The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Religion
The Sabbath-School Index: Pointing out the history and progress of Sunday-schools, with approved modes of instruction.
Pardee, R. G. (Richard Gay)
Sunday schools
Immediately connected with conversion is Christian child-culture and
training in Bible knowledge, religious habits and service, and
Christian character. Oh how important it is for child or man to have a
kind, judicious sympathizing Christian friend at hand at every step,
especially in the first year of life after conversion, to inquire and
counsel as to difficulties and dangers! Secret and social prayer, the
regular study of the Word, the social life and habits, the reading,
the associations, the feelings, the imagination, the judgment, and the
desire and tendencies all want watching, counselling, checking,
guarding or instructing by one who is tender, candid, sincere and
true. The whole life and usefulness much depends upon all this. The
churches of Christ ought all to be such training-fields of Christian
culture, but alas! we are sorry to confess that they are not generally
so, and consequently largely fail in this their great work. To throw a
little child, with only a spark of grace in the heart, into this world
of wolves of temptation and error, with no one to watch over, counsel
and guide, oh, it is sad indeed, and ought to excite the sympathy and
prayers of all godly people. Let us associate and band Sunday-school
workers together in earnest, in this great work of Christian culture
and holy living--in little prayer-meetings teaching the children how
to pray, how to resist temptation and fight against sin, and stand up
for Jesus, how to overcome bad tempers and feelings, how to cultivate
the disinterested missionary spirit of the gospel in caring for
others, and doing good to others as we have opportunity. The children,
like young trees from the nursery, need early "to be _planted_ in
courts of the Lord," if we would have them to grow up comely trees of
righteousness.
_Children's Prayer-Meetings._
Children, even little children, need to be taught _how_ to pray. We
all need to be taught to pray "as John also taught his disciples."
This is especially true with children, because the prayers of the
minister, or of the father around the family circle, are in most cases
examples which a child will not try to follow. The words and
expressions are, for the most part, quite unintelligible to a child,
and consequently they must be taught in a different way. We must call
the attention of a child to the particular things which he wants, or
ought to thank God for, the particular sins which would be in his
child's confession, and just the things he wants to ask God for in his
own language every day and hour mingled with adoration and praise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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