The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

2. And now the consequences of such parental weakness. There is one
element in the law of consequences under which we live that makes it
specially solemn and terrible. It is this, that ordinarily they are not
experienced until it is too late to redress them. Our actions are seeds; no
one who looks at the little seed could ever imagine what a great tree,
what noble or what bitter fruit, could come from it. Consequences, as
seen in those around us, somehow hardly affect us; self-interest flatters
itself with the pleasing hope that, in our case at least, the results will
not be so disastrous. Let me plead with parents, when conscience or
experience tells them that they too have been guilty of consulting the
will of their children more than the honor of God, to look at the picture
of Eli and his home under God’s judgment. Let them ponder carefully
what God says. Let them remember that throughout the universe there
is no well-being but in harmony with the law of our being. In earth and
heaven, in nature and grace, in the individual, the family, and the
Church, obedience to the law under which God constituted a creature is
the only possible path to happiness. To disobey that law is to court
misery. And if the parents, destined of God to bear in the home the
likeness of His own Fatherly rule, from ignorance or sloth give way to
weakness, they must expect the natural results. It may not always
become manifest in the same degree or with equal speed, but in the loss
of power to their child’s character, in the loss of peace and happiness,
in many cases in the loss of the soul forever, they must reap what they
sow. God appointed parental rule in the family as the symbol of His
own authority, in which parents and children alike are to honor Him; to
dishonor Him is to lose His favor and blessing.
3. The cure of such weakness. In speaking of the causes, we have already
indicated some of the remedies. The first one is this: the determined
purpose, by God’s grace, to do God’s will. My duty is never measured by
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