Works of Ellen Wood

by Ellen Wood

  Unless the ears that listen to this dangerous doctrine be proof against it, how shall the poison fail to work?— “If this portion of the Bible and that of the New Testament did not come down to us by writers inspired by God, where is my guarantee that the other portions are worthy of belief?” reasons some one of the unfortunate hearers. And from that hour there lies on this hearer’s mind an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty in regard to the Bible; it is not to him the never-to-be-doubted guide that it used to be — God’s own book. But, take you care that your child is so trained, so assured, that this most fatal teaching, should he be exposed to it in later life, may fall harmless upon him.

  Once let a man begin to doubt the Bible, and he does not stop there. The next thing he will tell us is that he has no faith left in anything — in Heaven, or in a hereafter. Believe me, the faith you implant in your child must be founded as on a rock of adamant, if you would help him safely onwards to eternal life.

  It is the most solemnly enjoined duty imposed upon the generations of man — the implanting faith in their children. No other obligation laid upon them is so grave as this. Nothing like unto the consciousness of having fulfilled it to the best of our imperfect abilities will cheer our death-bed when we come to die. If I knew any manner in which to urge it upon you more strenuously, all you whose little ones are yet young and impressionable, I would use it.

  Think not it is I, or such as I, who would impress upon you a sense of its vital necessity. It is God Himself. It is the Bible. Throughout its pages are scattered in all parts this most imperative charge. None greater, none so earnest, was imposed upon the Israelites of old when Moses was leading them through the wilderness.

  “And these words which I command thee this day shall be in their 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.”

  Over and over again is the charge repeated. “Only take heed to thyself and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart all the days of thy life; but teach them thy sons and thy sons’ sons.”

  “Gather me the people together,” said the Lord God, “and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children..... Oh that there were such an heart in my people that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them and with their children for ever!”

  It was one of the last charges of Moses to the people, that last day, when he was going up to the mount to die. “Set your hearts unto all the words which I testify among you this day, which ye shall command your children to observe to do, all the words of this law. For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life: and through this thing ye shall prolong your days in the land, whither ye go over Jordan to possess it.”

  That good land beyond Jordan was, you know, a type of Heaven. If the Israelites had obeyed the laws themselves, and yet neglected to teach them to their children, would they have been suffered to inherit that good land? If we neglect our children, so that they fall away and never find the way to that promised land, upon whom will lie the sin? On them, who were not taught; or on us, who did not teach? My readers, it is a momentous question: a question that we cannot answer.

  After the Israelites had passed over Jordan, and the twelve stones that they had brought were pitched in Gilgal, Joshua gave them one charge.

  “When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land. For the Lord your God dried up the waters of Jordan from before you until ye were passed over, as the Lord your God did to the Red Sea, which he dried up from before us until we were gone over. That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.”

  Always the children, you see. They are to be taught, and shown, and trained for the Lord.

  It is spoken of by David in the Psalms — that “sweet singer of Israel.” He calls upon the people to hear and know the laws of God, and to teach them, as the Lord commanded, to their children, to the intent that when they grow up they might teach their children the same.

  “That the generations to come might know them, even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children: that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments.”

  That they might set their hope in God!

  And, in some verses later on in this same Psalm, which is the seventy-eighth, it states that the Lord’s anger was kindled against them, because “they believed not in God and trusted not in his salvation.”

  The Book of Proverbs teems with the importance of correcting and instructing a child. Look at it for yourselves. Search out the instances; they are too numerous to be transcribed here. But the one injunction that I have quoted, as you may think all too frequently, embodies the drift of most of them.

  Turn to Isaiah. Note how the teaching in the very earliest infancy is enjoined there, and in what manner it is to be performed.

  “Whom shall he teach knowledge? and whom shall he make understand doctrine? Them that are weaned from the milk and drawn from the breasts. For precept must be upon precept, precept upon precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little.”

  Indeed it must. If we are to do effectual good to our children, precept must be upon precept and line upon line, given untiringly and unceasingly. The efforts must be very gentle, very; here a little and there a little; gentle and almost imperceptible, only they must never flag. It seems an arduous task to undertake, no doubt, to you who have never entered on it, and perhaps have never had your serious reflection drawn to the obligation of it. But when once you have entered on and are fairly embarked in the work, you will experience a pleasure you little dream of now. It will of itself bring to you an exceeding great reward.

  “Is it necessary?” I hear some of you asking this question in doubt. Necessary? Well, it is the eternal welfare of your own child that is at stake; the child whom you love better than life. Accordingly as this knowledge of heavenly things and of a wish to attain to the Life hereafter is implanted in his infant heart, or not implanted, so may he be lost or saved.

