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Letter II.

August 26, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

In pursuing this subject I will notice several other things to be avoided in the training of children.

Avoid everything that can be construed by them into insincerity on any subject, especially everything that may make the impression that your word is not to be depended upon.

Avoid every appearance of impatience or fretfulness in their presence.

Wholly abstain from scolding at them. If you have occasion to reprove them, let it be done with deliberation, and not in such haste and in such tones of voice as to have even the appearance of anger.

If you have occasion to punish them, first converse and pray with them, and avoid proceeding to severe measures until you have fully made the impres- sion upon their minds that it is your solemn and imperative duty to do so.

Avoid in your conversation whatever might have a tendency to beget in them the spirit of slander and evil speaking. Never let them hear you speak evil of any man. But always, in their presence, as on all other occasions, "be gentle, showing all meekness to all men."

Avoid as far as possible whatever may be a temptation to them to indulge evil tempers. "Fathers, provoke not your children to anger," is both the counsel and the command of God. If you find your children naturally irritable and easily made angry, be sure to keep this verse always in your mind, that you may readily and certainly practice it whenever there is occasion to do so. If, therefore, you find your children inclined to the exercise of any evil temper whatever, be sure, as far as possible, to avoid all occasions that may prove too great a trial for them, and cause them to fall into their besetting sin.

Avoid unnecessarily exciting their fears upon any subject. Allow no one to make them afraid of the dark, or of Indians, or of witches, or of wild animals. Children are often very seriously injured by creating a morbid excitability upon such subjects, insomuch that from that time on they are afraid to be alone in the dark. And their foolish fears are often excited even at an older age, in view of things with which they were foolishly persecuted in their youth.

Never give them anything because they cry for it. If they find that they can get anything by crying for it, or that they are any more apt to get it because they cry for it, you will find yourselves continually annoyed by their crying. Children should be taught that if they cry for a thing, for that very reason they cannot have it.

I will now proceed to mention several things to be attended to in the training of children. First, be honest, and thorough, and correct in forming your own views and opinions on all subjects. This is of great importance. For if your children find you often mistaken in your views upon some important subjects, your opinions will soon cease to have much weight with them. It is immensely important that you be well instructed, and know how to answer their questions, especially on all moral subjects. Your opinions ought to carry great weight with them. It is for their own good. Your opinions will naturally carry great weight with them unless they find you in error. Be careful, then, as you wish to preserve your own influence over them for their good, and as you would not want to mislead them to their ruin, to be thorough and diligent in the use of means to obtain correct information on all moral questions.

Let your own habits be both right and regular: your rising in the morning, your retiring at night, the hours at which you take your meals, together with all your domestic arrangements. Let order pervade everything, and be sure to have a time and a place for every work, and everything around you. Have a place for every tool, and let every member of your family be constrained to keep everything in its place. And if they have occasion to use any tool, they ought to be sure to return it to its place before they put it out of their hands. By insisting upon this, you will soon save yourself and them a great deal of unnecessary trouble.

Be sure that they are up early in the morning, and retire early at night. This is imperiously demanded by their health and almost universally by their morals. If children are allowed to be up late in the evening, they will not only lie in bed late in the morning, but almost always get into the habit of either making or receiving visits from neighboring children. This will bring in its train a host of evils.

See that your temper and spirit are right. "Let the peace of God that passeth all understanding dwell in your hearts, that you may possess your soul in patience." And never allow your angry feeling to come into collision with theirs.

Let the influence which you have over them be an ever present consideration with you. Do not forget it. Do not be unmindful of it, even for an hour or a moment. In whatever you say and do in their presence, have an eye to its influence upon them.

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

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Letter III.

September 9, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

In addressing you further on this subject of what is implied in training up children in the way they should go, I call to your attention that in training children, parents should remember their nature, and that their will is in the first instance influenced by senses, and not by moral considerations. Their bodily appetites come to have a strong influence over the will before moral truth can reach the heart through the conscience, unless their minds are enlightened by a supernatural divine agency.

Therefore, parents should remember that physical training must precede moral training. Pains should be taken to keep their bodily appetites in a perfectly natural state. And as far as possible, prevent the formation of artificial appetites, and do all that the nature of the case admits to restrain the influence of the appetites over the will.

Parents should remember that all artificial stimulants lead directly to intemperance; that tea, coffee, tobacco, spices, ginger and indeed the whole family of non-nutritious stimulants, lead directly and powerfully to the formation of intemperate habits, create a morbid hankering after more and more stimulants, until both body and soul are swallowed up in the terrible vortex of intemperance.

Parents should remember that the least stimulating kinds of diet are best suited to the formation of temperate habits in all respects. And just as far as they depart from a mild, bland, unstimulating diet, they are laying, for the perversion of the child's constitution, a foundation for any and every degree of intemperance.

Parents should remember that the temper of the child is in a great measure dependent upon and intimately connected with his physical habits. If, during the period of nursing, the mother makes a free use of non-nutritious stimulants, she is continually poisoning the infant at her breast, and rasping up its nervous system into a state of extreme irritability. The certain consequence sooner or later will be the development of an irritable temper, with many disagreeable and even disgusting traits of character. If, when the child is weaned from the breast, the irritating process is still kept up, if it is fed with much pastry, unripe fruits, at unseasonable hours and in improper quantities—nothing else can be expected than that it will be a spoiled child.

Parents should secure the earliest opportunity to get the mastery of the will. The very first time, at whatever age children manifest temper and set up their will, they should be calmly but firmly resisted. It matters not how young they are. If they manifest a disposition to obtain a thing by crying, or in any way insist upon having their will, the parent should at once adopt some method of steadily and perseveringly opposing their will in that particular. To press the hand upon them and hold them still when they are struggling and screaming to get up, or even to let them lie and scream is vastly better than to yield any point to them when their spirit is stirred and their will is stubborn.

Parents should begin at the outset to get the mastery over the will and then keep it. The most steadfast and uniform perseverance is essential to retaining the mastery of their will. I have always observed that persons whose will has not been early subdued and kept under, are either never converted, or if hopefully converted, make but little progress in piety. I have had so much opportunity of making observation in this respect that if I find a person lingering under conviction and finding it very difficult to submit to God, if I find him grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit, and if converted, given to perpetual backsliding, I often make inquiry, and with scarcely a solitary exception, find that parental authority has never had a thorough influence over him: his will was not early subdued, and ever after, while still a minor, he was not kept in a state unqualified submission and obedience.

