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in The Primitive Monitor vol. 10 no. 3 (Mar. 1895)
Dear Brother Thompson: I have today been reading our dear Brother Rittenhouse’s letter in the Jan., 1895, number of the Monitor. He and I are strangers in the flesh. I have long known him through his writings, and have learned to respect his opinions and love him for the truth’s sake. I am glad he has given his opinions and advice to his brethren, for I deem this a very important, but much neglected subject. Allow me to add some thoughts which were suggested while reading his article.
I, too, love to see parents bring their children with them to meeting. It teaches them to reverence God and his worship. It is wrong for us to neglect this duty. We can not say that such parents do not love their children. It can not always be indifference. Sometimes I think it an extreme in opposition to the common notion that parents are, or can be instrumental in the saving of their children. Our own experience teaches us that we are powerless to give life or change the heart. We can not do this for ourselves, much less for our children. Nothing less than God’s almighty power can raise the dead in sin and quicken them into new life. Then, as parents, what instruction shall we give our children? Because we can not make them children of God shall we let them run without any restraint, correction, or instruction? I say most emphatically. No!
...Early impressions of the truth will always remain. The infidel may scoff. The conditionalist may boast of creature ability. They may not hope to move the mind established in the truth. One has said truthfully, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it;” Prov. xxii, 6. I would “bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord;” Eph. vi, 4. Says one, “Tell me what you mean by this.” This is what I mean: I would teach them that there is a God—holy, just, true, and unchangeable—the Maker, and Creator of all things, and as sovereign ruler he does his pleasure with the work of his hand; that this God demands of us and our children “that we love and serve him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and that we love our neighbor as ourselves;” St. Mark, xii, 30, 31: Deut., vi 7.
I would teach them that by reason of original (Adam’s) sin, and actual sin, they are rebels and enemies of God, and being such, God’s holy law demands their punishment, even death. That their inability, by reason of sin, does not remove their obligation to keep his law’s requirements. I would teach them to remember their Creator in the days of their youth. That it is his hand which bestows every comfort, every blessing. The brute considers not. I would teach them to adore him for his providences, and that it is his hand that rules the universe. The winds may brew, the lightnings crash, and the rocks rend. Famine, pestilence, and sword may come, still God, the Omnipotent, rules. Then when the storms come and the thunders roll, our children will not be found crouching in the dark places, in fear and dread, for does not father say that God rules the storm. |
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