upon a fuller title, than to make them of nothing, and redeem them from a state far worse than nothing. And after all this, shall the very parents of such children steal them from their absolute Lord and Father, and sell them to slavery and torment?

Motive 3. Consider how great power the education of children has upon all their following lives. Excepting nature and grace, there is nothing that usually does prevail so much with them - as the education they receive from their parents. Indeed the obstinacy of natural viciousness does often frustrate a good education; but if any means be likely to do good, it is this; but bad education is more constantly successful, to make them evil. This cherishes those seeds of wickedness which spring up when they come to age; this makes so many to be proud, and idle, and flesh-pleasers, and licentious, and lustful, and covetous, and all that is evil. And he has a hard task that comes after to root out these vices, which an ungodly education has so deeply impressed. Ungodly parents do serve the devil so effectually in the first impressions on their children's minds, that it is more than magistrates and ministers and all reforming means can afterwards do to recover them from that sin to God. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Prov. 22:6). And so the opinions which they first receive, and the customs and habits which they learn at first, are very hardly changed afterward. I doubt not to affirm, that a godly education is God's first and ordinary appointed means, for the begetting of actual faith, and other graces, in the children of believers.

Motive 4. Consider also how many and great are your advantages above all others  for your children's good. 

1. Nothing is learned so well - as that which is known to come from love. The greater love is discerned in your instruction, the greater success may you expect. Now your children are more confident of their parents' love, than of any others; whether ministers and strangers speak to them in love, they cannot tell; but of their parents' love they make no doubt.

2. And their love to you is as great a preparative to your success. We all harken to those who we dearly love, with greater attention and willingness than to others.

3. You have them in hand early and often, before they have received any false opinions or bad impressions; you have them while they are most teachable, and flexible and tender.

Motive 5. Consider how great a comfort it would be to you, to have your children such as you may confidently hope are the children of God, being brought to know Him, and love, and serve Him through your own endeavors in a pious education of them. 

1. When once your children are made the children of God, by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, you may be much more free from care and trouble for them than before. Now you may boldly trust them on the care of their heavenly Father, who is able to do more for them than you can desire. He loves them better than you can love them; he is bound by promise to protect them, and provide for them, and to see that all things work together for their good.

2. Religion will teach your children to be more dutiful to yourselves, than nature can teach them. It will teach them to love you, as well as if you had the wealth of all the world. It will teach them to honor you, though you are poor and contemptible in the eyes of others. 

3. And is it not an exceeding joy to think of the everlasting happiness of your child? and that you may live together in heaven forever?

~Richard Baxter~

(continued with # 2)