Parents should lay great stress upon the unconditional submission and obedience of their children. Some parents seem to have adopted the principle of not subduing the will of their children until they are old enough to be reasoned with, when they expect to govern them by reason, and moral suasion as they say. Now it should be understood that anything is moral suasion that acts as a motive, that the rod is one of the most powerful and even indispensable forms of moral suasion. It acts as a most commanding motive when the mind is very insensible to the voice of reason. It is no doubt the duty of parents to teach their children in the outset that it is their right and their duty to insist upon unconditional submission to their will, to make the child understand from the very first, that the will of the parent is a good and sufficient reason for the child's pursuing a required course of conduct. If the child is not taught that this is a good and sufficient reason, if he is left to demand other reasons, and if the parent only succeeds in gaining the child over to any course of conduct in proportion as he satisfies or fails to satisfy the child with the proffered reasons, the child is inevitably ruined. For in such cases, if the reason satisfies the child, and he yields obedience, it is not filial obedience, it is not rendered out of respect for the authority of the parent. It is no recognition of the parent's right to govern or of the child's duty to obey the parent. It is simply yielding to the offered reasons, and not to parental authority. Parents must, therefore, commence the government of the child, and perfect their influence over its will, if they ever expect to do so, long before the child can be reasoned with. In this respect the parent stands to the child in the place of God, lays his influence upon the will, and holds it in a state of submission to parental authority until the higher claims of God can come in, until moral considerations can be thrown in upon the mind as the regulator of the will. And ordinarily moral truth will have greater or lesser influence with the will just in proportion to the perfection or imperfection with which parental authority has influenced the will. *

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

* In contrast to the harshly authoritarian discipline of many supposed 'strict religious' men, Mr. Finney, though as resolute and determined, was all the while affectionate and gentle with the feelings of children. Such was the verdict of another one of his students, fellow professor, and biographer:

"An important element in Finney's influence was the strength and warmth of his personal friendships, and the tenderness of his family life. It is interesting, in looking over the file of his letters to his warm friend, Deacon Lamson, of the Park Street Church, Boston, to find them concluding with such expressions as these: "Love to Mary, and a thousand kisses to the children;" "Love to all your dear ones;" "With oceans of love to our dear Mary and the children, and as much for yourself as you can desire;" "I hope Mary is not ill. I thought if she had been seriously ill you would have informed us, but do relieve our suspense and anxiety upon this point."

G. F. Wright, Charles Grandison Finney. 1891.

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Letter IV.

October 7, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

In continuing my remarks upon what to attend to in the training of children, let me emphasize that you must keep them, as much as possible, with yourself and under your own eye. Make yourself, as far as possible, the companion of your own children. There is perhaps no greater error among parents than to allow the children of a neighborhood to mingle with each other, and without restraint find their own sports and employ themselves as they please. There is scarcely a neighborhood in which there are not, more or less, children who have heard various degrees of filthy conversation, vulgar, hateful, polluting, immoral, and perhaps profane and blasphemous things; and whose minds have become deeply imbued, perhaps, with the spirit of the pit or some other abomination, which, if left without restraint, will corrupt all the children in the neighborhood. Thus, one wicked child, left to mingle freely with the whole neighborhood of playful, confiding and unsuspecting children, will defile and ruin them all. Therefore, beloved, keep your children at home. Allow no children of your neighbors to come within your yard, or upon their play ground, without your consent. And be careful not to give your consent, unless you or some responsible adult member of your family can be with them. Be sure that you do not trust in the purity of a neighbor's children just because their parents are good people, nor assume that the minister's or the deacon's children may be left to mingle with your children safely. You should remember that the best of parents may have their children corrupted by contact with other wicked children, and you cannot be sure that they have not been. Therefore, be on your guard, or perhaps from the children of pious parents an influence may flow in upon your family that will deeply corrupt and finally destroy your children.

"But," most parents are apt to object, "we cannot give up our time to our children. We are obliged to attend to other matters." To this I reply that very seldom is this necessarily so. If the parents would satisfy themselves with a moderate supply of this world's goods, and abandon their fastidious and fashionable ways of living, they would, in almost all cases, have abundant time for companionship with their children.

But again it is objected, "Our children need the society of each other. The children of a neighborhood are benefited by contact with each other. Without this contact, they are apt to be selfish, proud, and to lack interest in others besides themselves." To this I answer, to be sure children need society. They need contact with other minds. They need to be so associated with other human beings as to take an interest in them, to witness the developments of character, and to develop their own characters. But it is believed, at least by me, that children are vastly more benefited by contact with adult minds than with the minds of children. I mean of course, those adults whose spirit, conversation and conduct are what they ought to be. And, to be sure, it ought to be in contact with those who take an interest in them. The example of adults has more influence with children than that of children with each other. And I honestly say, I would not care to have my children ever see any other children, could they be favored with the right kind of adult contact.

Provide means for engaging their attention at home. Children must have amusement. They must and will be involved in activities. They must have a room and grounds to play in. They must have means and things with which to occupy themselves. And parents can never make a more just and appropriate use of their money than providing with it the means of occupying, employing and educating their children. It is a vast mistake in parents to consider their money thrown away or misapplied when it is expended in the purchase of hobbyhorses, little carts, wagons, sleds, dolls, sets of furniture for their playhouses, needles, thimbles, scissors, boards, hammers, saws, augers, and tools with which their children may busy themselves, and with which to begin to design for themselves the structures which they see around them.

It should be remembered, however, that children love variety; they are never satisfied long with any one thing. They should not, therefore, be provided with too many things at once. For should you purchase many things at a time, you will soon find it impossible to provide novelties for them. Generally, a single new item at a time is sufficient to occupy their attention. A child will find a great many things to do with a gimlet. When he has busied himself with this, and finally lays it aside, add a pocketknife. With his gimlet and knife he can peg pieces of wood together. If to these you add, after a time, a hammer, then a little saw, and thus proceed carefully, but with due attention to just what is needed to sustain their attention, you will render them content at home without occupying much of your own time.

You will find it very important to let your children each have some place for his tools; and let it be an invariable rule, that whenever he has finished using them, they are to be put every one in its place. Let the child be made to feel that it is of great importance that nothing should be lost or mislaid. Thus you will cultivate a habit that will be of vast service to him through life. If he has little carts or wagons, be sure that he never leaves them out in the rain or dew, but has them securely housed; and the reasons why tools should not be exposed to the weather should be made familiar to his mind. If you have but one child, he will be lonesome, unless you take a little trouble in teaching him how to amuse himself. You must play with him, take him with you when it is convenient, go into his playroom or playground, show him how to use his little blocks, his little tools, his hobbyhorse, and try to give his little mind a start in the direction of inventing his own activities.

