Parable of the Growing Seed
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agents ready to flatter them. Children’s hearts are very impressible;
and there is danger if they are allowed to associate with either children
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or grown persons of evil tendencies. The eye needs to be educated,
or the child will find pleasure in beholding evil. The tongue needs to
be educated. Never let a word of disrespect to any one pass the lips
of your children without plainly showing that you are grieved, and
that other words of like character cannot be spoken in your household
without correction. If children are not taught to love, respect, and obey
their parents in the fear of the Lord, how can they be led to love God?
The little ones should be educated in childhood in childlike sim-
plicity. They should be trained to be obedient, upright, and practical,
doing their best in everything, and at the same time to be content
with the small, helpful duties, and with the pleasures and experiences
natural to their years. Childhood answers to the blade in the parable,
and the blade has a beauty peculiarly its own. The children should
not be forced into a precocious maturity, but should retain as long as
possible the freshness and grace of their early years.
The parable of the sower and the seed conveys a deep spiritual
lesson. The seed represents the principles sowed in the heart, and its
growth the development of character. Make the teaching on this point
practical. The children can prepare the soil, and sow the seed; and
as they work, the parent or teacher can explain to them the garden of
the heart with the good or bad seed sown there; and that as the garden
must be prepared for the natural seed, so the heart must be prepared
for the seed of truth. As the plant grows, the correspondence between
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the natural and the spiritual sowing can be continued.
The little children may be Christians, having an experience in
accordance with their years. This is all that God requires of them.
They need to be educated in spiritual things; and parents are to give
them every advantage that they may form characters after the similitude
of Christ’s lovely character.
The mind will never cease to be active. It is open to influences,
good or bad. As the human countenance is stamped by the sunbeam on
the polished plate of the artist, so are thoughts and impressions stamped
on the mind of the child; and whether these impressions are of the earth
earthy, or moral and religious, they are well-nigh ineffaceable. When
reason is awakening, the mind is most susceptible; and so the very
first lessons are of great importance. These lessons have a powerful