Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Proverbs 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
6. in the way he should go ] Lit. according to his way. The injunction contemplates not only the broad principles of education, physical, intellectual, moral, spiritual, which are the same for all, but their adaptation to each particular case, in a careful study of individual character and capacity, and with a thoughtful regard to future course of life: “ his way.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Train – Initiate, and so, educate.
The way he should go – Or, according to the tenor of his way, i. e., the path especially belonging to, especially fitted for, the individuals character. The proverb enjoins the closest possible study of each childs temperament and the adaptation of his way of life to that.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Pro 22:6
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
On the education of youth
A strict and virtuous education of youth is absolutely necessary to a mans attainment of that inestimable blessing, that unspeakable felicity, of being serviceable to his God, easy to himself and useful to others in the whole course of his following life. To the proof of this, lay down six propositions.
1. That in the present state of nature there is in every man a certain propensity to vices, or a corrupt principle more or less disposing him to evil, which principle is sometimes called the flesh, sometimes concupiscence, sometimes sensuality, and makes one part of that which we call original sin.
2. That the forementioned propensity of the sensual part, or principle, to vice, being left to itself, will certainly proceed to work, and to exert itself in action; and if not hindered and counteracted will continue to do so, till practice passes into custom and habit, and so by use and frequency comes to acquire a domineering strength in a mans conversation.
3. That all the disorders of the world, and the confusions that disturb persons, families, and whole societies or corporations, proceed from this natural propensity to vice in particular persons, which being thus heightened by habitual practice, runs forth into those several sorts of vice which corrupt and spoil the manners of men.
4. That when the corruption of mans manners by the habitual improvements of this vicious principle comes from personal to be general and universal, so as to diffuse and spread itself over a whole community, it naturally and directly tends to the ruin and subversion of the government where it so prevails.
5. That this ill principle is to be altered and corrected only by discipline, and the infusion of such principles into the rational and spiritual part of man as may powerfully sway his will and affections, by convincing his understanding that the practice of virtue is preferable to that of vice; and that there is a real happiness and honesty in the one, and a real misery, as well as a turpitude, in the other; there being no mending or working upon the sensual part, but by well-principling the intellectual.
6. This discipline and infusion of good principles into the mind, which only can and must work this great happy change upon a mans morals, by counter-working that other sensual and vicious principle, which would corrupt them, can never operate so kindly, so efficaciously, and by consequence, so successfully, as when applied to him in his minority, while his mind is ductile and tender, and so ready for any good impressions. For when he comes once to be in years, and his mind, having been prepossessed with ill-principles, and afterwards hardened with ill practices, grows callous, and scarce penetrable, his case will be then very different, and the success of such applications is very doubtful, if not desperate. It is necessary that the minds of youth should be formed and seasoned with a strict and virtuous and early and preventing education. On three sorts of persons this trust rests–
(1) Parents.
(2) Schoolmasters.
(3) The clergy. (R. South.)
The education of children
The careful, prudent, and religious education of children hath for the most part a very good influence upon the whole course of their lives.
I. Wherein doth the good education of children consist?
1. In the tender and careful nursing of them.
2. In bringing them to be baptized.
3. In a due care to inform and instruct them in the whole compass of their duty to God and to their neighbour.
4. In a prudent and diligent care to form their lives and manners to religion and virtue.
5. In giving them good example.
6. In wise restraints from that which is evil, by seasonable reproof and correction.
7. In bringing them to be publicly catechised.
8. In bringing them to be confirmed.
II. More particular directions for the management of this work. The young have to be trained in the exercise of the following graces and virtues: Obedience, modesty, diligence, sincerity, tenderness, pity, good government of their passions, and of their tongues, to speak truth and to hate lying; to piety and devotion towards God, sobriety and chastity with regard to themselves, and to justice and charity towards all men, Endeavour to discover the particular temper and disposition of children, that you may suit and apply yourself to it. Endeavour to plant those principles of religion and virtue which are most substantial and likely to have the best influence on the future government of their lives. Check and discourage in them the first beginnings of sin and vice: as soon as ever they appear pluck them up by the roots. Take great heed that the children be not habituated and accustomed to any evil course. Bring them, as soon as they are capable of it, to the public worship of God. Put them upon the exercise and practice of religion and virtue, in such instances as their understanding and age are capable of. Add constant and earnest prayer to God on behalf of your children.
III. Some of the more common miscarriages in the performance of this duty. These may be found in relation to instruction, example, and reproof. There often is too great rigour and severity; at other times too great laxity. It is always mischievous to punish while under the influence of passion.
IV. Show how good education comes to be of so great advantage. It gives religion and virtue the advantage of the first possession, and the further advantage of habit and custom.
V. Stir up those whose duty this is to discharge it with great care and conscience. Good education is the very best inheritance you can leave your children. In this way you promote your own comfort and happiness. The surest foundation of the public welfare and happiness is laid in the good education of children. Consider the great evils consequent on the neglect of this duty. (T. Tillotson, D.D.)