If you have several children, endeavor to make them satisfied with each other's companionship, without feeling a disposition either to go away from home for companions, or to invite those from outside to come to them. They must be restrained and kept from doing these things or they are certainly undone. This, then, must be a subject of study, of prayer, of much consideration on your part, how you may make your children love each other, be willing to stay at home, and be satisfied with their books, playthings, home, and siblings without roving the neighborhood for their amusements and activities.

Cultivate in them a taste for reading. To this end you must read to them yourself, or employ some judicious and excellent reader to read to them. You should yourself continue, from time to time, to search out and purchase such books as will interest and edify them, from which you can read to them from time to time such stories and things as will interest them and make a deep and right impression on their minds. But, beloved, be sure to be judicious in the selection of books and stories. Read nothing to them which you have not read over yourself. Consider what your children are, and ponder well what will be the natural influence of the material which you intend to read or to have read to them. And in all your selections have the moral bearings of whatever you in any way communicate to them strongly before your mind. Be sure to let no one at any time give your children books, tell stories, read things, or sing songs, or in any way make communications to them, the moral tendency of which is injurious.

Encourage them in employing themselves usefully; that is, in doing whatever may be beneficial to themselves or others. In the summer they may keep a little garden. At all times they may be involved in imitating the mechanical arts, making any pieces of machinery or tools for their own use, little tables, chairs, bedsteads, and in doing, in short, whatever can contribute to the well-being of their species.

Make your children your confidential friends. In other words, you be the confidential friends and companions of your children. Accustom them to confide to you all their secrets and everything that passes in their minds. On multitudes of occasions, they have thought, and not infrequently you will find obvious suggestions from Satan, which, if known to you, might enable you to do them immense good. Now, if you accustom them to throw their little minds open to you, and to feel that you, in everything sympathize with them, they may have the most perfect confidence in you; you will naturally come to be, as you ought to be, their confidant and their counselor. But if you will not give your time to this, if you turn them off and say, "Oh, I cannot attend to you," or if you treat them harshly, or sarcastically; if you humiliate, embarrass, and treat them with unkindness, if you manifest no sympathy with and for them after repeated attempts to get at your heart, finding themselves baffled, they will turn sadly away, and by degrees seek sympathy and counsel from others. Thus you will lose your own influence over them and give them over to other influences that may ruin them. How amazingly do parents err in these respects. Father, Mother, how sadly do you err, how grievously do you injure your children; no, how almost certainly you will ruin them, if you drive them, by your own wickedness, or leave them to seek for confidential companionship away from home. *

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

* Well did Finney know his children and value their interests. It was no wonder why they did not seek other counsel and companionship. They had a good father, who, as will be enlarged upon in later chapters, fulfilled his needful roles as Prophet, Priest, and King of the home:

"Mr. Finney's faith and power in prayer were a prominent characteristic. At the family altar he seemed to know instinctively the wants of every member of the family. In a few concise, comprehensive phrases the petition was laid before the Throne and the answer came right away."

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Letter V.

October 21, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

I will continue my remarks on what to attend to in the training of children by urging you to cultivate natural affection among your children. Remember, natural affection is natural in no other sense than that it is natural for children to love those who love them. Therefore, what is generally called natural affection is cultivated affection. Therefore, great pains should be taken by parents to cultivate among children not only an affection for themselves, but for each other. Many parents, and fathers especially, treat their children in such a manner that their children have very little affection for them, and in many instances, it is to be feared that they have none at all. And then, perhaps, the children are reproved for the lack of natural affection. But parents should have consideration enough not to wonder at the absence of natural affection, as they call it, in their children, when they take little or no pains to be worthy of or to cultivate their affection.

Again, encourage inquiry on the part of your children. They come into a world of novelties. Before they are a week old, they may be seen staring around the room, as if they would inquire who, and what, and where they are. As soon as they are able to talk, they display the most intense desire to be instructed in regard to everything around them. Now parents, and all others who have the care of children, should encourage their inquiries and as far as is possible, or proper, give them satisfaction on every subject of inquiry. Give them reasons, discerningly detailed, as shall satisfy their little minds.

Parents will find their children inquisitive on those subjects that are by many supposed to be of too delicate a nature to be conversed upon by children. For example, what constitutes a breach of the seventh commandment, and things of this nature. At a very early age, it is no doubt proper to inform children that they are yet too young to be instructed upon such subjects; but that, at a suitable time, you will give them the necessary information, requesting them at the same time not to converse with others than their parents about such things as these. But prior to the age of puberty, and before an explanation of such things will excite improper feelings, parents should, beyond all question, give their children necessary instruction and caution upon all such subjects. When instruction is given, caution and admonition should be frequently repeated, accompanied with solemn prayer and instructions from the Word of God, so as to make a deep impression on the mind, and thoroughly to sensitize and awaken the conscience. Parents cannot neglect to do this without guilt in as much as this is a responsibility plainly enjoined upon parents by the authority of God, to teach their children the law and commandments of God. "And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up."

Parents, and the guardians of children, should never allow themselves to evade the inquiries of children by falsehood. For example, when an infant is born in the family, telling them the physician brought it, or that it was found in a hollow tree, or, in short, telling them anything false about it. There is nothing improper, unnatural, or indecent, in letting them know so much upon the subject, as that it was born of their mother.

To tell children falsehoods about such things is only still further to excite their curiosity, and create the necessity either of telling them the truth or still more falsehoods.

Be especially careful of the influences that act upon your children at public schools. It often seems to me that parents hardly dream of the amount of corruption, filthy language and conduct often witnessed in public schools. Little children of the same, as well as of opposite sexes, deeply corrupting and defiling each other. These things are often practiced to a most shocking extent, without parents seeming even so much as to know of it. I would rather pay any price at all within my means, or even to satisfy myself with one meal a day, to enable me to educate my children at home sooner than give them over to the influence of public schools as they are often arranged and conducted.

Remember that your children will be educated, either by yourself or by someone else. Either truth or error must posses their minds. They will have instruction, and if you do not secure to them right instruction, they will have that which is false.

Prove yourselves in all respects worthy of the confidence of your children. Let them always witness in you the utmost integrity of character. Let them, in no instance, see in you the appearance of deceit, falsehood, or unkindness. Let your whole heart stand open to them; and in return, you will find that their little hearts will stand open to you. If you show yourselves worthy of their confidence, you can depend on having it.

Deal thoroughly with their consciences. As soon as they are able to be instructed on moral questions, give yourself to a thorough enlightening of their minds upon every precept of the law of God. Put their minds as fully as possible in possession of those truths that will make their consciences quick and as sharp as a two-edged sword.

