by Richard Baxter
"Bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord." Ephesians 6:4
Parents! Your example and life are a continual and powerful sermon which is always seen by your children!
Parents! Your children have an everlasting inheritance of happiness to attain, and it is that which you must bring them up for. They have an endless misery to escape, and it is that which you must diligently teach them. If you don't teach them to know God, and how to serve Him, and be saved, and to escape the flames of Hell, you teach them nothing, or worse than nothing. It is in your hands to do them the greatest kindness or cruelty in all the world! Help them to know God and to be saved, and you do more for them than if you helped them to be kings or princes.
If you neglect their souls, and bring them up them in ignorance, worldliness, ungodliness, and sin, you betray them to the devil, the enemy of their souls, even as truly as if you sold them to him! You sell them to be slaves to Satan! You betray them to him who will deceive them and abuse them in this life, and torment them in eternity!
If you saw but a burning furnace, much more the flames of Hell, would you not think that man or woman more fit to be called a devil than a parent, who could find in their hearts to cast their child into it? What monsters then of inhumanity are you, who read in Scripture what is the way to Hell, and who they are that God will deliver up to Satan, to be tormented by him, and yet will bring up your children in that very way, and will not take pains to save them from it!
If you love them, show it in those things on which their everlasting welfare depends. Do not say you love them, and yet lead them unto Hell! If you do not love them, yet do not be so unmerciful to them as to damn them! You cannot possibly do more to damn them, than to bring them up in . . .
ignorance,
carelessness,
worldliness,
sensuality and
ungodliness!
There is no other way to Hell. And yet, will you bring them up in such a life, and say that you do not desire to damn them?
But if you train up your children in ungodliness, you may as well say that you intend to have them damned! And is not the devil more excusable, for dealing thus cruelly to your children than you who are their parents, who are bound by nature to love them, and prevent their misery?
Let me seriously speak to the hearts of those careless and ungodly parents, who neglect the holy education of their children. Oh, do not be so unmerciful to those who you have brought into the world! Oh, pity and help the souls that you have defiled and undone! Have mercy on the souls that must perish in Hell, if they are not saved! Oh help them who have . . .
so many enemies to assault them;
so many temptations to pass through;
so many difficulties to overcome;
so severe a judgment to undergo!
Help them who are so weak, and so easily deceived and overthrown!
Help them speedily. before sin hardens them, and Satan makes a stronger fortress in their hearts!
Oh be not cruel to their souls!
Do not sell them to Satan, and that for nothing! Do not betray them by your ungodly negligence, to Hell!
If any of them will perish, let it not be because of you who are so much bound to do them good.
The undoing of your children's souls is a work much fitter for Satan, than for their parents!
Consider how odious soul-betraying parents are who betray their children to be the slaves of Satan here, and the firebrands of Hell forever! O do not join with the devil in this unnatural, horrid wickedness!
"Do not withhold correction from a child, for if you beat him with the rod, he will not die.
You shall beat him with the rod, and shall deliver his soul from Hell." Proverbs 23:13-14
(Please send this to every parent you know!)