LITTLE children have been the care of God from the earliest times; on great occasions He has ordered that they should hear His words, when perhaps they were too small to understand them. But little children can learn to obey before they are able to understand all they are told. The Lord God ordered that the children should be taught His ways when His people Israel left the land of Egypt, and again when they entered Canaan, and also when the nation of Israel was gathered together to hear the solemn word of God in the valley between the mountains Ebal and Gerizim.
And the loving Christian father and mother find joy in teaching their children the holy will of God, and in hearing their little ones repeat texts from His word before they can for themselves read the Scriptures.
When the blessed Lord was here on earth, the little children of Israel were taught the words of Jehovah their God. According to the habit of their times, when a boy was five years old he was to read in the Bible, though if not very strong his school life did not begin until he was six or seven years of age. The first concern in Israel was that the children should read the sacred Book.
You may remember how we told you of the doorways of the Egyptian temples last year, and what strange signs and marks were made on them. In that land from early infancy the children of the Egyptians were taught to look to idols and to false gods for protection, and the pictures or marks on the doors allied their eyes and minds to the worship of these vanities. There is a passage in the book of Deuteronomy (ch. 11:20) which says of the words of God, “thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates;” and probably to that word may be traced the use of the “Mesusah.”
You must now look at our picture. Observe upon the door post, just above the staff the man holds, there is a kind of little case represented. This is a “Mesusah.” We have one before us such as Jews in our times place outside their houses, and probably the little case, though in olden days made of metal, was not unlike that which we have. In this case are placed some passages of Scripture, written upon parchment, and tightly folded up. The passages are taken from the Book of Deuteronomy, and include the text already quoted. But since the words of God were hidden in the metal case, the case only and not the words were seen, and there can, be no doubt that too often the use of the case was very superstitiously regarded.
The little children portrayed in our picture are both too young to learn to read; they have come to the door to see their father go out, and you notice he is kissing his hand to the Mesusah. He means by this act to render reverence to God. Or he would touch the little shining case in which the words were enclosed, and teach his children that God was the protector of his house and of them. As the godly Jew touched the Mesusah this beautiful verse was present to his mind, “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth and even for evermore. (Psa. 121:8.)
We may be sure that the little ones who thus watched their father day by day would learn to do as he did, and thus from their early infancy the word of God would be connected in their minds with their father’s confidence. As the father came into his house again he would do the same thing, day by day teaching his children to lift their eyes to the bright little metal case on the door post.
It is a very happy thing for us to have texts on the walls of our rooms, though we hope our young readers will not wrap them up in a little case where their words cannot be seen. How often has such a text as “Thou God seest me” been like a burning flame before the eye, stopping the feet from their willful course; how often has such a word as “God is love” drawn a weary heart to God’s own heart, and spoken comfort to the soul.
Let the Christian parent not be behind the Jewish one of bygone years in teaching the children the blessed words of God.