Guard against the cultivation of so legal a spirit, as to drive them to despair when they have sinned. While you cultivate the most discriminating conscience, be sure also to instruct the little one thoroughly in respect to the plan of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ.

Add physical discipline to moral instruction. I have referred to this subject before, but wish to say in addition that it is doubtless one of the greatest errors in the education of children to overlook the fact that at that early age the discipline of the rod will often present to them a more powerful motive than can be brought to bear upon them by moral truth presented to their uninformed minds. The rod cannot safely be laid aside until the powers of the mind are so fully developed and the mind so thoroughly instructed that the whole range of moral truth may be brought to exert its appropriate influence upon the mind without the infliction of pain. It seems to me that some parents presume to be wiser than God, taking it upon themselves to decide that it is not wise to use the rod upon children. Remember Proverbs 19:18 and 23:13,14: "Chasten thy son while there is hope, and let not thy soul spare for his crying." "Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell."

Let them see that your religion is your life—that it is your joy and rejoicing from day to day, and not that it fills you with gloom and melancholy. Many professing Christians have such a kind of religion as to render them miserable rather than happy. They are almost constantly in bondage to sin, and consequently under a sense of condemnation. They are wretched, and exhibit this wretchedness daily before their children. This creates the impression on their little minds that religion is a gloomy thing, fit only for funerals and deathbeds; and only to be thought of on a near prospect of death. Now this is making the most false and injurious impression upon their minds that can be conceived. It is a libel upon the religion of Christ. But shocking to say, it is almost as common as it is false. Your children should see that you are religious in everything, and that in all things you are not reluctantly but joyfully acquiescent in the will of God.

By all means let them daily see that you are not creatures of appetite—that you are not given up to the pursuit of wealth, or to the pursuit of fashion, not seeking worldly reputation or favor, that neither good eating, nor good drinking, nor good living, in any other sense than holy living, is the object at which you aim. Let them see that you are cheerful and contented with plain, simple food, that you are strictly temperate in all things, in respect to the quality and quantity of whatever you eat, drink, do, or say. In short, let your whole life inculcate impressive lesson that a state of entire consecration to God is at once the duty and the highest privilege of every human being.

Be sure to pray with and for them. Never punish them without praying with them. Whenever you give them serious admonition pray with them. Pray with them when they lie down and when they rise up. And enforce the lesson by your own example, that they are never to do anything without prayer.

Lay hold on the promises of God for them. Search the Bible for promises. Lay your Bible open before you. Kneel over it, and spread out the case of your children before God. Begin with the covenant of Abraham, and understand that God made the covenant as well with the children as with the parents. And remember that an inspired Apostle has said, "The promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." Take the promise in Isaiah 44:3-5: "I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring: and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water courses. One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." Remember that this promise was made more especially to the Church under the Christian dispensation, and respects the children of Jewish parents. Throw your souls into these promises, and wrestle until you prevail.

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

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Letter VI.

November 4, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

I will now call your attention to some of the difficulties in the way of training up children in the way they should go.

One difficulty is a lack of the requisite information on the part of parents, and especially on the part of mothers, to whose care and management they are principally committed. Thus far, as a general fact, female education has been so much neglected that only a few women have the necessary information for the proper training of children. There is a most sad deficiency in this respect, in the training of young women in reference to their being future mothers. Why, the education of daughters is one of the most important things in the world. That women should be educated is wholly indispensable to the salvation of the world. An enlightened and sanctified generation of mothers would exert the greatest influence upon future generations that ever was exerted upon human beings. It is one of "guilt's blunders," to educate the sons and allow the daughters to go with little or no education.

Another difficulty is the frequent lack of education, and still more frequently of consideration, on the part of fathers. Most fathers seem to be so much engaged in business, politics, or personal pleasure and recreation as to leave very little time for deep consideration in respect to their responsibility and influence with their children. This is all wrong; for if there is anything that demands the attention and time of the father, it is those things that concern the well-being of his children. If he neglects his own household, whatever else he does he virtually "denies the faith, and is worse than an infidel."

A lack of a sense of responsibility in both parents often prevents their training up their children in the way they should go. Without a keen and efficient sense of responsibility, parents will never do their duty to their children, however much they may love them.

A lack of agreement between the parents in regard to training their children becomes another difficulty; for if the parents do not agree upon the course to be pursued, if they do not lend to each other the whole weight of their influence, children will soon see it and parental influence will soon lose its power over them.

Also to be noted is the ruinous notions that are prevalent among parents in regard to training up children. Many parents have given themselves so little to consideration upon this subject that their opinions are little more than dreams and old wives' tales upon the subject of training children.

There is often a great difficulty on account of the irrational thinking and habits of neighborhoods in regard to their children. If a parent who is anxious to preserve the morals of his children makes up his mind to keep them at home, it is often unjustly thought and said that it is because he thinks his children are better than the neighbors' children. Or, if he keeps his children at home, the neighbors' children are allowed to come in throngs to visit them. In this case they must be either sent home, at which their parents are often offended; or they must be allowed to remain, introducing the hazard of all those evils that arise from permitting children to mingle together without restraint. Or, to avoid this, the time of the father or mother, or of some adult member of the family, must be given up to superintend and accompany them in their play. It should be always understood by parents that they have no right to allow their children to go to a neighbor's house to play with his children without first obtaining the consent of the parents of such children. And, if they do, they ought to be willing to have them sent home at the discretion of those whose children they visit. Certainly no man has a right to inflict on me or my family the visit of his children without my knowledge or consent. Nor have I any right to do so to him. And I would much prefer my neighbor to turn his horse into my yard to feed without my consent, than to turn his children into my yard to play with my children without my consent. I say much prefer. I might say, almost infinitely prefer, as the horse would only devour the feed; but who can calculate the evil that may result from one hour's unrestrained and unobserved interaction of children with each other.

Another great evil is the recklessness of parents in respect to training their children. Many parents seem to allow their children to run here and there, to wander like a wild ass's colt. As long as their children are out of the way, it matters little to these parents where they are, or with whom they are keeping company. Now if there is anything in the universe that deserves the severest reprehension, and I must add, the deepest damnation, it is such a reckless spirit in parents. It is tempting God. No language can describe its guilt.

A great lack of firmness on the part of parents in training their children is another great evil. By firmness I refer to: the government and discipline of their children; guarding them against evil influences from outside the home; resisting the commonly accepted practices of society that would subject their children to the kind and degree of contact with other children which will positively ruin them; and, deciding against those fashions, in regard to dress and many other things, that tend to carry their children away from God.

