My dear Friends,—I feel a special interest in addressing you on the present occasion; a sort of family feeling resulting from a community of interests which is always inspiring. I have sometimes thought, when I have heard men talking to women on their duties as wives and mothers, their trials and difficulties, and so on—“Ah, it is all very good, but you don’t know much about it, after all.” Now, I do not come to speak to you to-night under this disadvantage, at any rate. I do know something of the things of which I speak; having had a large and young family, I have had some experience of the anxiety, toil, and difficulty required in the training and management of young children. It is because I am so well acquainted with the weight of the trials and duties of maternity that I sympathise so deeply with mothers, and would fain help to lighten their burdens by a little practical advice and instruction.
I presume that all here are agreed as to the responsibility devolving on parents to give some sort of training to their children. There is not a mother here who would think it right to leave her child to grow up without discipline or training of some kind! Then the question for us to consider is, What sort of training does God, and our duty to our children, require from us? In order to get at the answer to this question, the first important matter for a parent to settle in her own mind, is this: To whom does this child belong? Is it mine, or is it the Lord’s? Surely, this question should not need any discussion, at least by Christian parents! For do we not recognise, even before they are born, that they are peculiarly and exclusively a heritage from the Lord; and when they came into the world, the first effort we put forth was to hold them up and offer them to Him? And again, in their Christening we acknowledged that they belonged to Him, and promised to train them for His glory. Now the keeping of this one fact before the mind of a mother will be the best guiding principle in training; and it is because Christian parents so often forget whose their children are, that they make such mistakes in training them. I say then to you mothers here, settle it in your minds that your child belongs absolutely to God, and not to you—that you are only stewards for God, holding your children to nurse them and train them for Him.
This responsibility arises, 1st.—Out of the command and ordination of God. Both under the old and new dispensations, the Lord has, in the most emphatic and solemn manner, laid the obligation on parents to train their children for Him; He commands it, to whom both parents and children exclusively belong.
