11. Having found eternal life, use all appropriate means to develop Christian character. Prayer, reading the Bible, attending church and Sunday school, reading good books and Christian newspapers, keeping the best company--all these will help you.
[Illustration: “THE DRUMMER BOY AND HIS DOG.”]
Children are a gift from God. Children are a heritage from the Lord. It depends largely on parents whether they become a heritage of honor and delight or of sorrow and shame. It is not simply incumbent upon parents that their children be well cared for, fed and clothed, properly educated and so forth; but more than this, they are to be brought up “in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” This being true, then, the highest aim of rearing children is not simply that they may win success and command respect in the world. Respect and success are greatly to be desired and sought, but beyond them and beyond everything else is the highest and chiefest aim of parental love and care; that their children may honor and command the righteousness of God in the life that now is and magnify the glory of God in the life that is to be. This is the mark and prize of their high calling.
Admitting this, then, the early conversion of children is all-important. But if they are to be early converted, is it not wise--nay, absolutely essential--that mothers and fathers prepare the way by restricting their natural impulses by which they are led to desire indulgence in the gay vanities of life? Is it not positively wrong for parents to indulge that pernicious and destructive delusion, which some allow, of permitting their children to have their own evil way in the hope that in due time they will in some way see their error and turn to the right path of their own accord? Father, you are a Christian. Mother, you are a Christian. Now, in your home, in the management of your children, are you doing the best you can to show what a Christian family should be? How is it, my friends? I leave that question with you.
Carl Brickermann, a collection clerk in an uptown bank, in his accustomed daily routine found it necessary, among other things, to call by telephone the downtown brokerage firm of Hopegood & Co. One day he missed the familiar feminine voice which had usually responded to his calls. But the new voice seemed sweeter and much more passionately penetrating. For two or three days Brickermann was puzzled, not only because of the change at the other end of the ’phone, but also because of the strange and unaccountable fascination which the new voice possessed for him. At length one day, almost in desperation, he turned aside from his regular business inquiries to ask: