I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.? 
 
 i UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN; 
 
 OR, 
 
 AN APPEAL TO PARENTS TO PRAY CONTINU- 
 ALLY FOR THE WELFARE AND SALVA- 
 TION OF THEIR CHILDREN. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. WILLIAM SCRIBNER. 
 
 WITH A PREFATORY NOTE 
 
 BY THE 
 
 Rev. L. H. ATWATER, D.D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA : 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 
 
 / *>3 , 
 

 Entered according to Act of Con greBS^tn-ttjjeuyeag 1873, by 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 LC Control Number 
 
 tmp96 027860 
 
 WE8TCOTT & TflOMSOH, 
 
 Mereetypers and Eleetrotypers, Philadcu 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 rjIHE following appeal to Christian 
 -*- parents to abound in prayer for 
 the regeneration, early piety and uni- 
 versal welfare of their children is 
 plain, thorough and earnest. Its ob- 
 ject is of incomparable moment. Al- 
 though at first sight this duty might 
 seem to be among those commonplaces 
 in religion which are too obvious to 
 need argument or enforcement, yet it is 
 equally among those which, in part, 
 from their very indisputableness, are 
 liable to be forgotten or neglected. It 
 is, moreover, beyond doubt that there 
 has been a wide though often secret 
 
4 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 skepticism in regard to the prospect or 
 possibility of conversion and real re- 
 ligion in childhood and early youth 
 which has often checked and prevented 
 prayer and effort for this great blessing. 
 We are glad to believe that this is less 
 now than in the last generation. Great 
 good has been done by timely discus- 
 sion relative to the true import of in- 
 fant baptism and the status and training 
 it implies in the case of the children of 
 the covenant. Many of Christ's lambs 
 are now within his visible fold by open 
 profession proceeding from hopeful 
 conversion. We trust that the propor- 
 tion of such will be vastly increased. 
 Nothing can more contribute to this 
 great result than a great increase of 
 parental prayer for the regeneration of 
 children, along with the efforts for the 
 right training and nurture of these 
 
PBEFATORY NOTE. 5 
 
 children wliicli such prayer will natu- 
 rally inspire. We are confident that 
 this unpretending volume will greatly 
 further this precious cause. 
 
 L. H. Atwater. 
 Princeton, Nov. 15, 1872. 
 1* 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 rpHE early conversion of all the chil- 
 -*- dren of the Church should be in- 
 tensely desired and incessantly prayed 
 for. How great are the advantages 
 which would attend the early renewing 
 of their minds ! 
 
 It would shorten the period of their 
 complete subjection to the dominion of 
 sin. How can a holy soul, how can 
 one in whom there are daily breathings 
 after God, be satisfied to have his child 
 continue for years in bondage to sin, 
 even supposing a certainty may exist 
 that conversion will take place before 
 death ? One would think that even that 
 
 7 
 
8 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 joy which the Christian parent feels at 
 beholding the return of the long-lost 
 prodigal would be mingled with sadness 
 at the thought of the years previously 
 spent by him in the service of Satan 
 and in enmity to God. Many who live 
 to maturity before they pass from death 
 unto life continue during the remain- 
 der of their days to suffer from the ef- 
 fects of evil habits to which they were 
 addicted in the season of youth. 
 
 Moreover, unless those habits which 
 none but a true Christian ever prizes — 
 habits of daily and systematic prayer, 
 resolute conflict with sin in its various 
 forms, liberality, watchfulness over self 
 and others of a similar kind — are formed 
 in the morning of life, it is exceedingly 
 doubtful whether they will ever be- 
 come strong, even supposing the effort 
 to form them be subsequently made. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 9 
 
 As for the graces of the soul, as love, 
 faith and humility, there is no possibil- 
 ity of their being exercised through a 
 long series of years if conversion does 
 not take place until late ; consequently, 
 any great attainments in holiness are 
 not likely to be witnessed. 
 
 Although the saving conversion of 
 the children of the Church is an object 
 worthy of intense desire, yet it is a 
 thing not often looked for. Professing 
 Christians too frequently have little 
 or no expectation that their offspring 
 will experience the renewing influences 
 of God's Spirit at a tender age. Nor is 
 it often the case that members of the 
 Church who are not parents expect to 
 see the churches enlarged by the addi- 
 tion of converted children. Even min- 
 isters, while they may desire and pray 
 for the divine blessing on their labors, 
 
10 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 and may even be watching for it, sel- 
 dom confidently look for the conversion 
 of the little ones. Such a thing would 
 fill them with joy, but they are not ex- 
 pecting it as a matter of course. There 
 are persons, it may be, in the Christian 
 congregation, who are thought to be 
 not far from the kingdom of God, and 
 who are daily expected to give evidence 
 of having undergone a saving change, 
 but they are not often children. Were 
 a large number of these to come to 
 Christ in the exercise of faith, within 
 a short time, and express a desire to 
 celebrate his dying love at the commu- 
 nion-table, God's people would be filled 
 with surprise. 
 
 Yet all the means of grace have 
 been bestowed upon the child which 
 adults enjoy; the danger of staying 
 away from the Saviour is frequently 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 11 
 
 set before him, and lie easily compre- 
 hends it. He is assured that God de- 
 lights to hear prayer, and will give the 
 Holy Spirit to all who ask for it. He 
 knows that God has said, They that seek 
 me early shall find me, and he knows 
 that our heavenly Father regards even 
 a child's procrastination in the matter 
 of repentance and coming to Christ as 
 a great sin. 
 
 It may be said that Christians have 
 learned not to expect things which God 
 plainly shows by the workings of his 
 providence he does not intend shall 
 take place — that the fact itself that so 
 few children of professors are actually 
 renewed in childhood makes it evident 
 that it is not in accordance with his 
 will that they should be. It is a suffi- 
 cient reply to this to say, that if the 
 majority of professors were filled with 
 
12 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 the deepest longings for the early con- 
 version of their offspring, if they hab- 
 itually wrestled with God in prayer for 
 the blessing, if they faithfully and con- , 
 scientiously imbued their minds with re- 
 ligious knowledge, if they continued to 
 do all this unweariedly and with faith, 
 and if, after all, scarcely any little chil- 
 dren having such parents were brought 
 into the fold of the good Shepherd, 
 then it might afford evidence that God 
 is unwilling that many should be re- 
 newed at an early age. But as the 
 case stands no such conclusion can be 
 drawn. All that we are entitled to in- 
 fer is that God does not see fit to con- 
 vert at a tender age the children of 
 those whose desire for the blessing is 
 very faint, and who do not earnestly 
 seek it in the use of means which are 
 adapted to bring it about. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 13 
 
 That it is the will of God that the 
 early regeneration of the children of 
 the Church should take place, and 
 should be desired and expected by us, is 
 plain from the command of the Saviour, 
 " Suffer the little children to come unto 
 me." Here is virtually a command that 
 we desire their conversion while they are 
 yet little children, that we expect it, and 
 that we do all that in us lies to lead them 
 to Jesus. He enjoins it upon us to look 
 for and to strive to be instrumental in 
 their early salvation, and he gives us to 
 understand that our efforts shall not be 
 in vain by adding that just such little 
 ones are heirs and partakers of glory. 
 
 That it is the will of God is also 
 manifest from the fact that he has, as 
 was said, bestowed upon our children 
 all the means of grace which adults en- 
 joy. He has — and how can we be suffi- 
 
14 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 ciently grateful for it? — rendered the 
 truths which save the soul so simple 
 that they may be comprehended by the 
 youngest mind, and he has required 
 us carefully to imbue their minds with 
 those truths, on peril of his severe dis- 
 pleasure. He commands them to pray 
 for themselves, and he requires the 
 Church to pray for them. Surely when 
 these things are properly looked at, we 
 are driven to the conclusion that our 
 heavenly Father is willing that our 
 children should experience in their 
 hearts, while they are yet young, the 
 converting power of his grace. 
 
 The true explanation of the fact, that 
 the early and manifest conversion of the 
 children of the Church is not so fre- 
 quent as to be looked for as almost a 
 matter of course, is that parents devolve 
 the work of laboring for their conver- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 15 
 
 sion on others. Here is the sad mistake 
 which many fathers and mothers make. 
 They look to others to do the work 
 which they themselves should perform. 
 It is impossible for them to value too 
 highly the faithful endeavors of minis- 
 ters and Sabbath-school teachers to feed 
 the lambs of Christ, but let them be- 
 ware how they regard the labors of 
 others, in the matter of their children's 
 conversion, as a sufficient substitute 
 for their own exertions to bring about 
 that end. No Christian parent can be 
 released from the obligation of striving 
 by his own personal efforts to lead his 
 children to Christ. He is not permitted 
 to prefer the instrumentality of preach- 
 ing to that of his own religious training 
 of his little ones. 
 