Training up children to the primary virtues
Habits of virtue are of the same nature with dexterity in the mechanical or other arts. Would we acquire this dexterity, we must exercise ourselves early and constantly whether in the virtues or the arts. It is necessary for us to train up children to virtue with all possible care from their earliest infancy, and continually to exercise them in it, if we would have them truly virtuous persons. To do this we should find out their temperament, and conduct ourselves accordingly: we should habituate them to act from principle and design; we should teach them to be attentive to the consequences of their actions; we should strive to make their duty their pleasure. Further rules are–
1. Inure them from their earliest infancy to obedience and submission.
2. Inspire them with a predominant love for truth, for sincerity and frankness.
3. Train them to diligence, to method, and to industry in their affairs.
4. Be very careful to bring them up to humility and modesty.
5. Endeavour to inspire them with a sincere affection and hearty good-will towards all mankind, without distinction of rank, of religion, of country, or of outward fortune.
6. Neglect not to train them to compassion and benevolence.
7. Train them to patience in sufferings, to fortitude and courage in misfortune, to a steady and intrepid behaviour in all situations. These qualities and virtues are indispensably necessary to us in our present state. We must learn first to practise them in trivial matters if we would do so afterwards in riper years and more important emergencies. (G. J. Zollikofer.)
Child-training
Introduction:
1. Mobility needed in subject of training; therefore man is born a child. Yet be aware, flexibility passes, tendency to solidify soon creeps in.
2. Parents here granted right of loving dogmatism: in the way they should go.
I. True training embraces care and system.
1. These should touch each part of child-nature: flesh and blood. Evolution of full manhood only reached thus. Bodies are fed and trained. Mystery is, the soul often neglected. No animal neglects its young as man does. Every home should be its own Sabbath-school.
2. Cant train without a line to go on–a faith that can be taught–a system. Trained child not found where fathers mind is dark or chaotic. You like your child to choose its faith when it can think for itself? No child is mentally or spiritually free from bias. Child has all to learn. Has no standard of selection. First trainer has greatest power, whether good or evil. Mark this: if you dont bias it for good a thousand tutors outside your home will bias it to its hurt.
II. Train child to decide moral questions by principle, not by feeling.
1. A child is composed of appetites and moral sense. These all glow. But appetites get two or three years start of moral sense. You must be swift in training, or you wont get moral sense to overtake appetite.
2. Every day of life offer times for moral decision. Think of George Eliots Arthur Donnithorne; sweet temper, weak moral sense, strong animal tastes; so a standing peril to himself and others.
3. The one grand deciding principle for all souls is: What does Christ love, that is the thing to be done. It is sure: it carries child to right issues. It is safe: it imperils nothing in its whole being. It is rapid: under it souls grow holy fast.
III. Train child to judge Christianity by best results. Much of training given unwittingly. Soul-suction always going on in a child. Five senses are five avenues to soul. Crowds of motley ideas go up them–each idea a teacher. In your home they hear your views of men and actions. Beware! if you condemn Christianity, because of its sullied specimens, you harm the child. Put religion in its highest light. For its sake ask: What are its finest results? Show them spiritual splendours. Show them John, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Newton, Hale, Wesley. Christian gallery not wanting in fine portraits. Show them Christ. Moral longing will awaken them; they will hunger and be filled (Mat 5:6). Conclusion:
1. All details come under these principles.
2. Thus you will train a godly seed. (British Weekly.)
On religious education
i. An exhortation to the discharge of an important duty. The wisdom and propriety of the exhortation are founded on certain qualities inherent in man.
1. Man is remarkably prone to imitation. In private families every action of the parent is imitated by the child. So it happens in the aggregate life of the nation. The cast of general manners depends upon the leaders of society.
2. Children in their infant years contend obstinately for the gratification of their own humour. The principle of self-will is not in cases to be reprehended. When it makes us resolute in spurning compliance with mean conditions, with base proposals, and wicked instigations, it is generous and manly, and should be cherished. But reasonable accommodation of our own inclinations and our own sentiments to the dispositions and opinions of others is absolutely necessary for the transacting of human concerns, and consequently for the existence of civil society. It should therefore be taught to children, because they are inexperienced; and enforced on young persons, because their passions are turbulent. The training of children in the way of subjection to discreet and moderate control is an act of judicious kindness in every parent.
3. When we are born we bring with us minds already furnished with methodical principles; but through the sole gift of God we are endowed with capacity either for the inventing or the learning of arts and sciences. The extent to which this capacity becomes advantageous depends in a great measure on the degree and manner of culture with which it is improved.
4. In the generality of men there is an active spirit which is impatient of rest, and which will find itself employment. Children therefore need training in the proper methods of spending energy in labour and in recreation.
5. There is in man a most unhappy tendency to do evil. Man finds it more easy to indulge his appetites than to raise his soul to higher objects. The best friend of the child is he who begins with the first dawn of understanding to impress on the mind of his child that there is a God everywhere present in power and knowledge, and another state of existence, where goodness shall terminate in happiness, but vice be productive of misery.
II. The effect which will ensue from early care employed in education. The mental faculties most distinguishable in our first years are memory and imagination. If the proper effects of right instruction are not so visible as might be wished at every period of our age, let no one hastily conclude that therefore the elements of education are totally obliterated. Good principle may for some years lie dormant in the mind. Unless in cases of extreme depravity, the good principle, like the good seed, will at last find its way to shoot up, and give a tenfold measure of increase after its own kind. The training, then, of children in the way they should go is from the nature of man indispensably necessary. (G. J. Huntingford, D.D.)
Of the duty which parents owe to their children
I. The heinous nature and fatal consequences of the neglect of parental duty.
1. As it appears in the sight of God.
2. As it affects the children.
3. As it affects parents themselves.
II. How parents should educate their children.
1. Train your children to revere you.
2. Train them to implicit submission to your authority. Insubordination in youth is the certain inlet to all that is disorderly in riper years.
3. In order to train your children to moderation in pleasure, lead them, as early as possible, to mark the imposture of passion, and guard them from all intimacy with the loose and the dissipated, and interdict them of all loose and licentious reading.
4. Train them to industry and frugality. Unremitting application and assiduity are the only means by which pre-eminence among men can be attained.
5. Train your children to virtue and candour, and justice and humanity.
6. Train your children to piety. True views of the benignity of the Ruler of nature will impress their susceptible breast, with the feelings of genuine piety, and lead them to love the Lord their God with all their heart and strength and mind. (W. Thorburn.)
The formation of the minds of children
1. Repress not their curiosity or their inquisitiveness. It is in itself no fault. It is rather a strong impulse and an excellent means to become intelligent and wise.
2. Accustom your children or your pupils to the use of their senses; teach them to apprehend justly.
3. Beware of giving them false or not sufficiently precise ideas of any matter, though of never so trifling import.
4. Set them to learn nothing which, either on account of their tender age or from the want of other kinds of knowledge necessary to that purpose, they cannot comprehend. Measure not their capacities by yours.
5. Endeavour not only to increase and extend their knowledge, but likewise to render it solid and sure. It is far better for them to know a few things thoroughly than to have only a superficial acquaintance with many.
6. Guard them from being hasty in forming conclusions, and avail yourself of all opportunities for leading them, by observations, to circumspection and precision in their inferences and judgments. (G. J. Zollikofer.)
The formation of the hearts of children
To form the hearts of children means to direct their appetites and affections to the worthiest objects, to inspire them with a predominant love for all that is true and right and proper, and thereby to render the performance of their duty easy and pleasant to them.
1. Study to find out their temperament, and conduct yourself according to it. The temperament is, as it were, the soil that is to be cultivated, and the diversity of this soil is not so great but it may soon be discovered. More or less vivacity and quickness of apprehension, more or less sensibility to good and evil, to pleasure and pain, more or less vehemence in the affections, more or less disposition to rest or to activity–in these consist the principal diversity in what may be called the temperament of children. All these various temperaments may equally lead either to the virtues or to the vices.
2. Accustom them to act from principle and design, and not by blind impulse or mere self-will.
3. But be not satisfied with teaching them to act from reason, as rational creatures; but teach them to act upon the noblest principles, and in pure and beneficent views. Beware of setting only their ambition in motion, and of inciting them to application and duty from no other motive than the idea of the judgment that others pass on them.
4. Teach them, further, to attend to the consequences of their actions or of their behaviour. Teach them duly to prize that inward peace, the satisfaction, the cheerfulness of mind, the health and strength of body, and the other advantages which they have derived from honest and proper conduct.
5. Strive to make their duty a pleasure to them.
6. For facilitating all this to them, for teaching them to act upon principle, to act from the best motives, and to be attentive to the consequences of their actions, you should accustom them betimes to self-examination, which is the most excellent means for constantly becoming more wise and virtuous.
7. Teach them, in like manner, to reap benefit from the conduct of other persons.
8. Finally, to this end call history likewise to your aid. (G. J. Zollikofer.)
Advantages of good training
They who are well educated generally behave well for the following reasons:
