The salvation of the little child

Front matter

B V I

.Gu r — : ; 'ini he Salvation of

The Little Child

Contents

Page

The Key, - 3

I. God's Will for the Child, - - 7

CHAPTER I God's Will for the Child

Ah ! Here is a dear babe, bright and sweet, healthy and hearty! God has been good to you. According to the best of books, "Children are a heritage of the Lord" (Psalm cxxvii, 3). Precious they are to us, yet far more precious to Him; for they belong to Him in senses beyond any in which they are ours. He charges us with the care of them for Him; and no failure in our duty towards our fellow human beings can grieve Him more or bring upon us severer condemnation than the neglect of their interests, especially those of their immortal souls. No duty to others, rightly done, can please Him better.

With this care in view He gives us parental love, and wills that it shall be like His in view and spirit and aim. In proportion to the fullness and growth of your affection for your child, and its likeness to the love of God, will be your ability to bless his life and minister to his happiness, present and eternal. In all this God calls you to be "workers together with Him;" and you are greatly honored by the trust.

Now God's first will for your child is his salvation. He may plan very differently for different children in other things, but as to this, He has but one mind for them all. And you agree with Him. You would have your child puny and poor, uneducated and unknown, but saved and happy and sure of heaven by and by ; rather than see him vigorous and wealthy, a man of learning and crowned with public honors, but without the saving grace of God and the hope of eternal glory ; would you not ? You will, of course, do your best for him in every way ; but set each advantage in its due order of merit, and fix, with God, your hearts and minds, first, upon his salvation. From time to time you will be tempted to put something else in its place until that special something can be accomplished; but, however excellent that thing may be in itself, and in its proper order, firmly refuse to allow it more than its own rightful importance. Make it follow the highest good at a respectful distance. "The first thing first/' is God's law, as Jesus taught (Matt, vi, 33), and it is the only safe rule for us.

Applied to the case of your child, it means that God wills that he shall give his heart and life to Him at the earliest possible moment, and be first, and always, and fully, devoted to Him in love and service. Can you doubt this or think of God as having any other will for him? If you could, would it not shatter your faith in His goodness?

Life can not be empty. It may be filled with good ; but if this is missed, evil will take its place, with injury to the soul. Can it be otherwise? And if this is true of a lifetime, will it not be true of a year or a day? Depend upon it, the child who has spent ever so short a time in conscious evil has received a hurt. He can not be all that he would

God's Will for the Child have been if he had spent it in good. We are apt to think that everything has gone well if children are converted in their middle teens, but that is a great mistake. I was converted at fifteen, had been brought up by the best of Christian parents, and had not fallen into open vice; yet I had acquired hurtful habits of mind and soul, which, though they did not finally prevent my turning to God, made it more difficult than it need have been, and left weaknesses which I have had to watch and fight against ever since. I might have avoided the stress and vexation. I might have been a better and happier boy and man. I can not recall the lost benefit. I can not fully rid myself of the damage. I can not undo the wrong ; I can only be sorry. Can such an experience be the will of Cod ? It can not.

But the life without salvation may run on and on through the years with all this loss of good and doing of evil, and at last be exchanged for a hopeless eternity of the same character. It is vain to flatter ourselves that this is not possible to our children. The most degraded of sinners were once babes such as yours, and by no means all of them the offspring of wicked parents. I have known such to come from the homes of the Christian ministry. Inheritance can not fully or even mainly explain such characters and careers. We may as well be sensible about this, and realize that every child, no matter how great his advantages from parentage and other conditions, has still in him all the possibilities of saint or sinner in this world, and of perfected and glorified spirit or of hopelessly evil and lost spirit in the world to come. I remember a series of pictures which gave me a vivid impression of this truth. At the left hand was a sweet childface, promising everything one could desire; and from this, stretching across the page, two sets of studies of the same child as boy, young man, middleaged man, and old man. The upper set showed the growth of noble character, until the most beautiful of all was the "hoary head," truly "a crown of glory," because "found in the way of righteousness" (Prov. xvi, 31) ; while the lower set showed the child going down — down— through increasing wickedness and degradation until he had become a loathsome object. And what is heaven but the progress, upward and forever, of the one course ; and hell, but the eternal progress downward of the other? Add to the child's own possibilities of evil that, when once he has chosen the broad road, the world and the devil will help him to destruction, and you have a picture that makes one shudder and cry, "God forbid!" But He does forbid it; and provides the gracious means for preventing it, and for securing the choice of the upward way with all its blessings.

