Proverbs 22:6; Psalm 145:4; Psalm 78:3,4; Psalm 34:11
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.
Which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, shewing to the generation to come the praises of the LORD, and his strength, and his wonderful works that he hath done.
Come, ye children, hearken unto me—I will teach you the fear of the Lord.
J. R. MILLER (1840-1912): A mother’s first duties are to her children. No amount of public religious service will atone for neglect of her sacred home tasks. She may attend meetings and missionary services, do good work among the poor, and carry blessings to many a sorrowful home; but if she fails meanwhile to look after her own children, she can scarcely claim to have been a successful worker. A mother’s first duty is to bring up her children for God.
CHARLES BRIDGES (1794-1869): She educates them for God—and for eternity.
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): “Train up a child in the way he should go” is a privilege and responsibility which she cannot delegate unto others.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): O dear mothers, you have a very sacred trust reposed in you by God!
EDWARD PAYSON (1783-1827): Now this is what God has done. He has placed before you immortal minds, more imperishable than a diamond, on which you inscribe every day, and every hour, by your instructions, by your spirit, or by your example, something which will remain and be exhibited for or against you at the judgment day.
J. R. MILLER: But it will be a sad thing if a mother allows the proper care of her own children to be crowded out of her life by the appeals on behalf of other people’s children, the calls for public service, however important, or the cries of any other human needs in the world. These outside duties may be hers in some measure, but the duties of the home are hers, and no other’s.
C. H. SPURGEON: For my part, I abhor the spirit which takes a Christian mother from her children to be doing good everywhere except at home! I dread the zeal of those who can run to many services but whose households are not cared for—yet sometimes such is the case. I have known people very interested in the seven trumpets and the seven seals who have not been quite so particular about the seven dear children that God has entrusted to them! Leave somebody else to open up the Revelation and look to your own boys! And see to your girls, that they know the Gospel, for, indeed, there are some households where there is ignorance of the plan of salvation, albeit that the parents are professedly Christians! Such things ought not to be!
WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE (1819-1881): Woman, how divine your mission!
C. H. SPURGEON: One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters―she has the first hand in the fashioning.
CHARLES BRIDGES: Education should commence even in the cradle.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): Yes, we repeat, from “the cradle;” for we are most fully persuaded that all true Christian training begins at the very beginning. Some of us have little idea of how soon and how sharply children begin to observe; and how much they take in as they gaze at us through their dear expressive eyes.
C. H. SPURGEON: Babes receive impressions long before we are aware of the fact. During the first months of a child’s life—it learns more than we imagine.
C. H. MACKINTOSH: And how marvellously susceptible they are of the atmosphere which surrounds them! Yes; and it is this very moral atmosphere that constitutes the grand secret of training our families. Our children should be permitted to breathe, from day to day, the atmosphere of love and peace, purity, holiness and true practical righteousness. This has an amazing effect in forming the character.
CHARLES BRIDGES: The godly matron is the very soul of the house. She instructs her children by her example, no less than by her teaching.
C. H. SPURGEON: The first messenger that some of us had was that fond woman upon whose breast in infancy we hung. We should never breathe the word, “mother,” without grateful emotions! How can we forget that tearful eye when she warned us to escape from the wrath to come? We thought her lips right eloquent—others might not think so—but they certainly were eloquent to us! How can we ever forget when she bowed her knees, and with her arms about our neck, prayed for us, “Oh, that my son might live before Thee?” Nor can her frown be erased from our memory, that solemn, loving frown when she rebuked our budding iniquities! And her smiles have never faded from our recollection, the beaming of her countenance when she rejoiced to see some good thing in us towards the Lord God of Israel! Mothers often become potent messengers from God. And I think each Christian mother should ask herself in secret whether the Lord has not a message to give through her to her sons and to her daughters.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): See that your children read the Bible—Fill their minds with Scripture.
JOHN NEWTON (1725-1807): My mother was a pious woman and as I was her only child, she made it the chief business and pleasure of her life to instruct me, and bring me up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord…When I was four years old, I could read and could likewise repeat the answers to the questions in the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, with the proofs; and all Isaac Watts’s smaller Catechisms, and his Children’s Hymns.
JOHN WESLEY (1703-1791): I learned more about Christianity from my mother than from all the theologians of England.
C. H. SPURGEON: A Christian mother—what a minister is she to her family!
JOHN NEWTON: My dear mother, besides the pains she took with me, often commended me with many prayers and tears to God.
W. T. P. WOLSTON (1840-1917): It is an inestimable boon for a man to have a praying mother and much, I know, mine prayed for me.
C. H. SPURGEON: Some words of a mother’s prayer we shall never forget, even when our hair is grey. I remember on one occasion my mother praying this: “Now, Lord, if my children go on in their sins, it will not be from ignorance that they perish, and my soul must bear a swift witness against them at the day of judgment if they lay not hold of Christ.” That thought of a mother’s bearing swift witness against me, pierced my conscience and stirred my heart. This pleading with them for God, and with God for them, is the true way to bring children to Christ.
GEORGE SWINNOCK (1627-1673): Augustine saith that his mother travailed in greater pain for his spiritual than for his natural birth.
ANDREW FULLER (1754-1815): My dear sisters, yours is a great work.
C. H. SPURGEON: The moulding of the character of the next generation, remember, begins with the mother’s influence…Doubtless a good man generally comes of a good mother. It was usually so in Scriptural times, and it is so still―and the daughter of a good mother, will be the mother of a good daughter…The future of society is in the hands of mothers.
WILLIAM ROSS WALLACE: Blessings on the hand of women!
Angels guard its strength and grace…
For the hand that rocks the cradle,
Is the hand that rules the world.