1. Early impressions are deep.
2. Habit is strong.
3. Early piety is acceptable to God. The first love of an innocent heart is sacrifice of a sweet savour. (S. Charters.)
Religious training
A child may be said to be taught when in words we clearly convey to his mind any truth or enjoin upon his conscience any precept. He is trained when we ourselves so pass before him, in practical illustration of the truth and precept, that he is drawn along after us in the same way. The principle applies peculiarly to moral and religious instruction. Suppose you wish to instruct a child in benevolence or charity. You tell him what it inclines one to do for the needy and suffering; you dilate upon the beautiful sentiments which the exercise of it incites in ones own breast; you refer to distinguished examples of it that have blessed the world. All this is teaching. But now, again, you take your child by the hand, and lead him with you into some abode of poverty and want; you let him see with you the necessitous situation of the inmates of that cold and ill-provided dwelling; he marks the yearning of your heart towards them, and his heart swells in sympathy; the satisfaction that exhilarates your soul he shares as you freely give the needed aid; he witnesses the whole reciprocal action of a living bounty on your part and a returning gratitude on the spot. And this is training. One such scene will avail more than many lectures to make your child charitable. Or suppose, again, you would instruct your child in devotion, prayer to God. But to what purpose if the child is not moreover trained to pray?–to what purpose if the very house he lives in is a prayerless house? Would you instruct your child in that cardinal excellence of truth? You insist often, in words, on its importance. But, more than this, train it to do so. You rebuke deception. It is well. But practise not in any way what you rebuke. Would we instruct our children to be kind and gentle? How? by a command? Not so only, but more powerfully by the affectionate and pleasant bearing and tone of our own speech and person. Parents and friends often wonder that, after all the pains taken with children, the frequent counsels and admonitions, they should yet afterwards go astray. But was the child who has disappointed you trained as well as taught? Did you uniformly go before to beckon and lead him after in the way you first pointed out? But in the majority of cases the rule will hold good: your child will keep on as he has been trained. The soldier in his age might as soon forget the drill of his early discipline, or the sailor the first calculations by which, under the rolling planets, he made his way over the uncertain waves, as your child the practical guidance to which you have actually used him through a series of years. He will keep on, if you have been his leader and forerunner, when your feet stumble on the dark mountains, and will run the race after very much as you have run it before. The chief significance of the grave where you lie down will be to fix the direction in which you trained and the point at which you left your child. Your bark will disappear as it sails on over the misty horizon; but his bark shall hold the same course. Whither, whither shall it be? (C. A. Bartol.)
The education of the young
I. An interesting object. A child.
1. Its personal powers (Job 32:8), the faculties of the mind.
2. Its social importance.
3. Its possible elevation.
4. Its total depravity. Socrates confessed of himself that his natural inclinations were exceedingly bad, but by philosophy he overruled them.
5. Its immortal duration.
II. An important duty. Train up.
1. Let him be taught useful learning.
2. Let him be instructed in religious knowledge.
3. Let him be impressed by a consistent example.
4. Let him be guided into proper habits.
5. Let him be sanctified by earnest prayer.
III. An encouraging prospect.
1. From the Divine appointment (Deu 4:10; Deu 31:13; Eph 6:4).
2. From the Divine procedure. (Studies for the Pulpit.)
The religious instruction of the young
1. See to it that we present the Divine character in a manner calculated to encourage young hearts.
2. Distinguish between the way in which death affects the body and the way in which it affects the spirit.
3. Make it clear that the religion of Christ is in harmony with all innocent recreation and enjoyment.
4. Do all in our power to interest the young in the services of the sanctuary.
5. See that you offer to the young the truth which God has revealed to you, and of which you have felt the power.
6. Avoid all treatment of the young that is calculated to dispirit and discourage. Be careful not to exact too much from them.
7. Be varied in your teaching, and do not be depressed if the attainment of your object is delayed. (S. D. Hillman.)
The necessity of a wise and wholesome discipline
1. As soon as children are capable of reflection endeavour to make them acquainted with some of the leading truths of the gospel.
2. Explain the duties of practical religion as well as the articles of belief.
3. Be careful to set before your children an example worthy of imitation, for instructions and exhortations will be invalidated by inconsistency.
4. Discipline, reproof, and correction are necessary in the family as well as in the Church and State.
5. Let correction and reproof be accompanied with fervent and importunate prayer.
6. Keep a watchful eye over them to see what may be the fruit of your labour. To rightly perform parental duties we must begin betimes; secure the affection of the children; keep them out of the way of temptation; and instruct them with gentleness. (B. Beddome.)
Godly training
The various branches of godly training may be thus enumerated:
1. Instruction in right principles–the principles of Gods Word.
2. The inculcation of right practice–the practice of Gods will.
3. Salutary admonition and restraint, and correction.
4. The careful avoidance of exposure to evil company and evil example.
5. The exhibition before them of a good example in ourselves.
6. Constant, believing, and earnest prayer. (R. Wardlaw, D.D.)
Education
I. Whom should we educate? The material. A child. The world teems with analogies both real and obvious, whereby the moralist may enforce the duty of educating in the comparatively pliable period of youth.
II. The process of education. Train up. Note the distinction between teaching and training. There may be teaching without training. Moral training according to a Divine standard, with the view of moulding the human being while yet young and tender into right principles and habits of action, is the only education worthy of the name. The oldest training-school is the best–the school at home; sisters and brothers are the best class-fellows, and parents the best masters. But formidable obstacles, both intrinsic and extrinsic, prevent or impede parental training.
III. The aim and end of education. In the way he should go. Wisdom in choosing the proper time, and skill in adopting the best method, would be of no avail if false principles were thereby instilled into the mind and evil habits ingrafted on the life. If we do not train the children in truth and righteousness it would be better that we should not train them at all. (W. Arnot, D.D.)
The training of children
There are many qualifications necessary for carrying out this important duty.
I. Sanctified love. This is not mere instinctive fondness which is common to man and animals, but–
1. A perception of the true beauty of childhood.
2. A realisation of the purity of childhood.
3. A consciousness of the guileless simplicity of childhood.
II. Felt responsibilty.
1. Children are not our own.
2. Children are the future inhabitants of the world. Hence the world will be, to a certain extent, what we make the children.
