Your Child Is Immortal

That child must live for ever. Its existence is endless as the life of its Maker. There lies concealed in that frame, clasped to a mother's bosom, and so feeble that the evening breeze might seem sufficient to destroy it, a living spark which no created power can ever extinguish! Cities and empires shall rise and fall during coming centuries; but that infant of yours will survive them all! The world and its works shall be burnt up, and the elements melt with fervent heat; new systems in the starry heavens may be created and pass away; but your child will live amidst the changes and revolutions of endless ages, which will no more touch or destroy it than the wild hurricane can touch the rainbow that reposes in the sky, though it may rage around its lovely form. When eras that no arithmetic can number have marked the life of your child, an eternity will still be before it, in which it shall live, move, and have its being! What think you, parents, of having such a creature as this under your roof and under your charge,— and that creature your own child? Consider,—


Your child must live for ever in bliss or woe. It must stand before the judgment-seat of Christ. It must be for ever lost, or for ever saved. It must be with God and Christ, with the angels and saints, loving and beloved, a glorious and majestic being; or for ever wicked and unutterably miserable, with Satan and lost spirits! I am assuming, of course, that it here attains such an age as makes it fully responsible to God; for if it die in infancy, I believe it will be saved through Jesus Christ. But to know that your babe, though dead, actually lives somewhere with Jesus; or that, if living here, it is yet capable of becoming one of God's high and holy family in his home above for ever,—may well deepen within you a sense of its personal value! Now, whether your child—should it be spared some years on earth—shall live for ever in joy or sorrow, depends upon what it believes and does in this world. It is how it lives here, which must determine where and how it shall live hereafter. Is that not a solemn consideration for you? And is it not more solemn still, when yon remember, that you, more than any other in this world, shall, under God, fix your children's fate for ever? The reason is plain; inasmuch as their character for time, and therefore for eternity, is affected chiefly by the manner in which they are trained by you in their early years. By your words and life, by your example and your instruction, you are most assuredly every day making use of what is to them, for many a day, the greatest power on earth, to give their souls, when most easily impressed, that stamp which they will retain for ever. Have a care, then, how you train them up.--Anon