HOME-TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

White Ribbon, Volume 13, Issue 162, 15 December 1908, Page 11

HOME-TRAINING OF CHILDREN.

George Macdonald says that a little child is horn nearer to the heart of God than to any human being. Granting this to he true, how important it is that their education he the very heat possible. Unfortunately, we cannot make to order the environment of our children. If this were possible, we would surround them with the noblest intluences, and would keep them from the false, the impure, the unholy. Since we cannot keep our children in ignorance of evil, shall we fold our hands and let them take their chance with the thousands of others, or shall we warn them, arm them, prepare them as far as may he, for what our experience and observation tiaches us is before them? A person so educated that every contact with the order which surrounds him, disciplines, informs, and broadens him, is raised above external changes and material happenings. How can we best help our childen in this momentous problem ? By making good attractive, and evil repulsive; by tilling their lives with the good so that they shall have no time for evil. Let us keep evil in the background, find much to praise in their weakest efforts, win their confidence at any cost to ourselves, which last, by the way, is the secret of success in this wonderful education.

Children who are led to freely converge with their mothers concerning all that happens through the day, their temptations and experiences, will not go far away. The mother can correct false ideals, and warn them against impurity of thought and practice. Needless to sav, the mother must live verv near to Cod to he worth v of these confidences, and wise in lespomling to them. Home should ever he the purest, brightest, most attractive place on earth, and children should feel that they can find peace and happiness there at all times. Children should he taught not to listen to or to indulge in anything they could not talk over at home with mother. I'amily Prayer. Cpon another phase of home training one writer has said : What has become of family prayers? What lias become of the old-fashioned home where they all gathered about a common centre Win n evening's calm pleasures were nigh. When tie* eandles were lit in the p.irloiir And the stirs in the ealni azure sky'r when the big Bible was brought out and the family were called together, children and servants as well, and the grey-haired father read to them, and they all knelt in praver, and rose up and sang together ? How many homes do we find now with altars in them ? How many fathers and mothers kneeling in prayer with their children around them. After the day s work is done, man and woman, hound hv the ties of Mood and relationship, should pause for a moment and take counsel and rest together in the refreshment of loving companionship and the stimulus of mutual sympathy.