Evening, July 11

Charles Spurgeon · Morning and Evening: Daily Readings

"Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their
   children, and their children another generation."

  Joel 1:3

   In this simple way, by God's grace, a living testimony for truth is
   always to be kept alive in the land--the beloved of the Lord are to
   hand down their witness for the gospel, and the covenant to their
   heirs, and these again to their next descendants. This is our first
   duty, we are to begin at the family hearth: he is a bad preacher who
   does not commence his ministry at home. The heathen are to be sought by
   all means, and the highways and hedges are to be searched, but home has
   a prior claim, and woe unto those who reverse the order of the Lord's
   arrangements. To teach our children is a personal duty; we cannot
   delegate it to Sunday school teachers, or other friendly aids; these
   can assist us, but cannot deliver us from the sacred obligation;
   proxies and sponsors are wicked devices in this case: mothers and
   fathers must, like Abraham, command their households in the fear of
   God, and talk with their offspring concerning the wondrous works of the
   Most High. Parental teaching is a natural duty--who so fit to look to
   the child's well-being as those who are the authors of his actual
   being? To neglect the instruction of our offspring is worse than
   brutish. Family religion is necessary for the nation, for the family
   itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots Popery is
   covertly advancing in our land, and one of the most effectual means for
   resisting its inroads is left almost neglected, namely, the instruction
   of children in the faith. Would that parents would awaken to a sense of
   the importance of this matter. It is a pleasant duty to talk of Jesus
   to our sons and daughters, and the more so because it has often proved
   to be an accepted work, for God has saved the children through the
   parents' prayers and admonitions. May every house into which this
   volume shall come honour the Lord and receive his smile.