3. Children have immortal souls.
III. Indirect influence. To obtain this we must–
1. Subdue our own passion. No passionate parent can possibly influence his child for good.
2. Set a godly example.
3. Cultivate confidence and win affection.
IV. Patient waiting and earnest prayer. (Homilist.)
Childhood innocence a dream
Here is an assertion, but is not experience frequently at variance with it? The statement of the text is unqualified. Adherence to the right path is given as the invariable result of having been trained up in the right path. Can this be established by facts? With what restrictions are the words of the wise man to be understood? It is implied in the text that there is no tendency in a child to walk in the right way, and if we leave him to himself he will be sure to walk in the wrong. Almost from the moment of the childs birth can be discovered in the infant the elements of the proud, revengeful, self-willed man. There is hereditary guilt where there cannot be absolute. The innocency of childhood is a dream and delusion. In dealing with children we have not to deal with unoccupied soil, but soil already impregnated with every seed of moral evil. In what manner may the precept of the text be best obeyed? The great secret of training lies in regarding the child as immortal. (H. Melvill, B.D.)
Teach the youngest
Dr. Chalmers, in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Morton, says: You cannot begin too early. God should be spoken of to the very youngest, and the name of Jesus Christ familiarised to them; and every association of reverence and love that the tone and style of the parents can attach to the business of religion should be established in them. Their consciences are wonderfully soon at work.
Childhood injured
Childhood is like a mirror catching and reflecting images all around it. Remember that an impious thought uttered by a parents lip may operate upon a young heart like a careless spray of water thrown upon polished steel, staining it with rust which no after-scouring can efface.
Teaching and training
It is a very important thing to get hold of the distinction between teaching and training, or, as the margin reads it, catechising. Train up a child, not merely lead a child. There is a New Testament text which brings out the same thoughts where parents are taught to bring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Observe the distinction between nurture and admonition. Admonition means teaching, and nurture means training–two very remote things. Eli was a capital admonisher, but no trainer. Eli admonished his sons very often. If mere talking would have answered, he would have done well. He should have been like Abraham, who commanded his house after him. Do you think you could ever make good marksmen by giving lectures on the science of projectiles? Would that make men good shots? If you are to be good shots you must handle the rifle and actually shoot. (S. Coley.)
The training of a child
Human society is now hard enough, and needs more sympathy in it than one always sees; but what it would become if the hearts of men were not kept in some degree of softness and tenderness by the affections which are raised and developed by family life it is difficult fully to conceive. This text corrects the terrible and mischievous misconception that a childs future is altogether a thing of chance. It can be controlled. All life can be trained. It can be made to take a course different from that which it otherwise would take. The training is within certain limits. Children will be trained in spite of us. How they are trained depends largely on us. We rely on this same principle of training in every other relation which the child sustains. The laws of religious life are not capricious and incalculable laws. Duty has to be learned like a business, or a science, or a profession. The training of a child consists in
1. Teaching.
2. Example.
3. Discipline.
4. Prayer.
Show me a child well instructed in the truths of the gospel, living day by day in the presence of consistent and winning examples, and surrounded with prayers, and I do not say that such an one may not through a strange self-will break his way through all these blessed influences and become a wreck and a castaway, but it will be a wonder if he comes to such a melancholy end, and it is easier to believe that in such a case the training has been faulty than that there has been a failure in the Divine promise which connects the spring and the autumn. (Enoch Mellor, D.D.)
The training of children
The whole human family has descended from the loins of Adam, and is necessarily tainted with his impurity. By one mans disobedience many were made sinners. We are all under the power of sin. This tendency to sin is often exhibited in the child long before the dawn of consciousness. It is constitutionally a sinner, and the uninterrupted development of its nature will necessarily be a growth in sin.
I. The text does not mean that this sinful nature is to be trained in the hope of producing blessed results, but something higher and better is to be supplied from without. Life and grace and power have been brought into the service of humanity in the person of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and are to be made over to us by the operation of the Holy Ghost. But this Divine life is here only in germ, and must be developed in the midst of certain conditions, and here is a duty that God requires at the hands of parents. I know Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him, and that they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He had spoken of him. Here it is expressly stated that Abraham was to do his part in order that the Lord might verify to him the blessings guaranteed in the covenant.
II. This training should begin at the very dawn of the childs existence. When we are told to train up a child in the way that he should go, it is meant that we should do this; not let it first grow up in sin and then try to reclaim it afterward by extraordinary effort. To do that is to give the world, the flesh, and the devil all the advantage. The child will not grow up a Christian without the influence and teaching of the parent. The receptive faculties of the child must be trained and sustained, and then the Holy Ghost will sanctify the life and make it fruitful in holiness. During its earliest life the child absorbs impressions and is completely under parental influence and direction. Parents are also invested with authority over the child, and it will need discipline, but this must be exercised in love. For the lack of this spirit corrections administered are often of no avail Correction administered in a wrong spirit will do harm and not good. It must be evident, therefore, that properly to train our children we must not only teach them Christian doctrine, but we must live the life of a Christian.
