What They Said

“Among the blessings which make happiness are the children, who come with their sweet life and their holy gladness. Children bring care, and demand toil and sacrifice, ofttimes cost pain and grief; yet the blessing they bring to a true home a thousand times repays the care and the cost. It is a sacred hour in a home when a baby is born and laid in the arms of a young father and mother.”

J.R. Miller

“Cultivate in your children a taste for pure and noble pleasures—instead of a love of worldly gaiety. Pure and noble pleasures last. They wear well. They leave no sting behind. The pleasures of worldliness and gaiety do not wear well. They exhaust the powers of body and mind, and all the capacities of enjoyment, prematurely—and leave a sting behind. That is the reason why the Word of God condemns them—and why Christians abstain from them.”

John Abbott

"We may plead guiltless as to the blood of the body, but there is the blood of souls. How many of us have sacrificed our children to the idols of the present Canaan, fashion, custom, dress, dancing, and worldly conformity in general. Look at the education given. Look at the company chosen. Look at the practices indulged in. Can it be said, that we realize the value of the soul, and seek first and principally the salvation of our children and friends, with the glory of God?  O how many of our children have been sacrificed to form, fashion, and the various idols of the world!"

James Smith

"You cannot control your children, you say. Then the Lord have mercy on you!  It is your business to do it, and you must do it, or else you will soon find they will control you. No one knows what judgment will come from God upon those who allow sin in children to go unrebuked."

Charles Spurgeon

"It is a fact that unless children are brought up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they, and the society which they constitute or control, will go to destruction.  Consequently, when a state resolves that religious instruction shall be banished from the schools and other literary institutions, it virtually resolves on self-destruction."

Charles Hodge

"We must labor to do good to our children even from their earliest years. If Satan begins so early to do them harm, we must not be behind him in diligence to lead them to God. How soon in life a child becomes responsible and accountable, is a difficult question to solve. Perhaps far sooner than many of us suppose. One thing, at all events, is very clear–it is never too soon to strive and pray for the salvation of the souls of children–never too soon to speak to them as moral beings, and tell them of God, Christ, right and wrong. The devil, we may be quite sure, loses no time in endeavoring to influence the minds of young people. He begins with them even from childhood. Let us work hard to counteract him."

J.C. Ryle

"Do not leave your children to wander out without the guardianship of holy knowledge, for there are seducers abroad who will mislead them if they can."

Charles Spurgeon

"Your children are pieces of yourselves, and therefore ought to be governed with great tenderness and love.  When you caution them, when you counsel them, when you reprove them, do it in such a manner as not to exasperate, endeavoring to convince their judgments and to work on their reason."

Matthew Henry

“There is little hope of children who are educated wickedly.  If the dye have been in the wool, it is hard to get it out of the cloth.”

Jeremiah Burroughs

"The Fountain of parents' duties is Love (Titus 2:4).  This is expressly enjoined to them.  Many approved examples are recorded hereof: as Abraham (Gen 22:2), Isaac (Gen 25:28), Rebekah (Gen 25:28), and others.

Great reason there is why this affection should be fast fixed in the hearts of parents towards their children. For great is that pain, pains, cost, and care, which parents must undergo for their children. But if love be in them, no pain, pains, cost or care, will seem too much."

William Gouge