The Christian Home: As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc.Philips, Samuel
Religion
The Christian Home: As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc.
Philips, Samuel
Family; Home; Marriage; Parent and child
2. They should remove all temptation. Evil propensities are called forth by
temptation; and a child loses the power to resist in proportion to the
frequency of the temptation. Hence the exposure of our children to
temptation but educates and strengthens their propensities to evil. On the
other hand, if we remove temptation, these propensities will not be called
into activity, and will lose their tenacity. Never allow your children to
tamper with sin in any form; teach them how to resist temptation; inspire
them with an abhorrence and a dread of all evil. In this way you prepare
them for the reception and reproduction of moral truth.
3. Another means of moral education is example. This has been styled the
"education of example." This has more power than precept. The efficiency of
this means is based upon the natural disposition of the child to imitate.
Children take their parents as the standard of all that is good, and will,
therefore, follow them in evil as well as in good. Hence the parent's
example should be a correct model of sound morality. The child will be the
moral counterpart of the parent. You can see the parent's home in the
child. He is the moral daguerreotype of his parent. This but shows the
importance of good example in his moral training.
4. But one of the most effectual means is, by moral training, by which we
mean, to draw out and properly direct the moral faculties, and to habituate
them to the exercise of moral principle. Without this, all mechanical
education will be fruitless. To call forth muscular power you must
exercise the muscles. So you give the child moral stamina by developing its
moral faculties, and establishing in them the habit of moral action. This
training has its foundation in the law of habit. It is given, with its
results, in the Word of God. "Train up a child," &c. Also in the old maxim,
"Just as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined."
"Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil,
The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come!"
The power and pleasure of doing a thing depends much upon habit. Our nature
may become habituated to good or evil; we become passive in proportion to
the habit. How important, then, that the moral powers of our children be
trained up to principles and action until habits of good thought, feeling,
and conduct, are established. Then they will not depart from them; and
their moral life will be spontaneous and a source of enjoyment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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