III. If a child is thus nurtured and trained in the Divine life we need not suppose that a technical experience or sudden transition is necessary to constitute it a Christian. The neglect of parental training cannot be made up in any other way. There is no danger of claiming too much for our holy religion. The whole being of man is to be sanctified by it. The chief end of our existence is to glorify God. How often it is said of a man who dies owning no property that he left nothing to his family! But every child is an heir, and his inheritance is indefeasible. First of all are his memories of his parents and his home. The man who has no property to devise should not be unhappy. I give and bequeath to my children a good name, a Christian example, and a faithful training. Is not that a good start for a last will? These are legacies over which no heirs quarrel and that require no probate outside of the sanctuary of the heart. (E. R. Esohbech, D.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. Train up a child in the way he should go] The Hebrew of this clause is curious: chanoch lannaar al pi darco, “Initiate the child at the opening (the mouth) of his path.” When he comes to the opening of the way of life, being able to walk alone, and to choose; stop at this entrance, and begin a series of instructions, how he is to conduct himself in every step he takes. Show him the duties, the dangers, and the blessings of the path; give him directions how to perform the duties, how to escape the dangers, and how to secure the blessings, which all lie before him. Fix these on his mind by daily inculcation, till their impression is become indelible; then lead him to practice by slow and almost imperceptible degrees, till each indelible impression becomes a strongly radicated habit. Beg incessantly the blessing of God on all this teaching and discipline; and then you have obeyed the injunction of the wisest of men. Nor is there any likelihood that such impressions shall ever be effaced, or that such habits shall ever be destroyed.
chanac, which we translate train up or initiate, signifies also dedicate; and is often used for the consecrating any thing, house, or person, to the service of God. Dedicate, therefore, in the first instance, your child to God; and nurse, teach, and discipline him as God’s child, whom he has intrusted to your care. These things observed, and illustrated by your own conduct, the child (you have God’s word for it) will never depart from the path of life. Coverdale translates the passage thus: “Yf thou teachest a childe what waye he shoulde go, he shall not leave it when he is olde.” Coverdale’s Bible, for generally giving the true sense of a passage, and in elegant language for the time, has no equal in any of the translations which have followed since. HORACE’S maxim is nearly like that of Solomon: –
Fingit equum tenera docilem cervice magister
Ire viam, quam monstrat eques; venaticus, ex quo
Tempore cervinam pellem latravit in aula,
Militat in sylvis catulus. Nunc adbibe puro
Pectore verba, puer; nunc te melioribus offer.
Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem
Testa diu. HOR. EP. lib. i., ep. 2, ver. 64.
“The docile colt is form’d with gentle skill
To move obedient to his rider’s will.
In the loud hall the hound is taught to bay
The buckskin trail’d, then challenges his prey
Through the wild woods. Thus, in your hour of youth
From pure instruction quaff the words of truth:
The odours of the wine that first shall stain
The virgin vessel, it shall long retain.”
FRANCIS.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Train up, or, initiate or instruct, a child in the way he should go, Heb. in or according to his way, i.e. either,
1. According to his capacity. Or rather,
2. In that course or manner of life which thou wouldst have him choose and follow. Or, as one learned man renders it, in the beginning of his way, i.e. in his tender years, as soon as he is capable of instruction. Heb. in the mouth, &c. The mouth is oft put for the beginning or entrance of any place, as Gen 29:2; Jos 10:18; Pro 8:3; Dan 6:17. Will not depart from it, to wit, not easily and ordinarily. The impressions made in childish years will remain, as hath been observed by all sorts of learned writers. But this, as many proverbs of like nature, are not to be understood as if they were universally and necessarily true, which experience confutes, but because it is so for the most part, except some extraordinary cause hinder it.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6. Traininitiate, or earlyinstruct.
the wayliterally, “hisway,” that selected for him in which he should go; for earlytraining secures habitual walking in it.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Train up a child in the way he should go,…. As Abraham trained up his children, and those born in his house, in the way of the Lord, in the paths of justice and judgment; which are the ways in which they should go, and which will be to their profit and advantage; see
Ge 14:14; and which is the duty of parents and masters in all ages, and under the present Gospel dispensation, even to bring such who are under their care in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, Eph 6:4; by praying with them and for them, by bringing them under the means of grace, the ministry of the word, by instructing them in the principles of religion, teaching them their duty to God and man, and setting them good examples of a holy life and conversation; and this is to be done according to their capacity, and as they are able to understand and receive the instructions given them: “according to the mouth of his way” s, as it may be literally rendered; as soon as he is able to speak or go, even from his infancy; or as children are fed by little bits, or a little at a time, as their mouths can receive it;
and when he is old he will not depart from it; not easily, nor ordinarily; there are exceptions to this observation; but generally, where there is a good education, the impressions of it do not easily wear off, nor do men ordinarily forsake a good way they have been brought up in t; and, however, when, being come to years of maturity and understanding, their hearts are seasoned with the grace of God, they are then enabled to put that in practice which before they had only in theory, and so continue in the paths of truth and holiness.
s “super os viae suae”, Montanus; “ad os viae ejus”, Schultens. t “Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem testa diu”, Horat. l. 1. Ep. 2. v. 69.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
6 Give to the child instruction conformably to His way;
So he will not, when he becomes old, depart from it.