 The command that we bring up our 
 children in the nurture and admonition 
 
16 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 of the Lord has but one meaning, and 
 can be easily understood. As far as the 
 children of believers are concerned, God 
 designs that parental training should be 
 the first and ordinary means of their 
 salvation. They can no more be regen- 
 erated and saved without the use of 
 means than can others, only in their 
 case these means have a relation to the 
 peculiar position which they occupy as 
 children of the covenant.* There is a 
 
 * In the last excellent narrative (1872) of the Gen- 
 eral Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
 United States of America, in regard to the state of relig- 
 ion within the bounds of that Church, occur the follow- 
 ing words: "We are led to fear that the privileges of 
 the Abrahamic covenant and the family obligations are 
 too lightly esteemed among our people. Frequent men- 
 tion is made of the Sabbath -school, but scarcely an ut- 
 terance regarding home instructions. Is there not evi- 
 dencein this that the true work and mission of the Sabbath- 
 school is misapprehended ? Or, at least, does it not sug- 
 gest to us the probability that parents are neglecting the 
 solemn obligation imposed upon them by divine author- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 17 
 
 special promise to bless to their salva- 
 tion the prayers, the godly example and 
 the teaching of their parents, or of those 
 who fill the place of parents to them. 
 The Church has always recognized this 
 truth, and in all ages of her history 
 
 ity, and constituting a part of the covenant, in leaving 
 the instruction of their households chiefly to the Sab- 
 bath-school teacher ? The teacher may or may not be 
 faithful in his work, but in any case he is not a party to 
 the covenant made with God, and solemnly ratified by 
 the ordinance of baptism, concerning the members of 
 the family. The Abrahamic covenant, existing to-day, 
 as during the infancy of Isaac, in all its blessedness and 
 power, has its significance and must produce its results 
 through the family relation. It was to Abraham and 
 his seed that the promises were made ; and, in like man- 
 ner, through the whole history of the Church, the bless- 
 ing to the household has been through the covenant 
 with the parents. The privileges and the obligations of 
 a covenant cannot be separated. Parents cannot come 
 into the presence of God claiming that he shall bestow 
 upon their children the blessings of the covenant when 
 they themselves have wholly neglected to discharge the 
 duties required of them by the very conditions of the 
 covenant." 
 2* 
 
18 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 her best and wisest teachers have ' 
 sisted that her children are to be madU 
 partakers of the benefits of Christ's re- 
 demption through the use of these means 
 by their own parents. That holy and 
 successful minister of Christ, Richard 
 Baxter, expressed the opinion that the 
 time would probably come when almost 
 all the children within the pale of the 
 Church would become pious under pa- 
 rental culture. He also says, "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. . . . And the preaching 
 of the word by public ministers is 
 not the first ordinary means of grace to 
 any but those that were graceless till 
 they came to hear such preaching. . . . 
 The ordinary appointed means for the 
 first actual grace is parents' godly in- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 19 
 
 struction and education of their chil- 
 dren." * 
 
 The work to be done by parents in 
 order to bring about the salvation and 
 to secure the very highest good of their 
 children includes — 
 
 1. Religiously instructing them. 
 
 2. Setting before them a holy ex- 
 ample. 
 
 3. Restraining them. 
 
 4. Praying for them. 
 
 It is only concerning the last of these 
 duties — that of praying for their chil- 
 dren — that I propose to say a few words 
 to Christian parents in what here fol- 
 lows. 
 
 I simply desire to offer you some per- 
 suasives to the faithful performance of 
 this duty. The incentives which may 
 well move you to intercede for them 
 
 * Quoted in BushnelPs " Christian Nurture." 
 
20 PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 earnestly and unceasingly are many and 
 powerful. That which I would first 
 urge you to make the matter of your 
 perpetual supplication is their salvation. 
 It is to be feared that very few faithfully 
 pray for the salvation of their offspring, 
 and it is certain that by many the duty 
 is shockingly neglected. 
 
PART I. 
 
 PEAYEE FOE YOUE CHILDEEN'S 
 SALVATION. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because their salvation is so great a 
 prize that it is worth all the pains which 
 your prayers to secure it for them may 
 cost you. 
 
 When the unconcerned sinner is 
 thoroughly aroused to a sense of his 
 lost condition, he feels that to gain his 
 own soul, at any sacrifice, is a work of 
 infinite importance, and with the great- 
 est earnestness he sets about using every 
 means to save it which the word of God 
 directs him to employ. 
 
 21 
 
22 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 An English nobleman, who subse- 
 quently became an eminently useful 
 Christian, thus describes his own case 
 when his exposure to eternal death was 
 first suddenly revealed to him : " It was 
 at Brighton, 132 Marine-parade, about 
 seven o'clock in the evening, that I re- 
 ceived such a deep impression of eter- 
 nity that the effect has continued to the 
 present day, and by the blessing of God 
 will remain to my dying day. I had 
 just dressed for dinner, when the sight 
 of the clothes which I had thrown off 
 suddenly impressed me with the thought 
 of dying, of undressing for the last 
 time, of being unclothed of this body. 
 I felt the terrors of dying unprepared 
 in a degree approaching to reality. 
 In the bed I saw, not a place of nightly 
 repose, but a place intended to receive 
 the dying struggle. In short, the pros- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 23 
 
 pect of death was impressed on my 
 imagination with overwhelming force, 
 and not of death only, but of eternity, 
 of the day of judgment, of an offended 
 God and the sentence to eternal tor- 
 ment. I felt the imperative necessity 
 of preparing for death at any cost 
 and any sacrifice. The prospect of 
 heaven added little or nothing to my 
 resolution. Safety was all I aimed at. 
 This I felt was within my reach, and I 
 grasped at it with the feelings of a 
 drowning man. Salvation must be 
 sought and attained, though the path to 
 it lay through fire and water. No 
 hardship seemed worth a moment's 
 consideration in comparison with so 
 great a prize." * 
 
 Now, precisely the concern which we 
 
 * "Memoir of Lord Haddo," fifth edition, page 19, 
 London. 
 
24 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 feel about our own danger when we are 
 at first truly awakened, we should feel 
 with reference to the danger our chil- 
 dren are in until we have good grounds 
 for hoping that their souls are safe. 
 We should feel that their salvation 
 must be sought, though the path to it 
 may lie through fire and water, for our 
 children are a part of ourselves; and 
 fearful as the thought is, it depends, in 
 all probability, upon us, their parents, 
 whether they are saved or not. We 
 cannot throw off our responsibilities for 
 them. Do you feel that the eternal 
 ruin of your children is a possible 
 thing — that it is most probable if you 
 never pray for them? The fact that 
 their souls are precious beyond all 
 thought, that the loss of their souls 
 would be inconceivably dreadful, that 
 eternal life would be to them an infinite 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 25 
 
 gain, and that your prayers may be in- 
 strumental in saving them, should stir 
 you up to the offering of incessant sup- 
 plications in their behalf. Surely you 
 must be convinced that their salvation 
 
 from eternal death is worth all vour 
 
 %j 
 
 prayers and tears — all the agonizing 
 earnestness which may accompany your 
 intercessions for them. 
 
 This is true if the declarations of the 
 God of truth are to be believed. Had 
 not the soul's salvation been precious 
 beyond all conception, he would not, 
 in order to secure it, have delivered 
 up his own Son. Your children have 
 just such souls as the blessed Saviour 
 came to redeem. Pity for them indeed 
 glowed in his heart when he gave him- 
 self to die. If you are convinced that 
 their souls' redemption has a value be- 
 yond all price, can you shrink from the 
 
26 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 burden — if you regard it such—which 
 importunate prayer for them would 
 impose on you ? 
 
 II. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because fetv will pray for it if you 
 do not. 
 
 There is reason to fear that compar- 
 atively few professing Christians inter- 
 cede for souls whom they have not 
 some very special reasons for being in- 
 terested in. This is lamentable, for the 
 world will never be converted to Christ 
 until his people pray more for their 
 fellow-men. Indeed, almost all the sup- 
 plications offered by Christians should 
 be intercessory. " To pray always/' 
 says an earnest and eloquent writer, 
 "is a hard precept, and one we can 
 only come to by time and habit, as well 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 27 
 
 as by gift and grace. But the thing is 
 to find that the older we grow, the more 
 we pray, and the more we pray, the 
 more our prayer takes the line of inter- 
 cession for the souls of others. 
 
 " The inestimable privilege of prayer 
 is given us not merely for our own ne- 
 cessities, but that we may use it for the 
 temporal and spiritual good of others." 
 
 God expressly commands us to 
 make intercessory prayer. I exhort, 
 therefore, that, first of all, supplications, 
 prayers, intercessions and giving of 
 thanks be made for all men.* This 
 command is too often forgotten. As for 
 singling out souls in order to make 
 them the subjects of prayer, very little 
 of this is done, and those who are 
 thus singled out are generally persons 
 thought to be of importance in the 
 
 * 1 Tim. ii. 1. 
 
28 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Church or in the world. Your chil- 
 dren will probably, therefore, be passed 
 by in those intercessions in which 
 highly favored ones are particularly 
 remembered by God's praying people. 
 
 Oh, then, seeing that few, if any, in 
 the Church of Christ will be faithful to 
 them in this respect, let them have the 
 benefit of your own perpetual supplica- 
 tions. Plead with the Saviour to give 
 them his Holy Spirit. Come to God 
 for this blessing with holy boldness, 
 with earnest wrestlings, with arguments 
 and tears. Say not that you truly love 
 them if you find it too much trouble 
 thus to entreat for them the blessings 
 which their souls imperatively need. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 29 
 
 III. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because none others can pray for 
 it as you can. 
 
 We may desire an interest in the 
 prayers of a stranger, but we covet 
 still more the intercessions of one 
 who loves us, and who thoroughly 
 understands our character and wants. 
 We know that such a one is able 
 to pray for us as no stranger can. 
 In like manner, your great love for 
 your children, the tender pity you feel 
 for them and your knowledge of their 
 disposition, wants and trials qualify 
 you to plead with God in their behalf 
 with an importunity and an earnestness 
 which can take no denial. 
 
 Even ungodly fathers and mothers 
 cannot but long to have their offspring 
 saved — even such cannot bear the idea 
 
 3* 
 
30 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 of their being for ever lost. But what 
 words can at all express the profound 
 anxieties of pious parents for their 
 children ? " If we turn our eye to her 
 who is pre-eminently the parent — if one 
 can earn the title by intensity of pain 
 and love — the mother has a tenderness 
 toward her offspring which she has 
 long since concluded to bury in silence 
 or utter only in prayers, since she well 
 knows no language of hers can ever ex- 
 press it." 
 