Another difficulty in the way is a lack of faith and deep piety in parents. Many parents seem to have no practical confidence in the promises of the Bible in respect to their children. They have very little piety; and many of them seem not to know that there are such multitudes of exceeding great and precious promises upon which they may rely.

Another difficulty is a lack of a sense of responsibility to the neighborhood, in parents. An ill-managed family is the greatest nuisance that can infest any neighborhood. No man has a right to neglect the proper training of his children, and thereby render them a pest to society, any more than he has a right to build a mill dam that will flood a timbered country and thereby destroy the lives of the people. Now the former is a sin of an infinitely greater degree than the latter. And if a man deserves to be indicted for building such a mill dam, as is often the case, how much more does he deserve to be indicted for a common nuisance in allowing an uninstructed and unmanaged family to pour their abominations over the neighboring children. Such a family ought to be regarded as a public nuisance. Such fathers and mothers ought to be worked with, advised, admonished, and if need be, rebuked and even indicted. And the influence of such families should be as strictly and religiously guarded against as we would guard against the influence of the devil.

Another great difficulty is the influence of the flesh in the present state of the human constitution. The bodies of infants generally come into the world saturated with tea, coffee, and often with alcohol. They are born of mothers who have lived on the most stimulating kinds of diet, and from their very birth nurtured upon whatever is calculated to pamper their appetites and rasp their nervous system into a state of the utmost excitability. This promotes a precocious development of all their organs, and gives great power to their animal propensities. It is almost sure to deliver them over, at a very early age, to the dominion of appetite and lust.

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

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Letter VII.

November 18, 1840

Dear Brethren and Sisters:

I now come to my fifth observation on Proverbs 6:22: If the condition is fulfilled, that is, if a child is trained up in the way he should go, it is certain that when he is old, he will not depart from it.

First of all, because God has said it.

Secondly, because He has laid the foundation of this certainty in the very nature of human beings. It is a fact, well known to everybody, that human beings form habits by the repetition of any given course of conduct, or feeling, until their habits become too confirmed to be counteracted and put down by anything but Almighty Power. It is the law of habit that lies at the foundation of the difficulty of bringing sinners to abandon their sins. A long indulged and confirmed habit is, in the Bible, compared to the strength and stability of nature itself. God says, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spot? Then can ye, who are ACCUSTOMED to do evil learn to do well." Here the law of habit is compared to the strength and permanency of nature itself. Now if a child be trained up in the way he should go, the uprightness of his future conduct is secured, not only by the promise and grace of God, but by this law of habit, which is laid deep in the foundation of his constitution.

Thus God has put the destiny of the child into the hand of the parent, who naturally loves it more than any other human being.

But again, God has established the law of parental affection for the benefit of the child, and so far as possible, to secure the training up of the child in the way it should go. I might quote a great many passages of scripture in confirmation of this doctrine; but if the text itself does not satisfy your mind, no multiplication of texts would do so.

Here I must notice an objection to the view of the subject I have taken. There is one common and grand difficulty, which has seemed to stumble Christians, in respect to their laying hold on the promises in regard to their children, and counting upon their being converted, sanctified, and saved with any sort of certainty. It is this: Many good men have, in all ages, had shameless and reprobate children. To answer this, I point out that good men are not always perfect in judgment, and therefore may be, and sometimes doubtless have been guilty of some primary error in training their children.

A great many good men have been so occupied with the concerns of the Church and the world as to pay comparatively little attention to the training of their own children. Their children have been neglected and therefore almost certainly lost. Whatever the case, when they have been neglected, they have not been trained up in the way they should go. So, the condition has not been fulfilled.

Many good men have lived in bad neighborhoods, and found it nearly or quite impossible to train up their children in the way they should go without changing their locations. And though they saw the daily contact of their children was calculated to ruin them, and did, as a matter of fact, prevent their training them up in the way they should go, yet they have, probably from a sense of duty, remained where they were, to the destruction of their children. In such cases, the ruin of their children may be chargeable to their neighbors, because the influence of their neighbor's children prevented their bringing them up in the way they should go.

A few remarks must conclude what I have to say to parents at this time. You see the great importance of mothers' organizations. Mothers must make the training of their children the subject of much consideration, study and prayer. If any mind should be well stored with knowledge, it is the mind of a mother. If anyone needs to understand philosophy—mental, natural, and moral—it is a mother. If anyone needs the wisdom of a serpent and the harm- lessness of a dove, it is a mother. It is, therefore, all important that mothers should meet together, exchange views and books, and converse, pray, and devise every measure for training up their children in the way they should go.

There should also be fathers' organizations. If there is anything important to the interests of this world, it is that children should be universally trained up rightly. And how amazing it is that fathers are so slow to perceive the necessity of deep study and research, prayer, discussion, reading, and conversation on the subject of training their children. There are organizations among men for almost everything else, and yet, I hesitate not to say that organizations for this end are as necessary and important as for any other object whatever. Pious mothers are often at their wits' end to know what to do to secure the salvation of their children. They are greatly at a loss to know what course of training will most likely result in their sanctification. They go to their husbands; but their minds are engaged in everything else. They have paid very little or no attention to the subject of training their children. And, as a general thing, if a father governs his family at all, it is only by a legal system, more or less rigid, according to his natural temper, habits, and way of doing things. And, notwithstanding, the wife needs the counsel of her husband, and the father of her children; fathers are, as a general thing, little prepared to give them counsel. There should be a great deal of consultation between the father and mother of every family in relation to training the children, and a great deal of consideration and forethought.

But another thing that renders both fathers' and mothers' organizations of the utmost importance is that there may be cooperation and unanimity in the neighborhood on the subject of training children. If possible, every father and every mother should be enlisted in these organizations, so as to secure the right training of all the children in the neighborhood. For, as I have said in a former letter, one unmanaged family will often, in spite of all that can be done, corrupt a whole neighborhood. Parents, therefore, ought to be instructed throughout whole neighborhoods in respect to training their children. For if some families of children are allowed to run about and visit, both by day and by night, it will be difficult to restrain other children; and just as moral influences reveal themselves quickly, so the results will spread as naturally and as certainly as a contagious disease. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to secure the attention and hearty cooperation of every parent in the neighborhood.

Permit me here again to revert to a topic, which I have mentioned in a former letter, and say again, that it is of the utmost importance that care should be taken to secure the right kind of domestic help. As you value the souls of your children, do not receive into your family any filthy girl or young man, or old man, that will tell falsehoods to your children, tell them vile stories, use vulgar language, or in any way corrupt the morals or their manners. I would sooner have the plague in my family than to have such influences as these. I would not allow the nearest relative I have on earth to remain in my family unless he would refrain from corrupting my children.