The first instruction is meant which, communicated to the child, should be , after the measure (Gen 43:7 = post-bibl. and ) of his way, i.e., not: of his calling, which he must by and by enter upon (Bertheau, Zckler), which of itself cannot mean; also not: of the way which he must keep in during life ( Kidduschin 30a); nor: of his individual nature (Elster); but: of the nature of the child as such, for is the child’s way, as e.g., derek col – haarets , Gen 19:31, the general custom of the land; derek Mitsrayim , Isa 10:24, the way (the manner of acting) of the Egyptians. The instruction of youth, the education of youth, ought to be conformed to the nature of youth; the matter of instruction, the manner of instruction, ought to regulate itself according to the stage of life, and its peculiarities; the method ought to be arranged according to the degree of development which the mental and bodily life of the youth has arrived at. The verb is a denominative like , Pro 22:4; it signifies to affect the taste, (= ), in the Arab. to put date syrup into the mouth of the suckling; so that we may compare with it the saying of Horace, Ep. i. 2, 69: Quo semel est imbuta recens servabit odorem Testa diu . In the post-bibl. Heb. denotes that which in the language of the Church is called catechizatio ; ( ) is the usual title of the catechisms. It is the fundamental and first requisite of all educational instruction which the proverb formulates, a suitable motto for the lesson-books of pedagogues and catechists. [from it] refers to that training of youth, in conformity with his nature, which becomes a second nature, that which is imprinted, inbred, becomes accustomed. Pro 22:6 is wanting in the lxx; where it exists in MSS of the lxx, it is supplied from Theodotion; the Complut. translates independently from the Heb. text.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Here is, 1. A great duty enjoined, particularly to those that are the parents and instructors of children, in order to the propagating of wisdom, that it may not die with them: Train up children in that age of vanity, to keep them from the sins and snares of it, in that learning age, to prepare them for what they are designed for. Catechise them; initiate them; keep them under discipline. Train them as soldiers, who are taught to handle their arms, keep rank, and observe the word of command. Train them up, not in the way they would go (the bias of their corrupt hearts would draw them aside), but in the way they should go, the way in which, if you love them, you would have them go. Train up a child according as he is capable (as some take it), with a gentle hand, as nurses feed children, little and often, Deut. vi. 7. 2. A good reason for it, taken from the great advantage of this care and pains with children: When they grow up, when they grow old, it is to be hoped, they will not depart from it. Good impressions made upon them then will abide upon them all their days. Ordinarily the vessel retains the savour with which it was first seasoned. Many indeed have departed from the good way in which they were trained up; Solomon himself did so. But early training may be a means of their recovering themselves, as it is supposed Solomon did. At least the parents will have the comfort of having done their duty and used the means.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Mandate For Child Training
Verse 6 commands the parent to train the child in the way he should go, with the promise that he will not depart from such when he is old. Both command and promise are in accord with Deu 6:6-7; Eph 6:4; 2Ti 3:15.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
6. Train up a child, etc. A very literal rendering of these familiar words would perhaps be: Make it narrow for the boy on the mouth of his way. It contains the idea of the old Hebrews in respect to education, (see note on Pro 1:3,) restraint, control, repression. Let there be restraint to the boy, or youth, as to his evil tendencies. “Hedge him in,” as Miller reads; restrain from the wrong way and constrain to the good. The “mouth of the way” would naturally be understood of the beginning of it. But the phrase has a conventional sense, meaning, according to, or according to the measure of. Hence the passage would read: Train a youth according to his way. The question now arises whether , ( darko,) his way, means the way he should go, or something else. We do not find any clear example of this meaning of the word; nevertheless, we are loth to surrender the old, familiar sense. Gesenius, and after him Stuart and others, interpret it of the bent of the mind, genius, inclination, or disposition for some particular occupation or calling. Stuart observes, “As darko can mean only the way of the child, the moral couched under the phrase. ‘he should go,’ finds in reality no proper place, although the sentiment itself is excellent and agreeable to the tenor of Scripture. An interpreter’s business is rather to inquire what is said than to conjecture, however ingeniously and piously, what ought to be said.” This is very true, but those who interpret the words in this way are also obliged to conjecture as to the meaning of darko, for it is not perfectly evident that it means the bent, inclination, or temperament of the child. It is possible, after all, that “his way” simply means the way in which he is to go; the mode, manner, or sphere of life to which he is destined by parents or by circumstances. If he inherit a throne, educate him for it; if he is destined to this or that profession or occupation, give him the training that he needs for it. And a step further: as every wise and pious parent desires and wills his child to lead a virtuous and pious life, let such parent carefully educate him accordingly. For according to his education will be his future life.
“ ‘ Tis education forms the common mind:
Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.”
When he is old This expression does not signify old age; but simply mature age, or, as we say, when he becomes of age. The maxim is based on the well known force of habit. The statement is that of a general truth, and, of course, admits of exceptions. On the old interpretation we have met with no better note on this proverb than that of Dr. A. Clarke. The Geneva Bible reads the first clause thus: “Teache a childe the trade of his way.” The marginal note is: “Bring him vp vertuously, and he shal so continue.” The Douay, following the Vulgate, has this: “It is a proverb: a young man according to his way, even when he is old he will not depart from it.” The Septuagint omits the verse entirely.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
v. 6. Train up a child in the way he should go,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Pro 22:6. Train up a child Initiate, instruct, catechise; lay down the first rudiments. Houbigant. Horace says remarkably, (considering him as under the Heathen dispensation,)
Nunc adbibe puro, &c. Ephesians 2 lib. 1: ad fin.
