The Saints' Everlasting Rest - Richard Baxter

servants, I would also persuade to this great work of helping others to the
heavenly rest. Consider what plain and pressing commands of God require
this at your hands. "These words thou shalt teach diligently unto thy
children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when
thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not
depart from it. Bring up your children in the nurture and admonition of the
Lord." Joshua resolved that "he and his house would serve the Lord." And
God himself says of Abraham, "I know him, that he will command his
children, and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the
Lord."
Consider, it is a duty you owe your children in point of justice. From
you they received the defilement and misery of their nature; and therefore
you owe them all possible help for their recovery. Consider how near your
children are to you: they are parts of yourselves. If they prosper when you
are dead, you view it as if you lived and prospered in them; and should you
not be of the same mind for their everlasting rest? Otherwise you will be
witnesses against your own souls. Your care, and pains, and cost for their
bodies, will condemn you for your neglect of their precious souls. Yea, all
the brute creation may condemn you. Which of them is not tender of its
young?
Consider, God hath made your children your charge, and your servants
too. Every one will confess they are the minister's charge. And have not you
a greater charge of your own families than any minister can have of them?
Doubtless at your hands God will require the blood of their souls. It is the
greatest charge you ever were intrusted with, and wo to you, if you suffer
them to be ignorant or wicked for want of your instruction or correction.
Consider what work there is for you in their dispositions and lives. Theirs is
not one sin, but thousands. They have hereditary diseases bred in their
nature. The things you must teach them are contrary to the interests and
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