Again, see the great importance of selecting the right kind of Sunday school teachers.

You see the great importance of selecting the right kind of books and periodical literature for your children. There are many books and periodicals, and those too that are extensively circulated, that I regard as of a very pernicious and highly dangerous tendency. They are calculated to form anything but right thinking and character among children.

All the domestic arrangements of every family should have a special regard to the training of their children. The right training of them should be a prime objective, and every other interest of the family should be made to bend to this. The hours of retiring in the evening and rising in the morning, the hours at which meals are taken, kinds of food, and in short all the habits of the family should have a direct reference to the right training of the children. Nothing should be allowed to enter into the family arrangements that has a tendency to injure their health, their intellect or their heart. No company should at any time be received and entertained whose conduct may endanger the manners or morals of the children.

Mothers should never, under any pretense whatever, neglect their own children for the purpose of attending to other matters. Mother, remember that nothing can compensate for the neglect of your duty to your children. This is your first great indispensable duty, to train your children in the way they should go. Attend to this then, whatever else you neglect.

Do not suppose that you can attend to this without being yourself devotedly pious. No mother has begun to do her duty to her children, who is not supremely devoted to God, and not endeavoring to train them up for God. Some mothers will neglect their children under the pretense of going to meeting and especially attending seminary, leaving it, as they say, "with God," to take care of their children while they do His work. They seem to think the time spent in taking care of their children is almost thrown away. And even some seem unwilling to have children because they shall have to "throw away" so much time in taking care of them. Now woman, you ought to know that a leading objective of your life is to bear and train up children for God—time which you spend in this employment is as far as possible from lost.

Other women, instead of neglecting their children to attend to their devotions, are neglecting their devotions almost altogether, and pretending to discharge their duty to their children while they are neglecting God and religion. Now this is equally erroneous in the other direction. No parent can train up children in the way they should go, without maintaining a spirit of deep devotion to God on the one hand, and on the other hand, without paying the most rigorous and unremitted attention to their personal training— physical, intellectual, and moral. Mothers should be emphatically "keepers at home." While the children are yet minors, mothers should consider it their business to train them up in the way they should go.

But in doing this they should consult God at every step, and should not imagine that they begin to do their duty any further than they consult the Word of God and live under the constant guidance of the Holy Spirit.

If you would train your children in the way they should go, be invincibly firm in training your own family, let other families do as they may.

Remember that if you resist the true light, or neglect your duty to your children, God "will visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generations."

Your brother in the bonds of the gospel,

Charles G. Finney

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Part II.

FAMILY GOVERNMENT

By the Rev. Professor Finney of Oberlin College, U. S.

At the Tabernacle, Moorfields. A sermon delivered on Monday evening, Dec. 23, 1850.

I SHALL not detain you long this evening as I am anxious to recover from the hoarseness under which I am at present laboring, but I shall confine my remarks to the connection of family government with the early conversion of children. For a long time it has been impressed on my mind and the impression is a growing one that parents do not sufficiently appreciate the importance of family government or the potency of its influence on the spiritual well being of their children. It is one of the most efficient means of grace. Family government, I say, when properly managed, is one of the most efficient means of grace mankind possesses if parents will only understand and weigh well the great object to be secured by it.

The family should be the nursery of piety; the family is the place where it ought to begin and where its earliest development ought to take place. I do not mean by this that the pulpit is by any means to be excluded, but that everything done in the pulpit must be seconded in the family, so that what is brought before the vast congregation in public shall be supported by paternal influence in the family and there concentrated to a focal point. With respect to family government, it is very important that parents should have a proper idea of the nature of their powers and responsibilities. With reference to the case I mentioned in my last, I may add that the story got abroad, and finally into the papers, that the lady had whipped the child to compel it to submit to the Almighty. Now I need not say that there is not the least foundation for this, but it is true that she used her parental authority kindly, and brought its whole force to induce the child to yield its immediate and unqualified submission to God. God said of Abraham, "I know him that he will command his household after him to follow me;" and God blamed Eli for not exercising a religious authority over his children.

The end of parental government the great object to be secured is self-government. Children need to be taught to govern themselves, and to do so by the revealed will of God. The great object to be attained is to teach the child to lay restraints upon himself in other words, to take upon himself the observance of God's law, and then to teach the child. The great object of family government is to secure this, and in order to do so it is indispensable that parents should govern themselves and thus afford an example to their children. Precept will never effect this object; parents must be what they would desire to have their children be. They are not likely to secure their end if they contradict by example what they teach by precept; for the instruction of the former is far more powerful and effective than that of the latter: if persons give good instructions and themselves neglect to follow them, they are sure to fall to the ground; and the parent cannot think it strange if he does not govern himself, if he does not obey his own rules of morality and propriety that his children are not better than they are. It would be ridiculous for him to complain and say he had taught them better. How did he teach them? both by precept and example? No, but neglecting the stronger power of example, he trusted almost wholly to the weaker power of precept.

I have had ample opportunities from the nature of my employment perhaps no man living more so of forming an acquaintance with multitudes of families. Before I was of age, I left my father's house, and ever since, in various ways, I have had unusual means of acquainting myself with the state of things in this respect in multitudes of families; and in all my experience, I may say, I have seldom if ever, known a family turn out badly, in which, when I searched out the matter, I could not trace it directly or indirectly to the manner they had brought the children up to some fundamental defect in family government. One member of a family perhaps has not had sufficient care taken of his temper, another has experienced some other defect of management.

Parents should be exceedingly careful over their own tempers. Never address your children in a loud, angry, scolding tone, but affectionately exercise your governmental power over them. Let the children see by all means, that you are not in a passion with them; for if you speak in a surly, scolding tone of voice, it only rouses the temper of the child, and almost always fails in securing permanently the object sought; such commands are given with a bad grace, and when obeyed, are obeyed in a bad temper.

Parents should be sure to govern their own tongues in this respect. Be careful to avoid censoriousness and not allow yourselves or them to dwell upon the faults of others; apply this principle moreover to everything else that may seem objectionable; for whatever you are, your children, to a large extent, will reflect your image, and breathe your spirit. Parents must also learn to govern their appetites; if you do not do this, your children are almost sure to be misgoverned. Your language, manners, and habits of life must be such as you wish your children's to be.

