Youth As Missionary Workers
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work. The children imitate their parents. Pride and worldliness are
encouraged in them, the love of the truth grows cold in their hearts,
and they are lost to the cause of God.
Children will learn to love that which the parents love. Those who
would interest their sons and daughters in Bible truth, must themselves
feel an interest in Bible truth and Bible study. If we desire our children
to love and reverence God, we must talk of his goodness, his majesty,
and his power. If we would have them love and imitate the character of
Christ, we must not only tell them of the sacrifice which he made for
our redemption, of the love, humility, and self-denial manifested in his
life on earth, but we must show them that this is the pattern which we
are striving to follow. If we desire to engage their hearts in the cause
and work of God, we must teach them to sacrifice for it. That which
costs little we have no special interest in, but that in which we have
invested our means will claim our interest and attention, and we shall
labor to make it a success. Parents, make religion the vital question of
life. Teach your children that every worldly consideration should be
made secondary to their eternal interests.
There is earnest work to be done in this age, and parents should
educate their children to share in it. The words of Mordecai to Esther
apply to the youth of today: “Who knoweth whether thou art come
to the kingdom for such a time as this?” The youth should be gaining
solidity of character, that they may be fitted for usefulness.
Every youth should be impressed with the fact that he is not his
own; that his strength, his time, his talents, belong to God. It should
be his chief purpose in life to glorify God and to do good to his fellow-
men. The Bible teaches him that he is a tree, on which fruit must be
found; a steward, whose capital will increase as it is wisely improved;
a light, whose bright beams are to illuminate the moral darkness that
enshrouds the earth. Every youth, every child, has a work to do for
God’s glory and for the salvation of souls that are ready to perish.
God demands the improvement of every faculty he has given to
man. Those who possess superior intellectual powers are thus placed
under greater responsibility, and if this gift is so perverted as to make
the possessor forgetful of God and his claims, if he employs it to lead
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the minds of others away from God, he will have a fearful account
to render in that day when every man shall receive according to his