By Lieut.-Colonel Seton Churchill
(Taken from “The Road that Led Me to Christ,” by this writer, published by Church Book Room, 82, Victoria Street, Westminster, S.W.I.)
Christless Homes
The atmosphere of a Christian home is not a privilege granted to everyone, so that we who have enjoyed it should be all the more grateful for it. A young captain, who, many years later on, was living in the same bungalow in India as I was, decided for Christ, and I urged him to write home and tell his people. He did so, and I shall never forget the reply that came some weeks after. So little did they realize the power of the Holy Spirit to change the human heart that they attributed the change about which he told them to the Indian sun, and urged him to come home at once. He had a great sense of humor and so we had many a good laugh together over the benefit of the Indian sun. He was quite convinced that it was the Sun of Righteousness with healing in its wings (Mal. 4:22But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. (Malachi 4:2)), which had changed his heart, so he could afford to laugh at the notion of the Indian sun having affected his brain. It was the heart and not the head that was changed. So far as the latter was concerned, he always appeared to me remarkably level-headed in his more sober moments, though somewhat wild and reckless at times before the great change took place.
Atmosphere of a Christian Home
How little young men realize what a valuable asset it is in life to be brought up in the atmosphere of a Christian home by God-fearing parents. I pity the man or woman from the bottom of my heart who has not, amid all the temptations, sorrows and disappointments of life, cultivated the spiritual part of his nature. “It does not do to put all one’s eggs into one basket,” says the financial man of the world. And as with money, so with other thing-s. Crashes will come sooner or later in life, and then God help the poor fellow who has nothing to fall back upon when the ambitions of life are wrecked, when his business has failed, or when he stands beside the open grave of all he loves on earth. There are times in life when the storms will arise in some form or other, and the poor, frail, human bark is sadly tossed about and sorely tried. These are the times when men sometimes find refuge in that cowardly act of suicide, and run away from the discipline of life and rush uninvited into the presence of their Maker. They were appointed by their Creator to hold a post of some difficulty, and, like a cowardly sentry, they desert their sacred charge, and go over to the enemy. Had they only learned from a loving mother or a praying father to have faith in God, they could have trusted Him in the mysterious hours of life, when all seemed so strange and dark.
Responsibility of Godly Parents
In case this ever falls into the hands of a father or a mother, I would say to them, O parents, see to it that, as tar as in you lies, your boy or girl is fitted for the strain of life, and that the spiritual side of their young lives is cultivated in a wise and judicious manner. You cannot change their hearts by compulsion, but you can set before them a high ideal, and do your best to insure that when you may, perhaps, have gone down into your grave, religion will be associated with the hallowed memory of a loving mother or a praying father. They may have laughed to scorn what appeared to them your peculiar notions, your ultra-spiritual tendencies; but in the crashes of life, with the wreckage of disappointed hopes all around, it is wonderful what a tendency exists for sorrowing hearts to turn to that Saviour whom they once despised, but whom they knew was so loved by the aged mother or the white-haired father, whose hallowed memory is now so precious, because mere worldly things failed to give that happiness which was one of the allurements of youth. The stern realities of life often teach people lessons that they were slow to learn when young, and one of those lessons is that, after all, “Mother (or father) was right.”