Page:The Life and Works of Christopher Dock.djvu/104

92 sharp eye on those who are set over them, be they parents or teachers.

Third, in order not to offend one of these little ones, a thing which is fraught with such severe punishment (Matth. xviii, 6, 10), we require untiring prayer for ourselves and for the gifts entrusted to us, that God may add His blessing that they may be brought up to His glory. Even if we were to apply all diligence in planting good seed in our youth by good teaching, and water it by careful training, yet God must give it strength, or it will not flourish. For we cannot give our children other hearts, but God can. Therefore, we should earnestly continue to pray day and night and beseech Him for their sakes; and when parents and teachers once make this their main object and greatest care, to bring up their children and those entrusted to them to the honor of God and to do with them as the Lord has already admonished the children of Israel in the Old Covenant (5th book of Moses vi, 6, 7), “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them 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.” Then in a few years we should see quite a different world. And although it does not lie in the power of parents to give their children new hearts, their efforts would still not be in vain, but God would add His blessing to their diligence, and if with all their diligence and those wholesome admonitions some should fail, they have still saved their own souls.