The consequences of the child's course, however, are not confined to himself. Think of what they will mean to you, to whom, of all his earthly friends, the vision has most of joy or terror. And the whole world is concerned. Every sinful career lowers the tone of the world's life, and makes its moral atmosphere less wholesome for other souls to breathe ; every life filled with good makes the world a better place for everybody else to live in. Above all it touches God. To save that very child, He gave Himself in His Son to die in the infinite sacrifice of the cross, and in His Holy Spirit to work on

God's Will for the Child 11 his conscience and heart. So we may be sure that He will not be content with less than the whole of his life and love and service. The days of tender childhood are as much His by right as any, and when taken from Him, are not only spent under His displeasure, but are also a cause of infinite grief to Him. Earth loses, heaven loses, and — I say it reverently — God loses, more than can be told, when one soul misses salvation for however short a time ; the fact will be eternally true and cause for unspeakable regret. Earth gains, heaven gains, and God gains, more than I can say, when salvation is accepted at the earliest time possible, and retained ; and the gain is everlasting and cause for unspeakable rejoicing.

From every sane and honest point of view we are bound to see that the only experience that can really and finally satisfy God, the godly, and the child himself, is that which knows salvation from the outset, and gains all its benefits in both worlds. Come, then, into entire and whole-hearted agreement with God; not merely in what you believe about this subject, but also in what you are willing to be and to do to the end desired of Him. Say now with all your heart, ''All Thy will, Father ; all Thy will for our child, and for us in our duty to him." Can you, dare you, say less ? No, indeed ! You will gladly set your whole natures to seek and to do that good will. It is well !

CHAPTER II God's Will for the Parent

In addition to what God does in direct ways for the salvation of your child, He calls in the help of human agents, and among these gives the chief place of responsibility to you as parents. Yours is the earliest and greatest opportunity of influence. No one else ought to take that place with any child as long as there is a Christian parent to hold it. Unsaved parents are not freed from this obligation ; they ought to be Christians and capable of their duty. Their failure is a dishonor, their children are wronged, and God is grieved.

This work, however, is more than duty, it is high privilege. You remember that President Lincoln used to say : "All I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother ; blessings on her memory." When such a testimony includes the service I have specially in view, you may know that the mother has come into the greatest glory of her motherhood. Why should it not be said as often of the father? Only because it is more rarely true. My own father, though a very busy man, did quite as much for me, in his way, as my mother. It was a grand way too, strong and yet kind. Why was I not won at the outset? I have not time to tell you

God's Will for the Parent 13 all I know about it. I will do better by passing on to you the lessons that can be learned from my memories. I ought to say, however, that the influence of my parents' faithfulness helped much to my conversion later ; and my heart is filled with gratitude upon every remembrance of it.

When I hear a son of godly parents say that the

Rev. Mr. led him to the Savior, I am glad

for the parson, but very sorry for the parents. He must go through life remembering that though they cared for him in other ways, they did not lead him to his highest good. Did they think that it was the minister's special business? It may be; if so they sadly blundered. Though a pastor, I do not covet the privilege for myself or for my class. What right have I, for example, to the strongest gratitude of your child ? God has given me a duty and privilege of my own, and I am doing and enjoying these, in part, at this moment in showing yours to you. But I will not usurp your place, the right of those who gave him birth.

Again, you need and desire the confidence of your child. You rightly wish that during his upgrowing, and most of all when he is choosing his friends, his wife, and his life-calling, he shall confide fully in you, and make no plans that you can not influence. Now if you minister to his inner life so continually and so wisely that he can talk freely to you about it, and also help him to form right judgments for himself, you will do more to encourage his turning to you in his times of need than by all other means in your power. You can only meet crises as they arise; you can secure his spiritual confidence from the beginning.

You can not now doubt that it is God's will that you should be the chief human agents in the salvation of your child. It is a purpose of love both for you and for him. So face your duty, claim your privilege, glorify your God, lead your child to Him and to heaven, prevent sin, increase righteousness, and, in the blessings that follow, find your present and eternal recompense.

