The Conversion of Children
Oome worthy Christians are strangely sceptical in regard to the conversion of children; they admit the impressibility of childhood; they admit that early piety is beautiful; they read in their own Bible the promise, “those that seek me early shall find me;” and they read, too, of such examples of youthful religion as Samuel and King Josiah and the well-taught Timothy. But about their own children’s conversion they have grave doubts and misgivings.
Just as well might they doubt the ability of a child of ten years of age to love its mother, or to obey the commands of its father. A child trusts its parents implicitly. How does your little girl know that it is not rank poison that you are giving her when she is sick? She cannot analyze the medicine; yet she swallows it down from simple faith in your say-so that it is “good for her.”
If a child can love a parent and trust a parent and obey a parent, it can love and trust and obey God. These three mental acts are the very essence of religion. Bear in mind, too, that in every thought and act toward God the child may have the supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit. Also bear in mind that the centre of Christianity is Christ. Now, an ordinary child of ten or twelve years can appreciate Christ’s history, his beautiful deeds of power and mercy, the sweetness of his promises, and his death of self-sacrifice, just as well as a man of threescore. The mysteries of Christ’s incarnation I cannot understand any better than a child; nor need either of us do it. A child can love Jesus with all the ingenuous ardor of its young heart. Is not this the touchstone of vital Christianity?
Just as soon as your son and daughter are old enough to understand right from wrong, they are old enough to do right or wrong. Doing right is religion; doing wrong is sin. Sorrow for wrong-doing is contrition. Ceasing to do wrong, from right motive, is repentance. Asking Christ to forgive wrong is an act of faith. Did you never know a child to be capable of these exercises?
Why argue the possibility of childish piety, when innumerable cases of sincere, intelligent, well-founded godliness have been exhibited by the very young? One of the most beautiful examples of almost angelic piety I ever witnessed was in a sweet girl, who was transplanted to heaven at the age of nine years. Her talk with me in my boyhood impressed me more than my minister’s sermons. When a little sick lad was asked by his pastor, ‘’Would you like to get better?” he answered, “I would like the will of” God.” — “If you get better, would you live just as you did before?” — “Yes; if God did not give me his grace I certainly would.” Could an adult mind have any better conception of dependence upon God than this?
It may be said that “children’s minds are volatile and chanfjeable.” Are jrrown people never changeable? Do men and women of forty years never become backsliders? I had rather risk the volatility of childhood, than the temptations to self-seeking sharpness and worldliness that beset middle life. If childhood is credulous, manhood and old age are too sceptical. Better a heart that believes too much and too easily, than one that is too slow to believe and to move at all. Oh! be assured, ye parents and teachers, that there is no such soil in the world for religious truth and converting grace as the heart of a frank, susceptible, trustful child. From that soil grows the loftiest and sturdiest piety of after years.
The most important ten years of human life are from five to fifteen 3’ears of age. The vast majority of those who pass twenty irreligious are never converted at all. Dr. Spencer tell us that, out of 235 hopeful converts in his church, 138 were under twenty years of age, and only /our had passed their fiftieth year! I have been permitted, during my ministry, to receive over one thousand persons into the church, on confession of their faith; and not one dozen of these had outgrown their fiftieth year. I did, indeed, once baptize a veteran of eighty-five; but the case was so remarkable that it excited the talk and wonder of the town. Such late repentances are too much like what the blunt dying soldier called “flinging the fag-end of one’s life into the face of the Almighty.”
In judging of the genuineness of children’s conversions, we must remember that they are but children. Don’t expect a converted boy to be a pious man; he is yet only a boy. Like a boy, he loves to play, and ought to play. But if he is willing to leave his play to attend a prayer -meeting, why is not that as good a proof of his heartdevotion, as for a man to quit his work for the same purpose? The little girl who denies herself a doll or a dress, in order to give the money to a missionarybox, practises a Christian benevolence as pure as our noble merchant princes, when they bestow their thousands in munificent charity. A child that controls its temper, because God forbids anger, does as saintly a thing as Stephen did when he forgave his persecutors. Hypocrisy is one of the most heinous and hateful of sins: is there more of it under twenty years of age than over? I trow not. In estimating the evidence of childish religion, we must look for children’s graces, and make allowance, too, for childhood’s weaknesses. God’s grace does not make a boy a man: it simply makes him a better boy.
At what age should a child be admitted to the church? To this question we would answer, that every one should be admitted to Christ’s church as soon as they give good evidence of a Christian conduct. The church is for all who love the Lord Jesus, and who seek to serve him. The Bible does not make age a condition of salvation. Shall a truly converted child be kept away from Christ’s table until it has got over being a child? And what is the use of having a fold, “if the lambs are all to be kept out until they can stand the weather”?
In every age of life, piety is possible, is attractive, is indispensable to salvation. We rejoice to see the man of middle life, or the mother amid her cares, yielding to Jesus a heart that has long been enslaved by worldliness, or haunted by scepticisms. But still more do we rejoice to see the divine Redeemer take his place in a young hearty — a heart, like that new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, which received Christ’s wounded body, — a place “in which 110 other one has ever yet been laid:’