The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

Forty-ninth Day -Home Rule.
'The bishop must be one that rules well his own house, having hi* children in
subjection with all gravity; (but if a man knows not how to rule his own house,
how shall he take care of the Church of God ?) Let the deacons be the husbands of
one wife, ruling well their children and their own houses.' — 1 Tim. Hi. 4, 5, 12.
IT is a most suggestive thought that among the qualifications for officehearers
in the primitive Church, bishop, elder, or deacon, in each case
the state of their household should have been taken account of, and a
failure there should have been considered sufficient to bar them from
the office for which personally they otherwise might have appeared fit.
It reminds us once again of the closeness of the link between parents
and children, and the organic unity of the home as a whole. From the
household you can infallibly judge of what the parents are: the parents
make it: it is the outgrowth and the expression of their life, the mirror
in which, often with startling faithfulness, their hidden failings are
revealed.
Some may be inclined to doubt the truth of this statement. They have so
often heard, they know, of pious parents whose children have turned
out ill. Is all the blame to be laid on the parents? We have no power to
change the evil nature; it is grace alone can do it. Is it not going too far
to put the blame of unbelieving or unruly children on the parents, and
count such a father unfit for holding office in the Church or household
of God, because his own household is not what it should be? And yet
just this is what the Holy Spirit does. He teaches Paul to connect
unbelieving and unruly children with the failure of the home rule, and
unfitness for Church rule. He thus stirs us to search out what the secret
evil may be by which, in parents who otherwise appear fit to be leaders
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