Now you are wondering whether my enthusiasm is justified by personal experience. Then I must take you back more than thirty years to the time w r hen our first-born, a daughter, was given us of the Lord, and, with her, the beliefs which I have been presenting to you. We dedicated our little one to Him at birth, and did whatever else occurred to us as helpful to the end in view. At that time I was in business, and my wife enjoyed the larger opportunity in training, and the supreme privilege of bringing the young spirit to the momentous decision w T hen a little less than five years old. It came about on a Sabbath when I was filling a distant appointment as a lay preacher. A simple talk, leading directly to the plain issue, was followed by prayer, and the "great transaction'' was done. Imagine our mutual rejoicing when I returned to hear the story ! Our thanksgivings continue to this day, and increase in fervor and blessedness.

Was it a deep and permanent work? It was, indeed! The evidences were immediate and unmistakable, and the relation to God then established has never been broken. To-day, as a mother, our child is leading her children in the same way, with a clear recollection of God's dealings with her own soul to encourage her.

God's Will for the Parent 15

You ask if so early a devotion to the spiritual did not spoil her childhood, bringing into it an undue care and unnatural seriousness. Certainly not; why should it? On the contrary, she entered with a keen relish into the innocent pleasures of youth, enjoying them none the less, but all the more, because she loved her heavenly Father, and knew that they were a part of His loving will for her. But her happiness did not depend upon them, nor did she crave the doubtful or dangerous. She was a thoroughly natural child.

Do you wonder that we are enthusiasts on the subject of child salvation? "Very unusual !" did you say? True, but there was nothing either in the methods or the results that is not equally within the reach and use of any Christian parent. Why should it not be the rule rather than the extraordinary exception?

The opportunity did not come again. Our only other child passed away in infancy, but left us with a joyful interest in another side of the same blessed truth. Of this I will speak later.

CHAPTER III From Birth to Accountability

You ask what is the earliest possible time at which your child can give himself to God and enter into the blessedness of conscious salvation. I answer, at the time when he becomes responsible for rightly choosing between good and evil. Let us call that time the threshold of accountability.

He is born with a moral nature ; but this, like his body and mind, is, for a time, in a state of infancy. By the growth of that moral nature he is every moment drawing nearer to that threshold, and if he lives much beyond physical and mental infancy he will certainly cross it and become answerable to God for his choice of principles and conduct. We will therefore call the period which reaches from birth to accountability the period of moral infancy. This puts out of the question the size and age of the child, and even the strength of his mind (within the range of sanity), and sees him simply in the moral view. He will be a moral infant as long as he can not make such distinctions between good and evil as are necessary to render him justly responsible for choosing the good and refusing the evil. For this he needs 1 Jth knowl-

From Birth to Accountability 17 edge and the capacity to judge of what he knows ; and these only come to him gradually, with the growth of his mind and moral nature, and the opportunities of observation and instruction. The circumstances of different children differ so greatly in these respects that we can not say, in any case, how long moral infancy will last.

We must not, however, think of the child as altogether dependent for his moral growth upon human teachings. God has also provided for his direct instruction by the Holy Spirit, in ways suited to his needs and knowledge. Though he should never hear a word about God, he would still, at some early time, become accountable for obeying the inward voice which says, "You ought," and "You ought not," and which we call conscience. That voice represents God for the child, who as yet knows nothing about Him. Conscience is his thinking and feeling, working together in considering the right and wrong of things ; and is dependent for its thinking and feeling rightly upon the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who is always working upon it during the continuance of His mercy. It will grow and do its work if it be not hindered. For hindered it may be by wrong teaching and other evil influences ; and helped it may be, beyond the direct working of the Holy Spirit, by human teaching inspired of Him, as all right teaching surely is. So conscience grows with knowledge and moral capacity, and is more and more useful, until the mind can rightly instruct the spirit and join with it to direct the will in its choice. From that time the conscience will be exercised upon all moral questions arising, and will make its influence in- 2 creasingly felt, even though the child may not yet understand what it is or know it by name. When, at the first, he hears it say, "You ought," and does what it prompts him to do; the same voice says, "That is right," and he is satisfied and happy; as also when he refrains from doing what the voice forbids. We call that the approval of conscience. But if he disobeys, the voice says, "That is wrong," and he is unsatisfied and unhappy. Conscience not only judges words and actions, but also thoughts and feelings, motives and purposes, and approves the good and condemns the evil that is so often found mixed in them all. In all its ways it works for good throughout all honest life. The little child begins with a tender conscience, and ought to retain it in that condition as long as he lives. Nothing but evil can harden it, and the only way to keep it true and sensitive is to constantly educate it God-wards and protect it from whatever can draw it from its loyal course.

