The Children for Christ by Andrew Murray

‘You fathers! provoke not your children to wrath.’ The education of a
child is a holier work than many think. It needs above everything selftraining.
This was one of the objects with which God created the family
relation: it is one of its chief blessings. Without his knowing it, your
child is God’s schoolmaster to bring you ever nearer to Christ. Not only
does the child, in his tenderness and lovingness, call forth the love of
your heart; his waywardness and willfulness call for it still more, as
they put it to the test and school it in forbearance and gentleness. Study
to have every token of your displeasure, every reproof and every
punishment, so marked by love that through it all the child may really
be encouraged into goodness.
But it is not by reproof and punishment, however gently and wisely
administered, that parents will keep their children from getting
provoked or discouraged. This is but the negative side; the positive is of
more importance. Prevention is better than cure. Cultivate ever in
yourself and the child that state of feeling which takes away the
opportunity of its coming into collision with you. Endeavor by your
own tranquillity, gentleness, and kindliness to promote the same
feelings in the child. Count upon the wonderful ascendency and
influence over children that sympathy gives, in both its aspects. Throw
yourself in sympathy into their interests, entering into their state of
mind and feeling. Expect them — for their nature is as keenly
susceptible of sympathy for others as from others — to enter into your
spirit and temper, and instinctively to yield themselves to its influence.
And as you seek to maintain the rule of love, not the mere love of
natural instinct, but of love as a principle of action, earnestly sought in
prayer from above, and carefully cultivated in all your family life — you
will find how the children will catch its spirit, and become your helpers
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