by Erastus Hopkins
“You should continually, from their earliest years, speak to your children of God. How can they love him unless they know him? And how can they know him unless they are taught concerning him? Surely the light of nature will not do more for their eyes than it has done for the eyes of the heathen who know not God. If you would train their affections and obedience for one higher than yourself, you must teach them of him who is the great end of their existence, from the very opening of their infant understandings. You are not to wait till they can comprehend God — for no angel can attain to this; you are not to wait till they can apprehend the logical argument by which God is proved to exist; but you are to repose the existence of the great God among the very elementary truths of their education. Long before the child can have any ripened apprehensions of his existence and attributes, it can have its thoughts, and can revolve them in its infant way.
“And your children can be interested in these things, earlier than perhaps you are aware. You can talk to them about some absent grand-parent whom, though they have never seen, they begin to love. And can you not talk to them about that dear Father in heaven, who is greater and better than this good father on earth? And can you not show them the stars that he made, and the beautiful grass he causes to grow, and the flowers that blow so sweetly? And can you not tell them of that little brother or sister, or parent who has gone to be with God? Why can you not make these some of the most frequent and pleasing topics of conversation with little children? Can you not tell them that when you lie in the grave that God will be their dear Father, and he will love them? And when your child offends you, and you are forced to look displeased, and its little heart begins to break, why can you not stoop and tell it that the dear Father in heaven is grieved too, and that he feels as you feel? Thus you may cause thoughts of God to be introduced very early and very pleasantly into the mind of the child; and nothing is more true than that you cannot acquaint it too early with the character, the claims, and the loveliness of that Being whom you aim to establish as the great and ultimate object of its affections. As it grows older, you can talk still farther of those things which are calculated to unfold to its mind the holiness and loveliness of God; teaching it to feel towards the Father that is unseen, just as you teach it to feel toward yourself. And while this course is pursued, the intellectual as well as the moral training of the child is best secured, and its mind is led into early and easy contact with subjects of an infinitely higher order than those which, too generally and exclusively, compose the topics of the nursery.”
“How can you expect them to pray to God, unless they see you pray, and thus confess your dependence, going to him for all things? If you would teach them to pray, and to be chiefly mindful of God and unseen and eternal things, there must be something - some arrangement holding a prominent place amid your household, calculated continually to cultivate these spiritual habits. Precepts will effect but little. Let them see that you are ever mindful of God, and of the great end of your spiritual existence - that you are thus mindful when you first wake from slumber, and when you lie down at eventide. Let them see that God is so prominent in your thoughts, that you cannot undertake the duties of the day without his blessing, nor rest in quiet at night without a committal of yourself and your beloved household to his kindness and care. Let them see that while they are your children, you acknowledge yourself to be a child of a greater Father, and kneel down with affection, and simplicity, and sincerity, to pour out your soul before him. Let your language in these exercises be simple, and your words few, that your children may neither be weary, or entirely uninstructed. O what a place and a posture is this for the parent, by solemn illustration, to teach his family the beauty of penitence for wrongs committed, and the delights of chastened love and obedience! Secret prayer does not subserve the desired end. It is witnessed only by the eye, and it enters only into the ear, of God. Household worship is the needed arrangement.”