Conscience, however, only explains accountability in part. The child must also have the conscious power to make and carry out the right choice, and successfully to resist the temptation to all others. Here, too, God does the necessary work by His Spirit; not forcing the will, but by His grace enabling it to follow His direction. The child will discover some time that he can do the right when he so chooses, and will use that power, though he may not recognize the Spirit in it any more than in the conscience. His right choosing and doing do not come from native goodness, as so many suppose. The child's course is determined, in every moral sense, by his choice, but only by grace can he make

From Birth to Accountability 19 a right choice, and even then he will need divine help to carry it out.

Is there then no native goodness? There is not. Man in his fallen state inclines only and always to evil ; and the right things that he does are chosen and done under gracious influences working on him from without; and so, not being caused by any native love for God and righteousness, do not make him right in himself or acceptable to God. If we should all be left altogether without grace, acting either directly upon us from the Spirit, or indirectly through lives and customs wholly or partly ruled by grace, we should soon be made sure of the total depravity of the human race. All the glory of all the good in us all, really and finally belongs to God, and as much in the child's case as in any. The natural depravity of his moral infancy is total because it is of the same measure as his moral stature.

To him let us return. When he realizes that everything with a moral quality is either right or wrong ; that he knows how to find out which it is ; that he ought to do right and can do it, and that he ought not to do wrong, and need not do it ; his moral accountability has begun.

This general form of accountability applies to all men; but there is a special application of its principles to those who know of God, of their own sinful state, and of His plan for saving them from that state. The truths of Christianity are before us in the Bible, and every one to whom they come is called of God to believe in and accept them as the foundations of his spiritual life. God says, in effect, "I have made this plan and provision to save you from sin ; accept it. I offer My grace through My

Son and Spirit ; let it do its work in you." Man can not, without sinning, ignore, neglect, or reject this call, for these are but different expressions of the same attitude of the human spirit against God. This view of the case was shown by Christ when He spoke of the Holy Spirit as reproving the world of sin because they did not believe on Him (John xvi, 8), and it is supported by other of His teachings (John iii, 18, 36, etc.). Moreover the Spirit was also to testify of righteousness. Christ showed this to be possible to man, by the effects of grace in His own human nature ; and, ever since He went up from the sight of the world, the Spirit has continued this testimony, that righteousness is attainable by all w r ho avail themselves of the same grace. Therefore no man who knows these truths is lost simply because he has committed any other sin or any number of such sins, but because he will not allow God to save him from sin. In this way a special sin is possible to those who are thus accountable, viz., the rejection of the revealed grace of God; and for persistence in this sin man will be justly and eternally rejected by God.

This form of accountability comes to the child when he has learnt enough of Christianity to realize his duty to embrace it and to know that rejection is sinful. Just how much he must know about it in order to this it may be difficult to say ; but the Gospel is simple, and people of very humble powers of mind have, in all the centuries, found it easy to believe, and to obtain all its blessings. For faith may grasp the main benefit by accepting the main purpose and provision, and gather the rest of knowledge and advantage afterwards ; indeed, that is a

From Birth to Accountability 21 common experience. This is well within the power of the child at the threshold. It is not necessary to his salvation that he should understand it fully. But it is plain that by the time he reaches that crisis he ought to know enough of Christianity to avail himself of the grace it reveals to save, and keep him under the new conditions of moral accountability. The importance of this will be better seen when we come to discuss the methods by which he may be led to accept it.

CHAPTER IV The Salvation of the Moral Infant

What is the spiritual state of the child during his moral infancy? We commonly speak of him as innocent, by which, if we use that word in a proper sense, we mean that he is innocent of any consciously evil intention, and this is true because the day in which he first fully realizes such an intention brings his moral accountability. But if we mean that everything that he thinks or feels, says or does, is good or even harmless, we are seriously mistaken.

