LITTLE Archie was in a terrible passion. He was not often so, and his gentle, loving mother was sorely puzzled. She wisely waited, however, till the childish temper was past, and then taking her little boy upon her knee she spoke to him, while he listened, with the teardrop still in his bright eye, and his little four-year-old face looking penitently up to hers. “Archie, Archie,” she said, “will you not try to be good? God cannot love my little boy when he is in a passion. God loves good children.”
“God loves good children.” I repeated the words to myself, as I sat in the room, and my heart grieved for the little one, and for many, many others. Why will Christian parents, men and women who know the Gospel in its simplicity and power, men and women who are praying, waiting, watching for the signs of spiritual life in the hearts of their children, why will they teach them such fallacies as these?
Christian mothers, did Jesus say to you, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance,” and does He say the opposite to your children? Does Satan not sow enough error in their little hearts that you must help him? Do you not find it hard enough to answer their doubts and questionings that you must add to them that sad misconception, “God does not love me because I am not good.” Do not say they are too young to understand these distinctions, that you will explain them as they grow older. Why not teach the truth at once? The earliest impressions are longest remembered. Only try how their little hearts will melt beneath the thought of a God who loves them even when they are naughty, of a Saviour who died for them even when they did not love Him. Only try it. Give them the true motive. Do not teach them to do right that God may love them, but because He does love them, and, God helping you, your children will live to thank God for mother who taught them not only in love but in truth. “God commendeth His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8.) R. H. M.