  Remember Christ’s own description of his final coming: of that dread day when the Son of Man shall come in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory, and He shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet to gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other.

  “I tell you in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken and the other shall be left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken and the other shall be left.”

  That is — oh, words of awful meaning! — the one shall enter into Life, and the other shall lose it.

  Now, what constitutes, or will constitute, the difference in these two; the chosen and the non-chosen? Apparently there is no difference outwardly. The one is not represented as idle, sinful, ill-doing; the other as diligent and of good report. Rather are we led to believe that both are doing their duty industrously as regards the obligations of this world; the two women equally grinding at the mill, the two men equally working in the field. But, the one class will have Heaven in the heart; be looking for it, hoping for it, striving for it; the other will never have thought about it. What a warning it is!

  Of all the incidents recorded in the gospel narrative, perhaps none are more pregnant with meaning (and with more meanings than one) than is that of the two thieves crucified with Jesus. It shows us how pardon may be had even at the eleventh hour; it shows how ready and willing the Redeemer is to hear the cry of
the sinner. He stands but to save. In the depths of his own agony, he would have stretched forth his hand, had it not been nailed to the cross, in forgiving love; his words and his heart alike went forth to the supplicating cry.

  “And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on him, saying, If thou be the Christ, save thyself and us. But the other answering rebuked him, saying, Dost thou not fear God, seeing thou art in the same condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this man hath done nothing amiss. And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom. And Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, To-day shall thou be with me in paradise.”

  Here is an exact exemplification of the previous words, “The one shall be taken and the other shall be left.” At this, the close of the two thieves’ life, one was saved and the other was lost. And why should this have been? Are we at a loss to know? Both were alike guilty, and had no doubt lived the same kind of evil life: but the one turned to God in the last hour; the other did not.

  Would it be too much to assume that the first had had an anxious mother, who had guided his thoughts heavenward in his earliest years, and that the second had not? It is more than likely. The infant lessons, forgotten all through his evil career, came back to him in that, the closing hour, and stood him in good need: led him to his Saviour, and preserved his soul. The other may never have had a word of Heaven and its glories whispered to him; may never have been shown so much as the first faltering step of the way thither, or been taught a single prayer. Be you very sure of one thing — I cannot reiterate it too often — that where these lessons have been taught, however much they have lain dormant or been lost sight of in middle life, they will come back to flood the heart in the last solemn, great extremity.

  Mothers! it lies with you to train your children. In that chapter of Timothy from which a few lines have already been transcribed farther back, St. Paul, after enlarging upon the perilous times of the last days, and the dangerous doctrines and practices that shall then fill the world, hardly seems to consider it necessary to warn Timothy; appearing rather to consider him proof against such. He says:

  “Continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and hast been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.”

  And Timothy, we know, had been brought up in this faith, in these things, by his mother.

  Elsewhere — it is in Corinthians — St. Paul compares our life here to a race; a race which all must run; the prize for which is an incorruptible crown, and telling us so to run that we may obtain it.

  A race it undoubtedly is. A race in which we have to fight and struggle. Great impediments beset our way at every step; sin, pride, carelessness, throwing us back perpetually; sometimes throwing us out altogether, so that we never find the prize or earn the crown.

  But of all the hindrances of the present day, none is so formidable as the spirit of infidelity. That it is gaining ground amid our young men, no one can deny. They are too self-sufficient nowadays for religion: they think themselves as clever as their Maker, and they despise the teaching of His prophets. Many of the books now issued are tainted with this infidelity. Even those of fiction. The other evening, glancing over the pages of one of these that is being extensively read, I came to the words, “If there be another world.” These books will fall into the hands of your children sooner or later. It rests with you to decide whether the taint shall have power to affect them, or whether it shall fall innocuous.

  Is it but a species of the worst kind of affectation, that induces this proclaimed disbelief? — or is it true atheism? I often wonder which. In most cases I believe it to be only the former. Guard, guard your children from every outlet of its approaches.

  The very fact that this life cannot satisfy the desires and aspirations of the spirit, earthly or heavenly, must in itself be a convincing proof that there is a different life to come; one higher and better. Docs anything ever satisfy us? Does realisation answer expectation; whether in fame, in love, in ambition, in wealth, in domestic ties? No, never. Something comes to mar them all. That which looked so fair and bright in anticipation, turns out — even if the hope be gained, and that is very rare — to be leavened with something that corrodes it. At the very best, though bliss of any kind be here realised, it flits speedily away. Time flies like a shadow. Man’s allotted years are but threescore and ten; and few of us can say at that age, looking back on the past, “My dearest hopes and dreams, in this thing or in that, were fulfilled unto me and became living realities.” Can this poor, imperfect life be the ending of all? Can the immortal soul, that nevers dies, have been created only for this? If so, what would become of those aspirations after a better, and holier, and loftier state than can be found below? — glimpses of which in the spirit are snatched by us all, though they are too fleeting to be retained or (almost) to be remembered. Were they sent to us for nought, think you? No. The soul will find its true and perfect life, when this unsatisfying existence shall be over.