Parents should always make the impression on their families that their government is not despotic and arbitrary, but that it is for the child's own good. Let this impression be secured: let the children understand that you exercise your authority not arbitrarily but simply with a view to accomplish the good of the family compact. This was God's design in establishing it, and this is his end in the government of the universe. The good of the governed ought to be the end of all governments. Where this is not the case, all pretended government is nothing less than a continual warfare; the governed obey as far as they are absolutely compelled to obey and no further. They regard the government as a tyranny. But let it be understood that the end and object of the government was the highest good of the governed, and then you secure their consciences on your side, then you have effected a footing and will attain your object. Let your child see that the object of your government is not your pleasure merely, but his own benefit that in punishing and restraining him, your object is to teach him to govern and restrain himself in short, endeavour to keep before his mind the fact that the end at which you are aiming is to promote his own interest.

Do this and you will always keep his conscience on your side, and ten to one if you do not secure your object. Ungoverned wills can never dwell in any family without quarreling. No community can exist where there are independent wills acting without reference to any one will whose decisions are law. Let me explain this: government is a necessity of human nature. Communities of persons living together must agree in some way to act in concert; but inasmuch as in such communities all persons are not equally well informed in fact, they have not all the means of obtaining the same degree of knowledge in order to have peace, there must always be some will supreme: for if there be several independent wills, each acting on its own responsibility in his own way, of course, such a body of persons is no community at all; and if a family is made up of a number of persons whose wills are unsubdued, all attempts at government are utterly useless and must be abandoned, or else there must be a quarrel.

I know a family, for instance, in the United States, which had been brought up in this manner: in the first place, the husband himself was a remarkably unreasonable man and the wife was unfortunately just as bad. Both were remarkably self-willed and neither would acknowledge the will of the other as law, so that between them, of course, there was incessant strife. They have three children, not one of which ever had its will subdued, for the plain reason that one of the parents would never suffer the other to attempt it without interfering, and thereby nullifying the effect. I am well acquainted with the family. Neither endeavoured to govern them unless when angry, and they had all been foolishly petted while very young, so that when their wills became developed they were unreasonable and capricious. One parent at a time would fly into a passion and attempt to punish them, and the other on such occasions invariably interposed, and thus they went on. The young persons grew up to manhood and womanhood in such a state of mind towards each other that they found it wholly impossible for them to live together. The father came to me time after time to know what he could do. He was a man of property sufficient to make the whole of his family comfortable and was perfectly willing to do so, but they were incessantly quarrelling, child with child and parent with parent, or parents and children together. Said I, "The difficulty is that you yourself are an unreasonable man and your family knows it. You are a very self-willed man and your family knows that. Your wife is just like you, and your children are the very image of you both, and there's the difficulty. There you are a family of independent wills, no one of which is willing to submit to another. You did not teach them to obey you till they became so old that to attempt to govern them was to quarrel with them." `I have ruined my family I see,' said he, `and must give up keeping house' and he absolutely did so. For a time he even separated from his wife for they could no longer live together.

Now I admit that this is a strong case, but I have known multitudes like it, and from similar causes. Sometimes the wife is unwilling to respect the position of the husband; he may be an unreasonable man, or he may not. But I cannot enlarge.

Let me relate another striking circumstance: some twenty years ago I was labouring with a minister in one of the cities of the United States who had a family of young children. The eldest son was a boy about fifteen years of age, and there were three or four girls and boys along below. There was this peculiarity in that family the wife would take occasion at the table to criticize her husband's preaching, and dispute with him on points of theology. In short, she carried those things to such an extent as really to break the power of the father over the children. She was a good natured, pleasant woman but after all, she never allowed her husband to maintain his proper position; instead of teaching the children to respect whatever their father said, she almost invariably took some exceptions to it, so that he never could get hold of the children. I saw this at the time; and some years after, I had seen the family; a lady came to——— to live, who had spent two or three years in that family. Said she, "Mr. Finney, I have made up my mind that I will never dispute with my husband, especially when there are young persons in the family." "Why," said I; "I lived in such and such a family and I always observed such and such things: (just what I have described.) Now mark the result of this conduct: "The eldest son" she continued, "died a miserable wretch, and the rest of the family are going in the same direction. The father was never allowed to govern in his proper position, and there was always a want on the part of the wife of giving him the place assigned to him by the Almighty and the result has been a great lesson to me."

Where there is any fault of this kind any neglect or opposition with regard to putting things in their natural place, any want of letting families be governed wherever there is a want of proper concord between parents, in bringing both their influences to bear on the same point, it will almost always ruin that family. Both parents should understand this; the mother should second the authority of the father, while the father should always support the power of the mother. And parents should remember that if they would subdue the little wills of their children, they must begin very early; for if you permit those wills to develop themselves, then your efforts to subdue them will only make them angry, and, therefore, not only prove abortive but drive them from home or to some abominable course to deceive their parents.

With respect to the conversion of children, let me ask, my brethren, what do you think is the reason that so many families with pious parents grow up unconverted? It is a remarkable fact that this is a very common occurrence. Ought it to be so? Ought so many families, with professing Christian parents, to grow up unconverted? One great reason is that parents do not make it their business soon enough and steadily enough to use the proper means to secure it at the earliest possible moment that the children are able to understand their duty to God. The longer a child goes on in sin, by so much the more difficult is he to get at. Once more, parents often do not understand, believe, and use the promises of the Almighty; they do not take hold of God in relation to their children; they do not feel their duties and responsibilities and throw themselves on God for assistance and direction as he has required them to do. He has furnished them with promises suited to the relation they sustain, and the peculiar responsibilities devolving upon them; and if parents will but understand, take hold upon, and make use of these promises for which they were designed, they will undoubtedly find in early life that God will convert the children. There is another error which parents ofttimes fall into: some parents are not aware of the pernicious influence of a fastidiously critical spirit in relation to preaching and the means of grace. Look around in any circle you please and observe a family where, on coming home from worship on the Sabbath, the parents are in the habit of criticizing the preacher and calling the attention of the family to anything they may think out of good taste. "The sermon on the whole was well enough," say they, for instance, "but there were such and such things," and they proceed to quibble on certain points either of manner or matter. Perhaps it was "too personal," perhaps "not personal enough." This is the species of conversation which they freely indulge before the children. Now all men of prudence who give such a conduct a moment's reflection will see at once what influence it must have on unconverted children. Go into families where this is the case, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they will be found to be unconverted. Some parents do this without appearing to be aware of it, and never hear a sermon without finding some fault with it in the presence of the children.

