He is a bad preacher!

(Charles Spurgeon)

"Tell it to your children, and let your children tell it to their children, and their children to the next 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 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 to the church. These can assist us-but cannot relieve us from the sacred obligation. 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 God.

Parental teaching is a natural duty. Who is so fit to look to after 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 instruction is necessary for the nation, for the family itself, and for the church of God. By a thousand plots, atheism 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 often saved the children through the parents' prayers and admonitions.

May every house into which this counsel shall come, honor the Lord in this matter and receive His smile!

"These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates!" Deuteronomy 6:6-9

"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4