Now let common sense judge of this question in the light of the Word and human experience. The child, like all the children of all the generations, has inherited an evil nature. God has said so through David: "I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me" (Psalm li, 5), and the same truth is taught and assumed throughout the Scriptures. The possibilities of expressing evil are, of course, limited with the moral infant; but there are enough of them known to us all to serve the needs of discussion. Think of anger, deceit, and selfishness, for example. In these the will is active, though the child does not choose them as knowing them to be evil. In an accountable person these would be consciously sinful, would they not? The only difference between the two cases is that

Salvation of the Moral Infant 23 the child does not know, as the older one does, enough about the character and tendency of the evil to render him accountable for it. His innocence is due to his ignorance, but the evil in him is none the less real because he does not understand it. Not only is it in him, but it will continue there and grow, if it is not cast out by some power not of himself. It will bar heaven against him if it is not disposed of in some way satisfactory to the holy God, for we can no more conceive of Him as admitting to His heaven an infant soul with evil in it than any other soul in that condition.

Does this mean that God will permit an infant inheriting an evil nature, and dying before he can secure deliverance from it, to suffer eternally on account of it? It does not. The case is fully met by His mercy. On what ground ? In what manner ? God saves the moral infant, not because he is "an innocent little thing," or "the best child in the world" in the eyes of his parents, but because He loves him infinitely more, and more wisely, than the fondest of human parents. He not only sees the child's present innocence of ignorance, and feels an infinite sympathy with his helplessness ; but also has in view his immediate and eternal future, and those immense possibilities that we were so lately talking about. If the child was allowed to enter heaven with his original evil nature unchanged he would grow to such moral maturity as is possible there, and the evil would grow in like measure. The place could not change his native inclination to evil. His own existence would be cursed by it, and heaven would be spoiled, which God has declared shall not be (Rev. xxi, 27). But the divine purpose is so to save the child from his evil nature that his eternal growth shall be in a holiness God-like and worthy of heaven. Where shall that salvation be wrought if not on this side of eternity? We know of no such change in the next world. Our Father, blessed be His name ! has provided for every child that he shall be saved throughout his moral infancy without any effort on his own part, and in the absence of any human help.

That provision is made by the atonement of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, just as for all the rest of mankind. The accountable, however, can only secure the benefit on fulfillment of certain conditions. Having consciously sinned by a wrong moral choice, they must needs turn from their sin to God and holiness by a new and right choice ; and repentance and faith are both the natural and ordained means to that end. These conditions are necessary to their good as well as to God's glory, and we can not conceive of any salvation from sin as possible to them apart from such conditions. Now the moral infant, not being capable, either of such moral choice as is necessary to conscious sinning, or of repenting and believing; it becomes as just for God to extend His mercy and grace to him without conditions as to do so with conditions to those capable of fulfilling them. If the respective cases should be submitted to any man strong in the principles of justice, though knowing nothing beforehand of God, I am sure that he would say that such a Being with such circumstances before Him ought to do exactly that which we judge from His Word He has done. God's justice secures that His law shall be adapted to the state and capacity of

Salvation of the Moral Infant 25 those He governs ; in what way could this have been better done? He does not say, on the one hand : "This child, not having sinned with conscious intent, needs no change ; admit him to My heaven as he is nor, on the other hand : "This child can not repent and believe ; turn him away," but rather : "This child has an evil nature from which he must be saved before he can enter into My glory, but since he has not consciously chosen evil and can not do anything to rid himself of it, the merits of My Son's sacrifice and the work of My Spirit shall meet his needs without any action of his own." The child's salvation is plainly within God's general plan. You ask what is wrought in the moral infant corresponding to the change brought about in an accountable believer, whose nature is cleansed from sin and brought out of spiritual death into spiritual life. I answer, that what is done in the one is done in the other, with no other difference in the immediate result than would naturally arise out of their differences of mental and moral capacity. What then becomes of the inherited depravity? It might seem at first thought as if this ought to be removed from the child at the outset. That it is not is proved by the evidences of evil in such children. But is not this true also of accountable believers? Ask the most faithful. They will tell you that even if they do not wilfully disobey God, they know that they commit sins of ignorance, and these, as being contrary to the will of God, need His mercy, and can not be ignored merely because those who have committed them did not think of them as being wrong. Being sure that they have so sinned, they take the unknown with the known to Him, plead for His mercy, and believe that all alike are pardoned and purged.