 It was as a parent that Jacob prayed 
 when he wrestled with the angel. No 
 doubt, as he continued to weep and to 
 make supplications, he found great en- 
 largement in prayer. No doubt he 
 thought of the oft-repeated promises to 
 Abraham, to Isaac and to himself, and 
 prayed for the coming of Him in whom 
 all nations should be blessed, who should 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 31 
 
 reign over the house of Jacob for ever, 
 and of whose kingdom there should be 
 no end. But that which imjDelled him 
 to begin to pray was his fatherly anx- 
 iety. It was the perilous condition 
 which his children were in, which first 
 drove him to the mercy-seat, with the 
 strong resolve that he would not be de- 
 nied. God knows the tender and anx- 
 ious love of a parent, and therefore he 
 has promised his people that if they 
 will be faithful as parents he will con- 
 vert and save their children for ever. 
 Know, therefore, that the Lord thy 
 God, he is God, the faithful God, which 
 keepeth covenant and mercy with them 
 that love him and keep his command- 
 ments to a thousand generations.* 
 When he would convince us of his 
 willingness to hear prayer, he has 
 
 * Deut. vii. 9. 
 
32 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 framed an argument founded on this 
 parental love. That argument is that, 
 if our heavenly Father is more willing 
 to bless us than parents are to give 
 gifts to their children, he must be will- 
 ing indeed. Repeated acts of prayer 
 become in time a habit of prayer, and 
 rest assured that none can so easily ac- 
 quire the habit of interceding for your 
 children as you can. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because your omitting to do so will 
 he perilous to them and to you. 
 
 It should not be forgotten that our 
 heavenly Father makes a distinction 
 between those who try to fulfill their 
 parental obligations and those parents 
 who are altogether unfaithful. You 
 must use the means which he has ap- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 33 
 
 pointed to prevent the ruin and to se- 
 cure the salvation of your little ones, 
 and not one of these exceeds in import- 
 ance the offering up of prayer daily in 
 their behalf. If you fail in this, they 
 remain in fearful peril. 
 
 The danger to yourselves also is great, 
 for by your wicked omission you incur 
 the displeasure of God. He is not an 
 indifferent spectator of your neglect. 
 It is not to unfaithful, prayerless pa- 
 rents that his exceeding great and pre- 
 cious promises are addressed, but " the 
 mercy of the Lord is from everlasting 
 to everlasting upon them that fear him, 
 and his righteousness unto children's 
 children, to such as keep his covenant, 
 and to those that remember his com- 
 mandments to do them."* 
 
 It is a dreadful thought that multi- 
 
 * Ps. ciii. 17, 18. 
 
34 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 tudes of souls have perished who would 
 have been saved had their parents faith- 
 fully prayed for them. Such parents 
 have gone into eternity with the blood 
 of their children on their skirts. The 
 great want of your children is faith; 
 without faith they cannot be saved. 
 But you have no right to expect that 
 God will bestow this gift upon them if 
 you do not seek it for them. By a life 
 of impenitence and unbelief they may 
 do dreadful and lasting injury, and 
 such a life they will be likely to live, 
 should they continue in the world, un- 
 less you pray for them. They are sur- 
 rounded by evil influences and they are 
 fallen creatures, and they need to be 
 protected from these evil influences by 
 the power of God, and no less do they 
 need to be inwardly restrained, enlight- 
 ened, controlled, purified and guided by 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 35 
 
 the Holy Spirit. These wants are very 
 great and pressing. Therefore ask God 
 earnestly and importunately to supply 
 them. 
 
 V. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because you will then find it easier 
 to perform other parental duties on the 
 performance of which God has condi- 
 tioned their salvation. 
 
 The Bible clearly makes known what 
 those duties are which God requires of 
 parents. They are required to teach 
 their children diligently the truths of 
 his word, and to accompany and enforce 
 this instruction by wholesome restraint 
 and the light of a holy example. 
 
 They cannot commit this work to 
 others. It is the parent himself who is 
 commanded to bring up his own chil- 
 dren in the nurture and admonition of 
 
36 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 the Lord.* God commends Abraham 
 for fulfilling himself his own parental 
 duties. "And the Lord said, shall I 
 hide from Abraham that thing which I 
 do, seeing that Abraham shall surely 
 become a great and mighty nation, and 
 all the nations of the earth shall be 
 blessed in him ? For I know him, that 
 he will command his children and his 
 household after him, and they shall 
 keep the way of the Lord to do justice 
 and judgment.''^ 
 
 When God says to parents, " These 
 words which I command thee this day 
 shall be in thy heart, and thou shalt 
 teach them diligently unto thy children, 
 and shalt talk of them when thou sit- 
 test in thine house, and when thou 
 walkest by the way, and when thou liest 
 down, and when thou risest up/'J how 
 
 * Eph. vi. 4. f Gen. xvii. 17, 18. J Deut. vi. 6, 7 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 37 
 
 plain it is that lie expects parents to be 
 the instructors of their own children ! 
 
 And why should they not be ? What 
 more natural than that Christian fathers 
 and mothers should themselves under- 
 take the work instead of depending on 
 others to do it for them ? How much 
 greater is the advantage which a parent 
 possesses than any other person can 
 have in his constant intercourse with 
 his child and his hold on its confidence 
 and love ! 
 
 This work of training up your own 
 children in the nurture of the Lord 
 has been given to you by God. It is a 
 great work, and nothing can sustain you 
 under the burden like the offering up of 
 prayer for your little ones, believingly, 
 earnestly and perseveringly. Pray, then , 
 for them — pray for them early and late 
 and without ceasing. God will an- 
 
38 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 swer your supplications by inclining you 
 by his grace to use his appointed means 
 for promoting their spiritual good, and 
 by wonderfully assisting you to employ 
 those means. Moreover, it will be seen, 
 should their lives be spared, that the 
 labor expended in their faithful train- 
 ing has not been in vain. Some who 
 are to be commended for their perse- 
 vering efforts to impart religious in- 
 struction to their children, and for the 
 mingled kindness and firmness with 
 which they control them, neglect too 
 much to pray for them. No doubt 
 this is the reason why many children, 
 who have been carefully taught and 
 governed, disappoint parental hopes. 
 Too little prayer, especially believing 
 prayer, was offered for them. We may 
 not be able to tell why it is so, but it 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 39 
 
 is nevertheless a fact, that some bless- 
 ings seldom come except in answer to 
 importunate, prayer. One of these is 
 the early conversion of our children. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Pray for the renewing of the souls of 
 your children, because prayer alone can 
 call into exercise that divine power in 
 their behalf which is absolutely neces- 
 sary in order that the means which you 
 may employ for their salvation may not 
 be used in vain. 
 
 That a radical change must be 
 wrought in their souls, that they must 
 be quickened or raised to life, born again, 
 created anew, you feelingly acknow- 
 ledge, because you believe that their nat- 
 ural state is a state of spiritual death. 
 But what is to effect the great change 
 which is so indispensable ? What is it 
 
40 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 which can make them new creatures 
 and impart to their souls a divine spir- 
 itual life ? Not Christian nurture, 
 which is to be faithfully used as a 
 means and the neglect of which might 
 be ruinous, but the mighty power of 
 God, and that alone. Only the exceed- 
 ing greatness of God's power which 
 raised Christ from the dead can 
 quicken their souls and cause them to 
 live the spiritual life. 
 
 But regeneration is not the whole of 
 religion. The principle of spiritual 
 life, when newly implanted in them, is 
 but feeble. Only as it is fed by the 
 truth can it be maintained and strength- 
 ened. Our Saviour prays, Sanctify 
 them by thy truth. But although the 
 knowledge of the truth and constant 
 progress in that knowledge are necessary 
 in order to sanctification, yet sanctifica- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 41 
 
 tion is still to be recognized as the 
 work of God's Spirit. The Spirit does 
 indeed use the word as his instrument 
 in producing holiness of heart and life, 
 still, it is by his agency, from first to 
 last, that any believer grows in grace. 
 
 Thus does your absolute dependence 
 and that of your child on the influ- 
 ences of the omnipotent Spirit appear. 
 Thus plain it is that, however long and 
 earnestly you may persevere in using 
 means (which, indeed, must not be 
 neglected) for the saving conversion of 
 your offspring, yet all will be in vain 
 unless the third person of the Godhead 
 works in them to will and to do. The 
 total spiritual death of the soul renders 
 the mere use of means utterly power- 
 less, and nothing short of the putting 
 forth of the same almighty power 
 which wrought in Christ can raise it to 
 
 4* 
 
42 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN". 
 
 life — can make it the possessor of a spark 
 of holiness. 
 
 Seeing that this is so, how sincere 
 and profound should be your gratitude 
 to God that he has pointed out a way 
 by which you may secure the exertion 
 of this divine power in their behalf! 
 He has taught you that prayer for the 
 efficacious operation of the Holy Spirit 
 on their hearts will certainly be heard. 
 Thousands of believing parents have 
 tested this gracious promise with suc- 
 cess. Their prayers have had power with 
 God, and have prevailed, and yours will 
 also prevail if you intercede with faith, 
 if you pray always and do not faint. 
 How wonderful that prayer should have 
 efficacy to secure the almighty energy 
 of the blessed Spirit for our children's 
 good ! It is owing to the infinite con- 
 descension of our God. 
 
PEAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 43 
 
 Let us show how exceedingly we 
 prize God's condescending love by con- 
 tinually seeking the great blessing 
 which he encourages us to seek ; and 
 if any have children who have long 
 been wanderers from the fold, let them 
 persevere in praying for them to the 
 very last, for it is impossible for them 
 to be so hardened that God cannot 
 change their hearts with infinite ease. 
 And nothing but believing prayer can 
 secure the exertion of his power to 
 effect the change. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren, because by their salvation., granted 
 in answer to your prayers, the divine 
 Saviour will be glorified. 
 
 Jesus is the great deliverer. He is 
 the deliverer of his people from eternal 
 
44 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 misery, and he is the author of their 
 eternal blessedness. It was his love 
 for them which constrained him to die 
 for their salvation. When any are 
 actually saved — saved in spite of the 
 fearful difficulties in the w 7 ay and the 
 opposition of Satan and all his hosts — 
 his design in dying is so far accom- 
 plished. 
 
 Thus, whenever a sinner is saved, Je- 
 sus is victorious — he is glorified, a new 
 star is added to his crown. Besides, 
 each soul snatched from the grasp of 
 Satan and eternal ruin sings his praises. 
 " New redeemed criminals from earth, 
 saved from the gates of hell, enter the 
 gates of heaven with a new song of 
 praise in their mouths, and add to the 
 ever-growing melody of which they 
 shall never weary." They never rest 
 day nor night, giving praise and glory to 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 45 
 
 Him that sits on the throne, and the 
 Lamb at his right hand. 
 
 Should your children, in answer to 
 your prayers, be added to the number 
 of the redeemed, you see how their 
 redemption will exceedingly glorify 
 the Saviour. This motive should be 
 stronger than any other which can in- 
 fluence you to seek their salvation. 
 The salvation of men should never be 
 thought of apart from the glory of 
 Christ. His exaltation is the highest 
 end contemplated in the work of re- 
 demption. Your love for him should 
 be stronger by far than any other pas- 
 sion of your soul. Not merely the sal- 
 vation of your beloved children, but 
 the glory of the blessed Saviour in their 
 salvation, should impel you to pray for 
 them. Nothing that can happen in the 
 world is worthy of notice, except in so 
 
46 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 far as it has a bearing on the promo- 
 tion of the glory of the Lord Jesus. 
 Perhaps our prayers and labors for the 
 conversion of our near relatives would 
 more frequently be blessed to their sal- 
 vation were we, in the efforts which we 
 put forth, more influenced by the desire 
 that our blessed Redeemer should be 
 glorified. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Pray for the salvation of your chil- 
 dren^ because you have a strong encour- 
 agement and incentive to do so in the ex- 
 press promise of God that, if you are 
 faithful to your trust, he will be their 
 God, and will save them. 
 
 The words which God spake to Abra- 
 ham, when he entered into covenant 
 with him and his seed, may be regarded 
 as addressed to each believer individ- 
 ually, and therefore to you. Why do 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 47 
 
 you expect to be heard when you ask 
 that you yourself may, during your 
 life and at your death, receive benefits 
 from Christ? Is it because God has 
 promised you that he will be your God ? 
 That his love for you shall never fail ? 
 That he will never leave you nor for- 
 sake you? That his Spirit which is 
 upon you, and his words which he has 
 put in your mouth, shall not depart out 
 of your mouth ? That he will circum- 
 cise your heart to love the Lord your 
 God that you may live? Then you 
 may just as much expect to be heard 
 and answered when you plead for your 
 children, for these promises of the cov- 
 enant are not one whit less intended for 
 them than for you. Indeed, they ex- 
 pressly mention your children, as will 
 be seen when they are read as they 
 stand in the word of God : " As for 
 
48 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 me this is ray covenant with them, saith 
 the Lord : My Spirit that is upon 
 thee, and my words that I have put 
 in thy mouth, shall not depart out of 
 thy mouth, nor out of the mouth of 
 thy seed, nor out of the mouth of thy 
 seed's seed.* The Lord thy God will 
 circumcise thy heart and the heart of 
 thy seed to love the Lord thy God that 
 thou mayest live.f 
 
 The covenant between God and each 
 parent dates from the very moment 
 when the latter, with penitence and 
 faith, accepts the proffered salvation. 
 It at once embraces his children, who 
 now have its seal attached to them, and 
 are to be watched over and cherished, as 
 belonging to God and as entitled to all 
 the benefits of membership in his 
 Church. It would involve a contradic- 
 
 * Isa. lix. 31. t Deut. xxx. 6. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 49 
 
 tion to deny that the offspring of 
 Christian parents are members of the 
 visible Church, while admitting that 
 they are introduced into the covenant 
 into which their parents enter with 
 God, and have a special interest in its 
 promise. This promise holds out to 
 faithful parents the expectation that 
 their little ones will be renewed and 
 savingly united to Christ at a tender 
 age. 
 
 To lead them to look for this is un- 
 doubtedly what the promise of the cov- 
 enant was intended to do. When they 
 remember, in their supplications for the 
 salvation of their children, to plead this 
 promise, this is the precise thing which 
 they are regarded by their kind and 
 gracious God as petitioning for in be- 
 half of their offspring — viz., that they 
 may be the subjects of the regenerating 
 
50 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 work of the Holy Spirit in the very 
 beginning of life. 
 
 If, however, parental solicitude longs 
 for clearer evidence than it sees of the 
 existence of grace, the anxious mother 
 would be guilty of no presumption 
 should she fully believe that, in conse- 
 quence of the divinely-established con- 
 nection between the faith of parents and 
 the salvation of their offspring, her 
 faith will bring upon her children the 
 blessing of the covenant. "The evi- 
 dences, the fruits and manifestations of 
 the Spirit's work in the infantile and 
 childish mind, subject as that mind is 
 to the restraints and training and relig- 
 ious habits of a godly home, may be — 
 must be in many cases — difficult to de- 
 tect before their riper years and larger 
 experience of sin and temptation and 
 the world ; but the assumption of al- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 51 
 
 most all the Churches of the Protestant 
 world, based upon clear Bible revela- 
 tions, is that the children of believers 
 are regenerated and savingly united to 
 Christ until the contrary is established 
 in their subsequent life, and it is ex- 
 pected that at an early age they will be 
 admitted to the Lord's table. The 
 agency of the Spirit, according to the 
 promise, is taken for granted, and the 
 children of the Church are to be looked 
 upon and trained and treated as united 
 to Christ, till they themselves disprove 
 it by their own willful rejection of the 
 covenant in which they were born, 
 baptized and blessed. This, we say, is 
 the underlying assumption of most, if 
 not all, the Churches of the Protestant 
 world." * 
 
 * See an admirable tract, entitled " The Early Regen- 
 eration of Sabbath-school Children," by the Rev. T. H. 
 
52 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 In view, then, of the relation which 
 your children sustain to God and the 
 
 Skinner, D.D., from which the above is quoted. Pub- 
 lished by the Presbyterian Board of Publication. 
 
 Presbyterians are not taught by the constitution of 
 their Church that the children of professing Christians 
 are first received into the Church when they become 
 communicants. The u Directory for Worship" teaches 
 just the opposite. Its language is, "Children born 
 within the pale of the visible Church," etc. The chil- 
 dren of believers are in the visible Church by right of 
 birth. When those whose parents are professing Chris- 
 tians are about to sit down to the Lord's table for the 
 first time, a form of declaration and welcome is some- 
 times read to them by the pastor in the presence of the 
 congregation. But it is not necessary that any such 
 form should be used, and many pastors prefer simply to 
 announce the fact that the session have admitted to the 
 sacrament of the Lord's Supper such and such baptized 
 persons. But when any form is adopted, and is read by 
 the pastor in the presence of the congregation, it should 
 make the truth emphatically prominent that the bap- 
 tized ones about to become communicants have, from 
 their birth, been members of the visible Church, and 
 that the session, in deciding that they possessed the 
 requisite qualifications for partaking of the Lord's Sup- 
 per, did not receive them into the Church as if they 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 53 
 
 covenant — in view of the fact that be- 
 cause they are your children the grace 
 which is promised to you is likewise 
 promised to them — you are authorized to 
 claim as much for them as for your own 
 soul, you may just as much expect to 
 be heard when you plead for their sal- 
 vation as when you pray for your own. 
 Whatever our gracious God has 
 really promised he will do. His prom- 
 ises bind him. This is one reason why 
 you have power with God when you 
 pray for the salvation of your off- 
 spring. Another thing which gives 
 
 were the children of unbelievers. A formal public pro- 
 fession of faith before partaking of sealing ordinances 
 is only required by our Directory for Worship of un- 
 baptized persons. Its language is, "When unbaptized 
 persons apply for admission into the Church, they 
 shall, in ordinary cases, after giving satisfaction with 
 respect to their knowledge and piety, make a public 
 profession of their faith in the presence of the congre- 
 gation, and thereupon be baptized." — Directory, Chap, IX. 
 5* 
 
54 PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 you power with liim when you pray is 
 his infinite love for you. We do not 
 deserve to be the objects of his love, but 
 it nevertheless remains true that God's 
 love for his people influences him to 
 show kindness to them, and to answer 
 their petitions. It is the nature of love 
 to have a constraining power over him 
 who is the subject of it. It constrains 
 the person loving to be kind to the one 
 who is beloved, to minister to his ne- 
 cessities and to grant his reasonable re- 
 quests. Indeed, we know that our Sa- 
 viour would never have died for his 
 people had not his infinite love for them 
 constrained him to do so. Because, 
 therefore, God loves his own people 
 with a love which passes knowledge, 
 they cannot importunately plead for 
 such a thing as the salvation of their 
 children without having power with 
 
PRAY FOE YOUR CHILDREN. 55 
 
 him, and prevailing. In addition to 
 this, his love for them causes him to 
 have a tenderness for their children. 
 They also are beloved by him and 
 are dear to him for their parents' 
 sakes. 
 
 IX. 
 
 m 
 
 An instance of God's faithfulness in 
 fulfilling his promise to hear the prayers 
 of parents for the salvation of their 
 children. 
 
 Multitudes of examples are on record 
 which show how faithful God is to the 
 covenant he has graciously entered into 
 with his own people. We desire, be- 
 fore leaving this part of the subject, to 
 present a touching instance of this 
 kind, with all the particulars, of which 
 we are well acquainted. The Holy 
 Spirit's work can easily be discerned by 
 all who read the narration. 
 
56 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN". 
 
 The beloved child of whom we speak 
 was a consistent communicant long be- 
 fore his death, but the evidence which 
 he furnished in his dying hours of hav- 
 ing undergone a gracious change was 
 more striking than any he had before 
 given. No child was ever more impor- 
 tunately prayed for, and in the dealings 
 of God with his soul in his last hours 
 his afflicted parents deeply felt that 
 their many prayers in his behalf were 
 abundantly answered. The exhibition 
 of genuine religious feeling by dying 
 believers, especially if such believers 
 are young, has a power in it altogether 
 peculiar — a fact which would of it- 
 self render the little narrative, never be- 
 fore published, worthy of preservation. 
 We extract it from a letter written 
 to the absent parents by a beloved rel- 
 ative of Willy who watched ovei his 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 57 
 
 sick-bed and constantly ministered to 
 him until he breathed his last. 
 
 " With deep sorrow, tempered with 
 joy, I write to you this morning — 
 with sorrow, because your dear boy 
 William has gone from us nevermore 
 to return ; with joy, because his going 
 from us was so peaceful and full of 
 Christian comfort. 
 
 " Dear Willy was not willing to have 
 you written to — though the doctor said 
 it would be well — for fear of alarming 
 you more than was necessary. All 
 day Monday I watched him closely, 
 and he had as comfortable a day as we 
 could expect, for it was one of the hottest 
 days of the season. Through the day 
 he was hopeful, full of fun and patient 
 as a lamb, being grateful for every lit- 
 tle attention and so very considerate of 
 my labor as almost to grieve me. But 
 
58 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Monday night was worse than the day, 
 and in spite of all we could do our poor 
 boy felt it in its severity, passing it in 
 restless tossing. His uncle sat with him 
 the first part of the night, and I the 
 latter part. 
 
 "Tuesday morning showed a great 
 change to the doctor, though not to our 
 eyes, and Willy read it in his face, and 
 asked me, f Aunt, what does the doctor 
 say exactly V I answered, ' Willy, he 
 says you are in a critical condition/ 
 Said he, ' That means that he thinks I 
 will not live, does it not V 
 
 " All this w r as with scarcely any ex- 
 citement, a little flush of the face, but 
 no tremor of the voice. I replied, * I 
 think it means that you are in danger, 
 yet he is not at all hopeless ; but this is 
 no more than you have known all the 
 time. Is it not so, Willy V 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 59 
 
 "He said, 'I know, aunt, you have 
 told me all the while there was danger, 
 but I have not really thought I should 
 die, and now, if it be God's will that 
 I should live, I would like to, and 
 shall ; but if he wills otherwise, it is all 
 for the best, for I know in whom I 
 have trusted in health, and I know my 
 Saviour will sustain me in death. But 
 my poor father ; it will be a great blow 
 to him to lose me, though he knows 
 where to go for comfort and strength. 
 I would love to see father and mother 
 and the dear children. Aunt, the evil 
 one has once or twice since I've been 
 sick tried to tempt me to doubt my 
 acceptance with God, but I dare not do 
 it, for God has promised, and I dare 
 not doubt his word. He has promised 
 that he will accept all who put their 
 trust in him; this I have done, 
 
60 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 and do still. I will not doubt. I know 
 I am bought with a price — that is all- 
 sufficient. What should I do now, if 
 I had not made my peace with God 
 while in health ? I could not do it now ; 
 for although not suffering from pain, I 
 am too weak/ 
 
 " He asked me to read the fourteenth 
 chapter of John, which I did, and it 
 seemed comforting to him. He said, 
 f 'Tis a fearful thing to be told you 
 must die, but the blessed Saviour 
 smooths all the terror away. Why 
 have I not worked more earnestly 
 for my Saviour while I had health ? 
 I did know the way, but have not 
 walked as steadfastly in that way as I 
 now wish I had. All I have to regret 
 is that I have not done more for Jesus, 
 but I hope my death may be the means 
 of doing the good I failed to accom- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 61 
 
 olisli in life. I have no ill-will toward 
 
 a. 
 
 any, and freely and fully forgive all 
 who have in any way injured rue/ 
 
 " The doctor came in and told him he 
 would call a consulting physician if he 
 wished, and Willy said, ' Just as you 
 please.' The doctor then talked with 
 him, Willy questioning him. I did not 
 stay in the room, but just as I came 
 back, he asked the doctor to pray with 
 him. This he did, and it was a great 
 comfort to him, for he alluded to it 
 several times during the day, as such a 
 comfort to have such a physician. 
 After consultation the physicians told 
 him he was very ill, yet they were far 
 from hopeless ; but much depended on 
 his constitution ; that he must rest as 
 much as possible and keep up good 
 courage. 
 
 "He said, 'I would like to talk to 
 
 6 
 
62 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 each of the family/ He did so, calling 
 for them as he wished, talking earn- 
 estly but calmly to each. He then 
 wished to be left quite alone, and 
 he prayed audibly ; but much as we 
 wished to listen to that prayer, we did 
 not, and Willy was alone with his 
 God. 
 
 " He called me back and said to me, 
 ' Aunt, this has not been a shock to my 
 spiritual nature, but it has to my nerv- 
 ous system. I am almost over that 
 now.' And indeed he was correct there, 
 for he was the most calm of the family. 
 There seemed almost a halo about his 
 head — such peace and holy joy as I 
 never saw but once before. As he 
 wished to see the Eev. Mr. D., we sent 
 for him and he came immediately and 
 had a long interview with him. I know 
 it was a great comfort to dear Willy, as 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 63 
 
 he said so several times during the day, 
 coupling him with his ' good doctor.' 
 
 " All through the day he was quiet, 
 taking short naps, frequently saying 
 to himself, ' Blessed Jesus ; precious 
 Saviour/ or quoting some passage of 
 Scripture, and then falling right to 
 sleep again. Several times he said to 
 me, ' My Saviour's arm is a strong 
 one to lean upon ; it is underneath me 
 and round about me, sustaining and 
 supporting me. It is a soft pillow for 
 my head. Oh what a comfort to my 
 soul ! So the day passed in holy quiet. 
 I felt all day that I was on holy ground, 
 getting glimpses of the other world, 
 and I do believe that Willy's commu- 
 nion with God was more close than 
 mortal could enjoy and live. Oh how 
 I did long for you and his father to be 
 present that you might have the com- 
 
64 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 fort of that day, for tell as we may, we 
 never can impart to you that calm rest- 
 ing on the Lord. It was all on the 
 Lord, for he said, ' My trust is alone in 
 Jesus. I am not good. Jesus is all 
 goodness ; in his merits alone I trust. 5 
 
 " During the night of Tuesday he 
 was for a few hours delirious, but 
 Wednesday morning at five o'clock he 
 was perfectly rational, and he remained 
 so until his spirit left us at eight o'clock. 
 Though, he could only answer us in 
 monosyllables, he knew us till the very 
 last. I repeated many passages of 
 Scripture that he had seemed to select 
 the day before, and he would say — it 
 was all he could utter—' Yes, yes.' 
 
 "I asked him, not long before his 
 spirit left the body, 'Is the Saviour 
 still near and sustaining you ?' • Yes.' 
 1 Is he still precious ?' ' Yes.' ' Can 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 65 
 
 you, now that you are actually passing 
 through the dark valley and shadow of 
 death, say truly, I will fear no evil, for 
 thy rod and thy staff they comfort 
 me?' Promptly he answered, ' Yes, 
 yes.' I feel that I never stood nearer to 
 God than during that day, and much as 
 I would love to say to comfort you, I 
 feel that his own words will do far 
 more than any I could frame. 
 
 " When Willy found he must die, he 
 felt that he would like to die at home, 
 though in the next breath he said, 
 ' 'Tis just as well, and better, as it is, for 
 God so wills it.' He had been with us 
 but a few days, but it was long enough 
 for us to love him dearly, and we 
 longed to know him better ; but we 
 thank God that he gave us this short 
 acquaintance with one who seemed so 
 near to him. His message to all was, 
 
 6* 
 
66 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 ' Work now for the Master while you 
 have life and health/ This was his 
 message to his brothers and sisters and 
 all his young friends." 
 
 Have you, Christian parent, chil- 
 dren still living whose godly lives fur- 
 nish evidence which satisfies you that 
 your many prayers for them are being 
 answered ? Then you can never be 
 sufficiently thankful for the favor you 
 have received. Indeed, you cannot 
 even comprehend the greatness of the 
 blessing bestowed upon you. Yet your 
 work for those thus spared to you, 
 is not all accomplished. Continue to 
 be faithful to the children who are with 
 you, while you account as yours still 
 those who have gone before you into 
 heaven. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THUS FAR AVE HAVE LIMITED OURSELVES TO 
 REMARKS ON PRAYER FOR YOUR CHILDREN'S 
 SALVATION. SUPPLICATING DIRECTLY FOR 
 THEIR SALVATION, HOWEVER, IS NOT YOUR 
 WHOLE DUTY. THERE ARE MANY THINGS BE- 
 SIDES THIS CROWNING BLESSING WITH REFER- 
 ENCE TO WHICH YOU SHOULD EARNESTLY PRAY, 
 IN ORDER THAT THEIR HIGHEST GOOD MAY BE 
 SECURED. 
 
