Parental Training
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does not become an Arnold or a Judas, it is because he lacks a fitting
opportunity.
Parents, it should be your first concern to obey the call of duty
and enter, heart and soul, into the work God has given you to do. If
you fail in everything else, be thorough, be efficient, here. If your
children come forth from the home training pure and virtuous, if they
fill the least and lowest place in God’s great plan of good for the world,
your life can never be called a failure and can never be reviewed with
remorse.
The idea that we must submit to ways of perverse children is a
mistake. Elisha, at the very commencement of his work, was mocked
and derided by the youth of Bethel. He was a man of great mildness,
but the Spirit of God impelled him to pronounce a curse upon those
railers. They had heard of Elijah’s ascension, and they made this
solemn event the subject of jeers. Elisha evinced that he was not to be
trifled with, by old or young, in his sacred calling. When they told him
he had better go up, as Elijah had done before him, he cursed them
in the name of the Lord. The awful judgment that came upon them
was of God. After this, Elisha had no further trouble in his mission.
For fifty years he passed in and out of the gate of Bethel, and went
to and fro from city to city, passing through crowds of the worst and
rudest of idle, dissolute youth, but no one ever mocked him or made
light of his qualifications as the prophet of the Most High. This one
instance of terrible severity in the commencement of his career was
sufficient to command respect through his whole life. Had he allowed
the mockery to pass unnoticed, he might have been ridiculed, reviled,
and even murdered by the rabble, and his mission to instruct and save
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the nation in its great peril would have been defeated.
Even kindness must have its limits. Authority must be sustained
by a firm severity, or it will be received by many with mockery and
contempt. The so-called tenderness, the coaxing and the indulgence,
used toward youth by parents and guardians is the worst evil which
can come upon them. Firmness, decision, positive requirements, are
essential in every family. Parents, take up your neglected responsibili-
ties; educate your children after God’s plan, showing “forth the praises
of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvelous light.”
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