A few years since, there was a person of this kind in my own household, and whenever a certain individual preached for me as he often did, for I frequently put someone into my pulpit once on the Sabbath this person would take occasion to criticize him. In fact, he dealt thus with them all, but particularly with the minister in question who was, by the way, the very best amongst them, and the one from whose preaching I hoped the most, both with respect to my own children and other persons; yet this individual was always in the habit of speaking against this man. But I could not bear it long. I would not endure it. I would not have such an individual in my family. His criticisms were ofttimes just enough, and it was natural enough for a critical mind to make them; but mark instead of being impressed by the numerous excellencies his sermons always had, almost always the things objected to were the only theme of his discourse. I told him at length that I could not have it; I had also noticed the few defects, but they were so completely over-balanced by the good, that I completely overlooked them, and should never think of them again. Another family in the place was in a similar condition in this respect. It was a gentleman who had a number of young persons boarding with him, and who was in the habit, I was told, of speaking at the table severely of the preaching from time to time. Let who would preach, he went home and criticized them and hence, such was his influence on the family, that it was just as plain to everybody as possible that the young people in that family were out of the way; in this case, it was so plain that it was impossible that it could be mistaken or overlooked, and it was the natural result of such a state of things.

The fact is, that to mention even actual faults in those who preach the Gospel to persons who are not prepared to appreciate their excellencies is a dangerous thing for a family of children. The thing needed to be done is to feel and use it himself and carry home everything that is good and bring it to bear in a focal blaze on the minds of children. But if he does not feel it himself if he is critical and fault-finding, he will ruin his family. Go where you will and you will find these fastidious parents with unconverted children. Now, if there are fastidious parents here in this congregation, you mark their families, and you will see they are not converted. Your minister may labor and labor with them, but the effect of his ministry is broken by this fastidious, censorious spirit, the attention being directed to the exceptional things in manner or matter, while the good points are largely or wholly unheeded.

But let me say once more that families who would have a blessing during a revival of religion must set their house in order. Parents must take the matter up, and if they have laid stumbling blocks before their families, confess their ex- istence and betake themselves to remove them. Parents often fancy that as they have been going on wrongly, it will lessen their influence over their family to call them round the family altar and confess it; but the fact is that such is by no means the case; the effect is quite the contrary. The house must be set in order so that God may come in and be honoured in abiding there and not dishonour- ed. Those who do not get blessed in their family during the times of revival you will find, as a general rule, are those who have not done this; and if you search into the matter you will find some one or more of the hindrances I have specified. I could mention a very large number of cases in which I have myself actually made such inquiries, as to what the stumbling block really was. Some- times I have seen the children deeply impressed and yet not converted, and so they have passed along from day to day. In a great many instances I have found in inquiry, that family prayer was neglected and the spirit grieved in various ways in that household, both by sins of omission and sins of commission.

But let me state a case. In one of the towns of the United States a few years since, I was labouring in a revival of religion when a young lady came to me for inquiry. I saw she was deeply convicted of sin. Her parents, she told me, were professedly pious, and accordingly, I expected her soon to be converted. But she came again and again without getting fully through till at length, her excitement was such that I feared lest she became deranged from the power of her convictions. I thought there must be some stumbling block. The next time she came, the following conversation took place;" Is there family prayer in your household?" I asked, "There used to be," she replied, "but for some time it has been wholly discontinued." "Oh! indeed," said I, "well what time in the day now do you think I could see your father?" She stated a time and I searched him out the very next morning. I found the young lady in a melancholy state of despondency. The mother was within, and the father some little way from the house. I began to converse with the mother and soon made the discovery that she was in a backsliding state. I asked her to call in her husband which she immediately did and he was in a similar condition. I then set before them the state of their daughter: God had convicted her right before them and with such force that she was on the verge of despair and destruction. "Why she tells me," said I, "that you don't pray in your family. How's that? Do you not see that you are standing right in the way of her conversion? Now until you confess your sins and break your hearts and set up again your family alter, I don't mean to leave your house! What? Is this child to be allowed to remain under conviction right before your eyes? Don't you see what a countenance she has already while you are going about here and there grieving the Holy Spirit?" They both began to weep, knelt down, and made a confession of their sins before the Lord, and it was but a very short time before their hearts were broken as the Spirit had previously broken their daughter's.

This I have found in all my experience, that if the Spirit of God does not work in a family, there is some such stumbling block in the way. Sometimes the elder children in the family, though professors of religion, are right in the way. They ofttimes set a bad example where the elder children are backsliding professors and the younger unconverted, the former often exercise a most pernicious influence over the latter. They are worldly minded, and if any of the younger children become serious, they laugh and talk it all away. Why? They are looked up to as Christians by their younger brethren; but instead of praying for them and watching over them, they conduct themselves in such a light-minded outrageous manner as to stand right in their way. I have often had occasion to expostulate with such. "What if your younger brothers and sisters are impressed by the Spirit of God, and instead of praying for them, your prayerlessness is one of the greatest obstacles in the way!" In fact, inquirers have often let this out in their conversations with me; they have said, "my eldest brother" does this or "my eldest sister" says that; indeed much observation has satisfied me that it is one of the most fearful things in the world for a family to be passed by, whether from this or any other cause; and this I believe to be often one of the most powerful obstacles.

If you see a family thus passed by unblessed, you may expect that it will be marked as was the village of Meroz. "Curse ye Meroz," says the angel, "curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof, because they came not up to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty." It seems to be a great and guiding principle of the government of God that, whenever a church is called into a conflict with the enemies of the Lord of Hosts to make an onslaught on the powers of darkness it is an awful thing for any family of that church to withhold its influence. Look at the whole history of the Jewish nation, how it reveals the great principles of God's government! He will act on the same principles now if he is the same God now as he was then. The spirit of God's government is the same under the present as under the former dispensations. God always would have rebuked a family for withholding its influence at such times, and he always will do it.

Sometimes the ministers of the same locality stand out and will have no connection with revivals, but mark! in my own experience I have uniformly seen that the curse of God follows such men. Were it necessary, I could substantiate this assertion by the names of persons and places. I could tell you some very striking facts, both with regard to ministers of various denominations as well as presbyterian elders and the deacons of congregational churches. This is a great principle of God's government, who can deny it? No man who knows his Bible and understands the dealings of God. When God calls upon the sacramental hosts to rally at the sound of his coming when his voice is heard in the tops of the mulberry trees if any family neglects to invite the Saviour to become its guest, what will become of that family? I suppose I have been reminded of the curse on Meroz thousands of times; it is a fearful thing that the Spirit of God should breathe over a community, and here and there a family shall go unblessed? Such families may expect their children to go unconverted; for it is remarkable that in this respect, God sometimes visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children; and upon the children's children; a son turns out perhaps a gambler; a daughter runs away and marries without her parent's consent, or something of that kind.

The fact is, brethren, God is a jealous God, and when he comes, he expects to be received. Now, brethren, have your families been blessed? Some of you have I known. But do not let any child in your families who has come to the age of intel