 I. 
 
 Pray for your children, because you 
 may then expect, as the result of your 
 prayers, that the power of God will 
 counteract in some measure the evil 
 you have done them. 
 
 Even the best of parents sometimes 
 do their children harm, and many 
 positively injure the young whom God 
 has committed to their culture and 
 
 67 
 
68 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 discipline, by defects of government. 
 " We have seen the good influence of 
 many a pious father frustrated by a 
 sternness and severity, a harshness and 
 austerity, a frowning and unsympathiz- 
 ing distance, which, if it commanded a 
 reluctant eye-service, commanded noth- 
 ing better, and repelled the affections 
 of his children not only from him, but, 
 we fear, from the religion which he thus 
 impersonated before them." You are 
 warned against provoking your chil- 
 dren to wrath. To administer poison 
 to them would not be inflicting on them 
 such harm as to nurture evil in their 
 hearts by severity, partiality or in- 
 justice. 
 
 On the other hand, you may exceed- 
 ingly injure, if not ruin, your child by 
 a misguided tenderness and lack of 
 conscientious authority. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 69 
 
 Now, fervent and unceasing prayer 
 for your offspring would have a power- 
 ful influence in enabling you to avoid 
 sins of government. It would be sure 
 to be accompainied by faithfulness in 
 every duty pertaining to your manage- 
 ment and control of them. Thought- 
 ful love for them, and an earnest desire 
 for their real good, would take the 
 place of mere fondness, and you would 
 be led to avoid the extremes of harsh- 
 ness and of hurtful indulgence. 
 
 Even though you may not be charge- 
 able with lamentable failure in the 
 training of your family, yet, by the un- 
 alterable law of the transmission of 
 parental character, you are ever work- 
 ing your own character into the " spirit- 
 ual texture of the souls of your chil- 
 dren/' so that their susceptible minds 
 and hearts are, in some degree at least, 
 
70 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 influenced for evil by your imperfec- 
 tions. If the appalling truth that your 
 influence over your offspring is in some 
 measure determined and proportioned 
 by your true inward character alarms 
 and distresses you, there is one thought 
 which is capable of affording you com- 
 fort. That thought is that your earn- 
 est pleadings with God, with whom all 
 things are possible, may be instru- 
 mental in counteracting the injury you 
 have inflicted on those so dear to you. 
 The Spirit of God will not only quick- 
 en to a joyous harvest the good seed 
 sown in faithfulness and tears, but will 
 prevent the bad seed from becoming 
 deeply rooted. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 71 
 
 II. 
 
 Pray for your children, because there 
 will be critical periods in their lives when 
 without your incessant prayers, offered 
 with reference to such times, they may 
 be left to act most unwisely if not 
 ruinously. 
 
 As soon as they begin to choose and 
 act for themselves in regard to the pur- 
 suits and transactions of life, they will 
 not unfrequently be placed in circum- 
 stances in which the evil consequences, 
 to themselves and those to whom they 
 are dear, of their decisions and acts, 
 will be terrible, unless in those decisions 
 and acts they are divinely guided and 
 blessed. 
 
 That is a very important period in 
 the history of the young when they 
 are called to select their own employ- 
 
72 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 ments for life. Be much engaged in 
 prayer that they may be divinely 
 led to engage in those pursuits and 
 occupations in which they can best 
 glorify God and do the most good to 
 their fellow-men. Who can describe 
 the suffering often caused by the sad 
 mistake which a young man makes 
 when he chooses a different business or 
 profession from the one for which he is 
 most fitted ? How greatly blessed are 
 they who, in answer to prayer offered 
 by themselves and those who love them, 
 have been led to devote their energies 
 to that lifework which God intended 
 should be theirs ! He may not intend 
 that your children shall do great works 
 and fill important places ; nevertheless, 
 you need not doubt that he has some 
 work or sphere for them into which 
 they may be guided. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 73 
 
 "God has a definite life-plan for 
 every human person, girding him visi- 
 bly or invisibly for some exact thing, 
 which it will be the true significance 
 and glory of life to have accomplished." 
 But it is possible to take another place, 
 and attempt another work, than those 
 appointed. You can have no certainty 
 that your children can escape such an 
 evil if you do not pray often that they 
 may be directed. 
 
 The time may be distant when they 
 will be of suitable age to enter into the 
 marriage relation ; nevertheless, as you 
 may be removed from them by death, 
 with reference to so momentous a matter 
 you should not neglect to pray. How 
 evil and bitter, in thousands of instances, 
 have been the consequences of entering 
 into this relation without the blessing 
 of God ! and when the children of 
 
74 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Christian parents make an unwise choice 
 and contract unhappy marriages, it is 
 a sure sign that such parents failed to 
 begin early to make this most import- 
 ant matter a subject of earnest suppli- 
 cation. 
 
 That we should lay up prayers with 
 reference to the future critical turns in 
 the lives of our children will be evi- 
 dent when we consider that " their ap- 
 pointments and stations — yea, even their 
 present and eternal happiness or misery, 
 so far as these are influenced by their 
 states and conditions in life — may be de- 
 cided by the most minute and trivial 
 events, all of which are in God's hand, 
 and not in ours." * 
 
 * Cecil. 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 75 
 
 III. 
 
 Pray for your children, because it 
 will lead you to a better understanding 
 of them. 
 
 Fervent prayer incessantly offered 
 for them, in which their special wants, 
 as far as you know them, are spread be- 
 fore God, will be sure to lead to greater 
 watchfulness over them, to a closer 
 study of their character and to a still 
 more exact knowledge of their disposi- 
 tions and wants. 
 
 This intimate acquaintance with the 
 character and needs of each of his 
 children, on the part of the parent, is 
 of the utmost importance. He should 
 not only know the characteristics which 
 ever belong to childhood, but he should 
 be familiar with the distinctive quali- 
 ties, the peculiar temperaments and 
 
76 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 the trials of his own little ones. He 
 should understand the motives which 
 most easily influence them, and what 
 temptations are most likely to lead 
 them into wrong-doing. He should 
 make himself familiar with their sor- 
 rows. He should know whether they 
 are gentle, sensitive, keenly alive to 
 sympathy, to ridicule, or the reverse; 
 whether, owing to his own mismanage- 
 ment, they may not lack confidence in 
 his love for them and desire for their 
 happiness. Men constantly misjudge 
 each other, and parents sometimes en- 
 tirely fail to understand their children, 
 and make sad mistakes as to the mo- 
 tives which actuate them. But if a 
 thorough knowledge of your children 
 is necessary, in order that you may be a 
 good parent, you cannot fail, as already 
 said, to gain that knowledge, if you 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 77 
 
 faithfully intercede for them. You 
 will be compelled to study their charac- 
 ter and needs in order to intercede for 
 them intelligently. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Pray for your children, because it 
 will increase your holy desires with 
 reference to them. 
 
 It was said that our children may 
 lack confidence in our affection for 
 them. But, more than this, they may 
 fail to see that we desire above all 
 things their spiritual good. Perhaps 
 the faintness of your desires for the 
 spiritual welfare of your offspring often 
 humbles and grieves you, but nothing 
 would so increase your holy longings 
 for it as prayer continually offered in 
 their behalf. When we give utterance, 
 while engaged in communing with God, 
 
 7* 
 
78 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 to those desires which he himself has 
 implanted in our hearts, we use the 
 very means which, above all others, 
 will increase their strength. If we 
 cannot pray, even for strangers, with- 
 out learning to love them, surely the 
 more w r e commend our children to God, 
 the stronger will our love for their souls 
 become. Besides, in the act of pleading 
 w 7 ith our heavenly Father to bestow 
 spiritual benefits upon them, we are 
 obliged to contemplate those benefits 
 distinctly. This will greatly increase 
 their value in our eyes. The more we 
 think of them, the more precious will 
 they appear to us, and thus will the de- 
 sire be intensified that our children 
 may be enriched by them. 
 
 This steady increase of holy desires 
 in your heart, with reference to your 
 children, will prove an unspeakable 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 79 
 
 blessing both to tliem and to you. It 
 will shed a heavenly influence on your 
 soul continually. It will react on your 
 prayers for them, making those prayers 
 still more sincere and fervent, and 
 therefore more influential with Him 
 who is the hearer of prayer. It will 
 cause you to covet more and more 
 for your children — and above every 
 earthly good — the kingdom of God and 
 his righteousness. It will strengthen 
 all your Christian graces and make 
 you holier in each of the relations you 
 sustain in life. 
 
 V. 
 
 Pray for your children, because no 
 other means will be so effectual in ena- 
 bling you to overcome the difficulty you 
 experience in talking with them on relig- 
 ious subjects. 
 
80 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Perhaps you often desire, and even 
 resolve, to obey the injunction, " Thou 
 shalt talk of these words to thy chil- 
 dren when thou sittest in thine house, 
 and when thou walkest by the way, 
 and when thou liest down, and when 
 thou risest up," but still you are silent. 
 The free conversation is still postponed. 
 The indescribable reluctance which you 
 feel in talking with them about their 
 souls' concerns is not overcome. 
 
