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JANUARY

       “Childhood is the most impressible period of life. Every object soon becomes a book; every place a school-house, and every event plows in some winged seed which will be bearing their appropriate fruit for thousands of ages yet to come. The young plant is bent with a gentle hand, and the characters graven in the tender bark grow deeper and larger with the advancing tree. Parents, in their religious teaching especially should seize upon these golden hours of prime, so hopeful and important. If they wait for intellectual development and wait to cast the good seed of the kingdom into the virgin soil, the enemy will come and sow his tares and occupy the ground.” So wrote John Kirk.
      Manners were part of her curriculum. Running into the yard, the garden or the street without permission was a capital offence. All her children were taught to be mannerly even to the lowest of the servants, and if a servant allowed bad manners, he was reprimanded. Rudeness was always punished.
      When the children were told to retire for the night, not a sigh nor a pout was tolerated. Promises were strictly kept, too. There was not the invasion of property for so much as the value of a pin.
      Richard Watson wrote, “To open the mind to human science, to awaken the pleasures of taste, and to decorate the external man with all the adornings of a civil and refined life might be sufficient to occupy the office of education were there no God, no Saviour, and no future (life.) Were this life not a state of probation—had man no peace to make with his God, no law of His to obey, no pardon to solicit from His mercy—then this would be education. But most affectingly deficient will the knowledge of that youth be found, and negligent in the highest possible degree must they be considered who have charge of his early years, if his mind be left unoccupied by other subjects and unfamiliarized to higher considerations.”
       This was the wisdom of Susannah Wesley: she knew every child to have a soul and that this soul was fallen in Adam, so it had to be instructed in all that relates to his responsibility to God and his necessary preparations for the life to come.
      Before they could kneel or speak she taught them to ask for a blessing upon their food by appropriate signs. In this way they would realize their dependence upon Him. As soon as they could speak they were taught prayers.
      When rising each morning and retiring each evening they prayed the Lord’s Prayer, and when they were older, they added a short prayer for their parents, a short catechism on Bible doctrines, and portions of Scriptures as their memory could bear.
      As soon as they were able to understand, the Lord’s Day was distinguished from other days. They were taught a reverence for the assembly of believers by constant attendance, as well as to be quiet and of a devout behavior during worship.
     She taught her children Bible doctrines. She gave them a thorough theological training that they would be able to give a reason for their beliefs. To do this, she prepared a doctrinal manual. She taught them the existence of God as seen from the creation of matter, as seen from the arrangement of the world, and also as seen from the stability in the order of nature. She taught them the existence of God as seen from the constitution of the human being and at the same time ably refuted the theory of the eternity of matter, the theory of chance, and the theory that creation occurred by a “fortuitous concourse of atoms.”
      She taught the absolute perfection of the Divine attributes, while she discussed with them the origin of evil, the fall of man, the sphere of reason in matters of religion, the moral virtues, the necessity of Divine revelation, and the theory of innate ideas.
     She prepared an exposition of Bible doctrines in which she discussed the defectiveness of the light of nature, the evil of sin, the necessity of the atonement, the value of the Scriptures, the creation and fall of the angels, and the formation of man. She discussed the probation of the first human pair, their temptation and fall, this effect upon their posterity, the provisions for redemption, the nature of faith in Christ—and in addition, she prepared a searching exposition of the Ten Commandments.
     The Scriptures tell us, “the rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his Mother to shame.” Susannah Wesley applied this divine truth with her family and conducted a one-half hour weekly conference with each child which was also a time for prayer and was in addition to a nightly conference she held with each child as time permitted.
     “There is a grave dereliction of duty and a violation of solemn responsibility when parents transfer the task of religious training to a stranger,” so wrote John Kirk; and Martin Luther said,     “When parents do not educate their children in the ways of the Lord, there is such a perversion in nature as when fire does not burn, or water wet.”
      Susannah Wesley confessed, “It is better to mourn ten children dead than one living; and I have buried many.”


 

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