the Fourth Week of Advent
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring." - Isaiah 44:3.
" Let little children come unto me," said Christ, and says it still. God delighteth in mercy; and delights in the hearts of little children because there is a greater readiness in them to receive his mercy than in adults. There are fewer hindrances; less to repel the Spirit of God; less of the world. The world is indeed there, and it developed itself with an astonishing rapidity, oh, then, how great the responsibility of those who have the direction of the young. How knowest thou, parent, but that the Lord has called thee to the knowledge of the truth very specially for this end, that thou mightest lend thyself to the Spirit of God in the matter of educating that child for the courts of the New Jerusalem.
There is no need that any truth should be deposited in the mind of the child before religious truth. In fact, truth is mutilated when it is taken away from religion. The truths of religion are difficult and mysterious to the man, because he started in life and passed through infancy and childhood with out them. It is easier for a child to learn the momentous truth that " of Him, through him, and to him are all things," than it is for a person of mature years. How much unfaithfulness must there be in parents and guardians, even in those whom we esteem believers, when their children exhibit so little of the Spirit’s influences. The blessing of the Lord, as we learn from other passages of Scripture, allies itself with the teachings and efforts and prayers of parents.
With the influences of the parent there are soon commingled a multitude of other influences; wherefore it is of the more urgency, that the tenderest years should be improved. The enemy will quickly sow tares, if you do not pre-occupy the soil with the seed of life.
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