Proverbs 22:6 - Homiletics

The training of a child

I. THE NEED OF THE TRAINING . This arises from various causes.

1 . An undeveloped condition. Each child begins a new life. If all that were desirable could be found wrapped up in his soul, this would need to be developed by education.

2 . Ignorance. The child does not come into the world with a ready made stock of knowledge. He must learn truth and be made to see the right path, which is at first unknown to him.

3 . Weakness. The child needs not only to be taught, but to be trained. He must be helped to do what is at first too much for his strength. His better nature must be drawn out, nourished, and confirmed.

4 . Evil. A child's mind is not a tabula rasa. We need not go back to Adam for evidences of hereditary evil. The child inherits the vices of his ancestors. Thus "foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child." Before he is guilty of conscious sin the tendency to wickedness begins to work within him.

II. THE AGE OF THE TRAINING . This is to be in childhood, for various reasons.

1 . Its susceptibility.

"Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Shades of the prison house begin to close

Upon the growing boy.

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,

He sets it in his joy."

(Wordsworth.)

Faith is natural to children. They cannot become theologians, but they may be citizens of the kingdom of heaven. Thoughts of God and Christ, and the call to the better life, can be well received by them.

2 . Its dangers. Children are open to temptation. If not trained in goodness, they will be trained in evil. Some have thought that children should not be biassed in their religious ideas, but left in freedom to choose for themselves. We do not do this in secular matters, trusting them to choose their own methods of spelling and to manufacture their own multiplication table. If we believe our religion to be true and good and profitable, it is only a cruel pedantry that will keep it from children for fear of prejudicing their minds.

3 . Its duties. Early years should be given to Christ. He seeks the opening bud, not the withered leaf.

III. THE LAW OF THE TRAINING .

1 . In action. There is a practical end in education. We are not merely to teach doctrine, but chiefly to train conduct.

2 . According to right. This is not a question of taste. There is a way in which a child ought to go. It is his duty to tread it, and ours to lead him in it.

3 . According to future requirements. While the main principles of education must be the same for all children, the special application of them will vary in different cases. We have to apply them to the specific career expected for each child. The prince should be trained for the throne, the soldier for the field, etc.

4 . According to personal qualities. Each child's nature needs separate consideration and distinctive treatment. The training that would ruin one child might save another. We have not to drill all children into one uniform fashion of behaviour; we have rather to call out the individual gifts and capacities, and guard against the individual faults and weaknesses. Thus the training of a child will be the directing of his own specific nature.

IV. THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE TRAINING . "When he is old, he will not depart from it." Age stiffens. It is well that it should grow firm in the right. Here is the reward of teaching the young. The work is slow and discouraging, and at first we see few results; perhaps we imagine that all our efforts are wasted upon thoughtless minds. But if the work is hard to begin, there is this compensation in it—when it has fairly laid hold of a child, it is not likely to be ever effaced. The teachings of the Sunday school are remembered after many a long year.