 You are not altogether insensible, it 
 may be, to the loss which they are sus- 
 taining through your neglect, for you 
 have sometimes witnessed the deep im- 
 pression made by religious truth on 
 their tender minds ; and yet, day after 
 day, you suffer the golden opportunities 
 which belong to the age of childhood to 
 go unimproved. Nothing is so adapted 
 to remove this reserve as earnest, per- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 81 
 
 sistent prayer, in which your child's 
 every want is spread before God and 
 specific requests are offered in its 
 behalf. Pray thus, and the effect in 
 opening your mouth will be sure to fol- 
 low. Out of the abundance of your 
 heart your mouth will speak. Your 
 own reserve being overcome, the shy- 
 ness of your children will disappear. 
 How touching and instructive is the 
 account of the interchange of thought 
 between Leigh Richmond and his son 
 Wilberforce, when the religious experi- 
 ence of the latter first became the sub- 
 ject of conversation between father and 
 child ! 
 
 "All reserve," writes the sister of 
 Wilberforce, who gives the account, 
 " was now banished from my brother's 
 inind.* He opened his whole heart to 
 
 * Leigh Richmond's " Domestic Portraiture." 
 
82 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 his father, told him minutely of all his 
 past conflicts, spoke of his present com- 
 forts and begged that he might be 
 closely examined. He wished to sat- 
 isfy his parent that his faith was scrip- 
 tural and sincere. He seemed to go be- 
 yond his strength in conversing, even 
 to extreme exhaustion, and appeared 
 very anxious to tell how God had en- 
 lightened, converted, strengthened and 
 comforted him. He would sit for hours 
 with his dear father in the study, sup- 
 ported in an easy-chair, telling him all 
 he had gone through, entreating his 
 pardon for the uneasiness he had occa- 
 sioned him by his past silence, and ex- 
 pressing his great joy at now being 
 able to converse with freedom and min- 
 gle their souls together in the delight- 
 ful interchange of confidence. It was 
 now that our beloved father was indeed 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 83 
 
 comforted, and that he received a full 
 answer to patient prayer." 
 
 Leigh Richmond himself writes in 
 regard to the joyful deliverance of both 
 from this reserve, " My prayers are an- 
 swered at last ; the door of utterance is 
 opened, and I am truly thankful. All 
 the nameless pangs of my mind during 
 the last eight months have been almost 
 blotted out of my remembrance by my 
 present consolations." 
 
 The removal of the difficulties in the 
 way of free conversation with your 
 children should be an object of earnest 
 desire, and that desire should be accom- 
 panied with fervent prayer. 
 
84 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Pray for your children, because you 
 will thus secure for them divine aid in 
 the efforts they may make to yield you 
 their obedience. 
 
 God requires of children submission 
 to the parent's will, and implicit obe- 
 dience, and all men regard the require- 
 ment as a benevolent one. It should 
 be the desire, as it is the plain duty, of 
 fathers and mothers to assist their chil- 
 dren to render obedience, but they fail 
 to afford them this assistance when they 
 neglect to exercise the authority with 
 which God has clothed them. This 
 is the reason why such omission is 
 cruelty to the young. Unaided self- 
 government is a task to which they are 
 unequal. Authoritative control may 
 be regarded as an aid afforded to the 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 85 
 
 feeble resolution of the child, for 
 his inclinations will overpower his 
 sense of right and his good intentions. 
 When conscience begins to reprove, a 
 feeling of compunction and mortifica- 
 tion renders him unhappy. Could he 
 now settle down upon an authoritative 
 injunction, the perplexing difficulty 
 would be dismissed from his mind. 
 
 The immature judgments of chil- 
 dren are insufficient to hold in check 
 their ardent and impetuous desires. 
 Hence they are often hurried into mis- 
 chief without a moment's reflection on 
 the unhappy consequences ; and when 
 the excitement has subsided, and the 
 season of calm reflection returns — as it 
 always will — the thought of the mis- 
 deeds actually committed awakens com- 
 punction and remorse. The sadness, 
 and self-accusations so surely consequent 
 
86 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 upon their commission appeal strongly 
 to parental sympathy, and should se- 
 cure the prompt exercise of authority 
 in wholesome restraint.* 
 
 But children need more than mere 
 human assistance, even though that 
 assistance may come from wise and 
 affectionate parents. They can no more 
 perform their filial duties without help 
 from God than you, without such help, 
 can perform your parental duties. 
 You pray, it may be, for supplies of 
 grace, and you rely on such divine in- 
 fluence to enable you to act well your 
 part as a parent, but do you not 
 strangely forget that your child is 
 equally dependent on the Holy Spirit's 
 power, and that without it he can 
 
 * See an admirable treatise on family government 
 by Rev. W. H. Bnlkely. Published by the Presbyte- 
 rian Board of Publication. 
 
PKAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 87 
 
 have no strength to fulfill the duties 
 which grow out of the relations he sus- 
 tains to you? You are solemnly bound 
 to think of the dependence of your 
 children on God's help, and earnestly 
 to pray that that help may be afforded 
 them in their endeavors to honor and 
 obey you. 
 
 VII. 
 
 Pray for your children, because other 
 parents, seeing your example, may be led 
 to imitate you. 
 
 Pray much for your children, and 
 you will be sure to set a high value on 
 prayer offered by parents for their off- 
 spring. You will have faith in it as a 
 means which all may use for obtaining 
 good things for their little ones, and for 
 securing their preservation from every 
 real evil. Your appreciation of the 
 value of parental prayer will rather in- 
 
88 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 crease than become weaker. In all 
 your utterances of your deep convic- 
 tions on the subject you will speak with 
 energy. Your words will be spirit- 
 stirring, and will have power to move 
 other parents. Others will be more or 
 less stimulated by your faithfulness, 
 and to some you may be made an un- 
 speakable blessing in the way of incit- 
 ing them to the more zealous perform- 
 ance of their parental duties. 
 
 They who are familiar with the life 
 of Philip Henry know that he was a 
 constant intercessor for his children at 
 the throne of grace, and his example is 
 highly admonitory to most parents. 
 His biographer says, " When his chil- 
 dren were removed from him, he was a 
 daily intercessor at the throne of grace 
 for them and their families. The 
 burnt-offerings were still offered accord- 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 89 
 
 ing to the number of them all. He 
 used to say, ' Surely, the children of so 
 many prayers will not come to harm/ 
 Their particular circumstances of afflic- 
 tion and danger were sure to be men- 
 tioned by him with suitable petitions." 
 And his daily prayers for them were 
 wonderfully answered. Probably there 
 never was a family in which grace 
 more remarkably reigned. It is said 
 of the children of Robert Hall that a 
 deep impression was often made upon 
 their minds by their hearing him as 
 they passed his study door commend- 
 ing them by name with the utmost fer- 
 vency to God, and entreating those 
 blessings for each which in his judg- 
 ment each most needed. 
 
 8* 
 
90 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 VIII. 
 
 Pray for your children, because they 
 will often, should they continue in the 
 world, have their times of need when 
 the power of God alone can avail to 
 help them. 
 
 Disappointments, sickness, losses, 
 cares, in short, adversity in various 
 forms, will be sure to overtake them 
 soon or late, and well will it be for 
 them if you have anticipated these 
 times of need by innumerable prayers 
 offered in their behalf. 
 
 There will be times of temptation 
 when their souls will be in fearful 
 peril. Is it possible that you have no 
 anxious moments when you think of 
 the temptations which will certainly be- 
 set them, and to which inbred corruption 
 will give such force — the allurements 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 91 
 
 of the world and, above all, the snares 
 of the evil one ? The spirits of dark- 
 ness will assuredly do all in their pow- 
 er to hurt them, and if possible will 
 accomplish their ruin. We are ever 
 surrounded by fallen spirits. Dream 
 not that any soul is so favored as to 
 escape their watchful efforts to destroy 
 it. They never dejoart from any of us 
 for a long season, and as fast as one 
 plot to injure us fails they contrive 
 another. We have no earthly friend 
 who can protect us from their machi- 
 nations, and you well know that you 
 have no power to defeat their plans 
 and contrivances to bring injury on 
 your children. But your blessed Sa- 
 viour is abundantly able to protect 
 them, for all power is given unto him 
 in heaven and in earth. They need no 
 better protection than he is able to af- 
 
92 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 ford them, and lie will hear your 
 prayers for them. Fail not, therefore, 
 to entreat him to defend them from the 
 malice, power and wiles of evil spirits, 
 the agents of Satan, who are constantly 
 around them. 
 
 In all the perils which may beset 
 your children, in all their times of 
 need, their souls will be safe if they 
 have the presence and indwelling of 
 the Holy Spirit, and therefore let your 
 supplications constantly ascend that 
 they may never be forsaken by the 
 Spirit, but may daily be the subjects of 
 his restraining, enlightening and sancti- 
 fying power. He would be their great- 
 est benefactor who would succeed in 
 leading you, their parent, habitually 
 to seek for them the influences of the 
 Holy Spirit. 
 
 Are they still the slaves of sin, 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 93 
 
 strangers to the new birth and unfit to 
 die ? Pray that God will give them 
 his Holy Spirit, and you pray for their 
 quickening by almighty power, for the 
 restoration of the lost image of God to 
 their souls, for that which will be the 
 beginning of their salvation. Are they 
 already the children of God and sav- 
 ingly united to Christ? Ask your 
 heavenly Father to give them his Holy 
 Spirit, and you pray that they may re- 
 ceive larger measures of holiness, that 
 their love to God and man may increase, 
 and that they may have more faith, 
 submission to the divine will, patience 
 and gentleness under injuries, and holy 
 courage and zeal in the service of 
 Christ. 
 