  Can I say more than I have already said? Is it, or is it not, essential to train our children, so that they may not fail to gain the life after this life? Christ calls it the one thing needful; the treasure hid in a field; the pearl of great price. For which pearl, when found, the finder in his joy sells all that he has, and buys it. How inestimable must be this treasure! What can compare with the joy of the finder? To know that he possesseth it, and is saved, and will live for ever! — that he belongs to the Lord, to the great! AM; an inheritor of the New Jerusalem that shall come down out of Heaven!

  Oh, mothers! help your dear ones to find it! You can only do it when they are young. Delay it, and they may miss the way. You may make what you will of the impressionable mind of a child; it is yours to mould as you choose; fill it not with good things, and it will fill itself with bad ones. Has a foreshadowing ever come dimly over you of that last great day when we shall be all gathered before the Lord, to inherit Heaven or to be shut out from it? Will you be able to stand with your children and say, “Lord, of those that thou hast given me, I have not lost one?” Or will you cower there in piteous agony, seeing that they are lost? Try and realize what such an hour as that would be: your dearly-beloved children shut out for ever. The very thought of it even now, makes your heart ache with a desperate anguish.

  And yet, I know that you cannot now picture it with that vivid sense of responsibility that you may in later life, when death shall be approaching, and your eyes shall have opened to see the past as it was, with all its mistakes and omissions, its time wasted, its opportunities unused. Whatever that past may have been, it is gone; gone for ever. You cannot alter it now; you cannot re-live your life. Nothing remains of it but its results, and the consciousness of whether you did well by your children, or did not do it. Ah, what will all the glory and honour, and wealth and fame, and houses and lands of this world be to you then? You may have taught your children how to insure success in these; but if you have not taught them how to strive for that other Land, on you will lie the sting of remorse. For in that hour riches and grandeur and the comforts of this life will take to themselves wings and fly away, and you perceive exactly what they were worth. Life, looking back upon it, has been so short! It seems now to have passed so quickly as not to have mattered whether you were well or ill in it, happy or miserable. The one true life in which it will matter, for you must dwell in it for ever, is being entered upon.

  Oh, take your little child now that he is young, and do what you can towards the saving of his soul. No duty laid upon you is so imperative as this; no neglect is so irredeemable if you pass it by. You may bend the young twig as you will, but you cannot bend the grown tree: you may lead the baby-child to be what you please, but you cannot lead the man. Never let the ten minutes of daily instruction and admonition be omitted. Shut yourself up with your child in private,
and say what you wish to say: he is yours to teach in infancy, in childhood, in boyhood, in youth. Observe it always when practicable. Read to him, and then talk to him.

  But, whilst enlarging on pleasant things to him — on the Heavenly Fathers mercy, on the Saviour’s love, on the Holy Spirit that must guide him, on the ministering angels that must protect him, such as those which Jacob saw in his dream — opposite phases must not remain untouched upon. He must learn that the Great God, if offended, is not a God of mercy, but a God of anger. He must hear of that wicked one, Satan; the arch-enemy who goes about seeking whom he may devour, and who has doubtless his army of evil angels, ever seeking to tempt man to sin. Approach the subject very cautiously so long as the child is young, and lead him to dwell, rather, on the other and brighter side. But assure him of this much: that he can always defeat those evil tempters by the simple act of asking aid of God. God is stronger than Satan, and against Him the wicked one has no power.

  Impress upon his mind, so far as you can, the idea of Heaven; cause it to hold a place there. Make him long to see it; to inhabit it.

  Tell him of all its revealed beauties, its satisfying peace, its wondrous glories. Of the angels in white, with their golden harps; of the sweet flowers that never fade; of the music to delight the ear; of the precious stones of many colours; and of the healing trees which grow on either side the pure river of crystal. Show him what this world is worth at its best, and what he will find in the one which is to come. The music here is pleasant, but if a wrong string be touched it mars the harmony; the flowers are beautiful, but they are but gathered to wither; their perfume is sweet to the senses, but shortly it is gone; the sky is blue and bright, but even as we look, dark clouds overshadow it; the sparkling sea is grand, but it swallows up ships. But in that good land pleasure will have its full fruition. Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive what God hath prepared for them who shall abide in it.