 Never approach the throne of grace 
 to make mention of your own wants 
 without remembering the wants of your 
 
94 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 children, who are no less helpless and 
 needy than yourself. Entreat for them 
 that they may obtain mercy, and that 
 they may find grace to help in time of 
 need. Death may be near to them ; 
 they may soon be called to go through 
 the dark valley. Surely that will be a 
 fearful moment when their strength 
 will fail and everything which now 
 binds them to earth will be cut asunder. 
 We should pray that our children may 
 have grace to help in that solemn hour. 
 This is our privilege. We may daily 
 ask God to be near them in their last 
 illness, and to enable them to face the 
 king of terrors without fear. 
 
 Hitherto nothing has been said in 
 regard to the benefits which you your- 
 self would reap from prayer faithfully 
 offered for your children. Prayer is 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 95 
 
 communion with God, whether it be an 
 act of adoration, thanksgiving or con- 
 fession, whether it be the offering up 
 of desires for blessings for ourselves 
 or others. If those for whom you in- 
 tercede are your ow r n children, it is 
 still the same — you are still commun- 
 ing with God. If this is so, you are 
 engaging in an act which will be 
 sure to promote your growth in grace. 
 To have communion with God is to use 
 the most powerful of all means for in- 
 creasing our spiritual life. 
 
 Another blessed result would almost 
 inevitably follow : you would be led to 
 intercede for many others. Other souls 
 who would be rejoiced to be remem- 
 bered by you would be thought of and 
 prayed for. Thus you would grow into 
 the habit of supplicating for those not so 
 intimately related to you as the mem- 
 
96 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 bers of your own family, until finally 
 you would become confirmed in the 
 habit of intercessory prayer. If the 
 family relation of the household of 
 faith is ever realized, it is in earnestly 
 and affectionately commending our fel- 
 low-believers to God. 
 
 Says one who could speak from ex- 
 perience in regard to this matter, " I 
 have received as a most precious and 
 unmerited gift the power of feeling 
 the things of the flock of Christ as if 
 they were my own. You cannot imag- 
 ine the happiness of this feeling. I 
 dedicate an hour every evening to 
 prayer and principally to intercession. 
 I generally begin with the thanks due 
 to God for all that he has done for 
 every one of his sheep on that day. 
 It is impossible for me to tell you the 
 great delight of thus mixing myself up 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 97 
 
 with the people of Christ and of con- 
 sidering their benefits as my own. The 
 thought which transports me most is 
 that of how many souls have been, 
 perhaps, this day joined to the Church ! 
 how many succored under temptation ! 
 how many recovered from their back- 
 slidings ! how many filled with consola- 
 tion ! how many transported by death 
 into the bosom of Christ ! I then try 
 to pray for the sweet "we," and to 
 think of the necessities of my Chris- 
 tian friends. Besides, I have a list of 
 unconverted persons for whom I wish 
 to pray."* 
 
 But our intercessions should go forth 
 for the whole body of Christ, his en- 
 tire Church, for the needy and the per- 
 ishing everywhere — for all, in fact, who 
 
 * " Memoir of Miss M. J. Grahani." Quoted in Dr. 
 Hamilton's " Mount of Olives." 
 9 
 
98 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 are capable of being benefited by our 
 prayers. One reason why believers 
 are not more joyful is, that they fail to 
 perform those acts, the constant repeti- 
 tion of which naturally tends to pro- 
 duce joy in the soul. But especially, 
 perhaps, is joy the recompense of inter- 
 cession. 
 
 "Heavenly joy is just the fruit 
 which our blessed Lord bestows on 
 such as devote themselves to interces- 
 sion. This is very observable. There 
 is a certain sunniness and light-hearted- 
 ness about them for which there seems 
 no ordinary cause, except that it is like 
 the sweet lightening of the spirit which 
 comes after a kind and unselfish action. 
 This may partly be the reason. But 
 there is another also. We see not the 
 fruit of our intercession ; the spirit of 
 prayer escapes out upon the earth, and 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 99 
 
 is everywhere like the hidden omni- 
 presence of God. It is out of our 
 sight. Nay, it is not like a series of 
 distinguishable works. We hardly re- 
 member how much intercession we 
 have made. Who can count the sighs 
 he has sent up to God, or the wishes 
 without words which the tongue of his 
 heart has told into the ear of Jesus? 
 And so, from the fruit being hidden, 
 vainglory attaches to it less than to al- 
 most any other act which the Christian 
 can perform. Whoever, then, desires 
 to joy in God, to be equable in all 
 things, to be happy and prompt in 
 serving Jesus, to be patient with life 
 because of the desire of death, let him 
 throw away himself and his own ends, 
 and betake himself to intercession as if 
 it were his trade." 
 
100 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Let us resolve that, from this time 
 forth, we will give ourselves more in- 
 tently to the work of interceding for 
 our children. Whether we pray for 
 our offspring or not must decide what 
 our distant descendants are to be, and 
 what kind of influence those descend- 
 ants will exert. Surely our fervent en- 
 treaties for God's blessing on our chil- 
 dren and our children's children would 
 be offered without ceasing were we able 
 fully to comprehend the far-reaching 
 results of such entreaties. 
 
 We have endeavored to present some 
 of the incitements which may well stir 
 up all parents to whose training God 
 has committed little ones to plead for 
 them incessantly. Let us remember 
 that " there is nothing we can give to 
 Christ which is so precious as our chil- 
 dren. . . . One Joseph, one David, in 
 
PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 101 
 
 a family may bless a whole common- 
 wealth, and even succeeding genera- 
 tions. It is chiefly in this way that the 
 Church is propagated. In this way 
 certainly it receives the most valuable 
 part of its accessions, if that can be 
 called an accession which is born and 
 bred within its pale. Let the attentive 
 reader ponder the undeniable statement 
 that if all the children of all the evan- 
 gelical Christians in America were con- 
 verted to-day, our country would need 
 nothing more to make it the happiest 
 and most glorious nation that ever was 
 on earth. This would be like millennial 
 light ! What hope would at once break 
 on all the land and on our prospective 
 population ! There is, therefore, no 
 blessing for our country which may be 
 more reasonably prayed for than the 
 
 9 * 
 
102 PRAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN. 
 
 Christian health and proficiency of our 
 sons and daughters." * 
 
 Let not Christian parents dare to de- 
 volve on others the great work which 
 God has especially committed to them. 
 For, as has already been said, it is 
 plainly liis will that believing parents 
 should themselves be instrumental in 
 the salvation of their own children. 
 
 * " The American Sunday-School and its Adjuncts," 
 by James W. Alexander, D. D. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The following interesting and sug- 
 gestive rules were laid down by Cotton 
 Mather, the eminent early New Eng- 
 land divine, for the ordering of his 
 domestic life, and especially for the 
 discharge of his religious duties to 
 his children. 
 
 1. He poured out continual prayers 
 to the God of all grace for his children, 
 that he would be a Father to them, be- 
 stow his Son and grace upon them, 
 guide them by his counsel and bring 
 them to glory. And in this action he 
 mentioned them distinctly, every one 
 by his name, to the Lord. 
 
 103 
 
104 APPENDIX. 
 
 2. He began betimes to entertain 
 them with delightful stories, especially 
 scriptural ones, and he would ever con- 
 clude with some lesson of piety, bid- 
 ding them to learn that from the story. 
 Thus every day at the table he used him- 
 self to tell some entertaining tale before 
 he rose, and endeavored to make it use- 
 ful to the olive plants about the table. 
 
 3. When the children accidentally at 
 any time came in his way, it was his 
 custom to let fall some sentence or 
 other that might be monitory or profit- 
 able to them. This matter occasioned 
 labor, study and contrivance. 
 
 4. He betimes tried to engage his 
 children in exercises of piety, and es- 
 pecially secret prayer; and he would 
 often call upon them, " Child, don't you 
 forget every day to go alone and pray 
 as I have directed you." 
 
APPENDIX. 105 
 
 5. He betimes endeavored to form in 
 his children a temper of benignity. 
 He would put them upon doing services 
 and kindnesses for one another and for 
 other children. He would applaud 
 them when he saw them delight in it ; 
 he would upbraid all aversions to it. 
 He would caution them against all re- 
 venges of injuries, and would instruct 
 them to return good offices for evil 
 ones. He would show them how, by 
 this goodness, they would become like 
 the good God and the blessed Jesus. 
 He would let them discover that he 
 w r as not satisfied except when they had 
 a sweetness of temper shining in them. 
 
 6. When they had the use of the 
 pen, he would employ them in writing 
 out the most useful and profitable 
 things that he could invent for them. 
 
 7. The first chastisement he would 
 
106 APPENDIX. 
 
 inflict for any fault was to let the child 
 see and hear in him an astonishment, 
 and hardly able to believe he could do 
 so base a thing, but believing they 
 would never do it again. He would 
 never come to give a child a blow ex- 
 cept in cases of obstinacy or something 
 that is very criminal. To be chased 
 for a while out of his presence, he 
 would make to be looked upon as the 
 sorest punishment in his family. The 
 slavish way of education carried on 
 with raving and kicking and scourging, 
 in schools as well as families, he looked 
 upon as a dreadful judgment on the 
 world. He thought the practice abom- 
 inable, and expressed a mortal aver- 
 sion to it. 
 
 8. He would often tell them of the 
 good angels who love them, help them, 
 guard them from evil, and do many 
 
APPENDIX* 107 
 
 good offices for them, and ought not in 
 any measure to be disobliged. He 
 would not say much to them of the 
 evil angels, because he would not have 
 them entertain any frightful fancies 
 about the apparition of devils. 
 
 9. When the children were capable 
 of it, he would take them alone in his 
 study to pray with them. 
 
 10. He found much benefit by cate- 
 chizing the children. The answers of 
 the catechism he would explain, with 
 abundance of brief questions, which 
 made them take in the whole meaning. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 Treatment Date: August 2005 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 
 
 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
 (724) 779-21 1 T 
 
>J0