Now pliantly inure Your mind to virtue, while your heart is pure; Now suck in wisdom; for the vessel well With liquor season’d long retains the smell. FRANCIS.
See Bishop Tillotson’s and Dr. Doddridge’s Sermons on the text.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Pro 22:6 Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Ver. 6. Train up a child in the way he should go. ] Or, According to his measure and capacity, dropping good things by degrees into his narrow mouthed vessel, and whetting the same upon his memory by often repeating, as the knife by oft going over the whetstone (it is Moses’s comparison) a becomes keen and useful. This is the way to make them expert and exact, and to secure them from Satan, for we are not ignorant of his wiles. It is reported of the harts of Scythia, that they teach their young ones to leap from bank to bank, from rock to rock, from one turf to another, by leaping before them, which otherwise they would never practise, by which means, when they are hunted, no beast can ever take them. So if men exercise their children unto godliness while they are young, Satan, that mighty hunter, shall never have them for his prey. They will not be young saints, old devils, as the profane proverb hath it; but young saints, old angels. Now, as all children should be carefully catechised and well principled, so those Timothies especially that are designed to the work of the ministry. Quintilian’s orator must, from two or three years old, be inured and accustomed to the best and purest words, very well pronounced unto him by his nurses, parents, handmaids, as soon as ever he begins to babble. Quanto id in theologo futuro expetendum, curandumque magis? b How much more, saith a learned man, should this be done by one that is to be a divine?
a Shanan and shanah ; repetere sicut in acuendo. Deu 6:6
b Amama in Attib.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Train up = Hedge in: i.e. straiten him in, as cattle are guided.
in the way he should go = concerning his way. Hebrew at the mouth of his way: “mouth” being put by Figure of speech Metonymy (of Adjunct), App-6, for the opening or beginning of his way. C H. Spurgeon applied it to “the way you wish you had gone yourself”!
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Pro 22:6
Pro 22:6
“Train up a child in the way he should go, And even when he is old he will not depart from it.”
This identifies the proper instruction and discipline of one’s children as, “A religious duty. It should also be imposed as a legal obligation upon that vast army of godless, reprobate men who have fathered children, deserted their mothers, and avoided providing support.
Pro 22:6. A commandment with a promise. The commandment: train up a child in the way he should go; the promise: even when he is old he will not depart from it. Such training requires many things: knowledge, wisdom, time, patience, determination and love. There are many failures in child-rearing because of lacking one or several of the above requirements. Child-training is something that is easy to neglect or try shortcuts with, but what a shame when the future of ones entire posterity is at stake! What is really more important? Eph 6:4 commands this type of training. Timothy had been taught the Scriptures from a child (2Ti 3:15); as a result the great faith that had dwelt in his mother and grandmother was in him also (2Ti 1:5). No wonder that as a young man he was well reported of by his home congregation (Lystra) and by other Christians in the area (Act 16:1-2). Other passages on child rearing: Pro 1:8; Pro 13:1; Pro 19:18; Pro 22:15; Pro 23:13-14; Pro 29:15; Pro 29:17.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
train up a child
See, Eph 6:4; 2Ti 3:15.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
The Training of Children
Train up a child in the way he should go,
And even when he is old he will not depart from it.Pro 22:6
The text may have originated with Solomon. If so, it contains the judgment of the most observant and sagacious of men. More probably it was a proverb in Israel, and therefore expresses the general judgment of the race which has trained its children more admirably than any other which has yet appeared on earth.
It is the Scripture expression of the principle on which all education rests, that a childs training can decide what his afterlife is to be. Without this faith there could be no thought of anything like education; when this faith is elevated to a trust in God and His promises, it grows into the assurance that a parents labour will not be in vain in the Lord.
I
The Parents
The Lord hath given the father honour over the children, and hath confirmed the authority of the mother over the sons, says Ecclesiasticus. It is a rare opportunity which is given to parents. No sphere of influence which they may acquire can be like it; other spheres may be wider, but they can never be so intense or so decisive.
1. To govern their children, parents must first be able to govern themselves. A large part of parental discipline must consist in rewards and punishments. Gods government is full of them. Every act of obedience to His law is rewarded; every act to disobedience is punished. But the Divine punishments are administered without a tinge of passion. When parents punish children, it is often only bad temper at work. A child by his fretful ways makes the house a purgatory until his mothers patience is exhausted. Then she boxes his ears, and so makes him realize, not that she can govern him, but that she cannot govern herself.
The way to train the child is to train yourself. What you are, he will be. If your hands are morally dirty, his life will be dirtied by the home handling he gets. If he is to obey his mother he must breathe in a spirit of obedience from his mother. Your child will never obey more than you do. The spirit of disobedience in your heart to God, of failure to obey, of preferring your own way to Gods, will be breathed in by your child as surely as he breathes the air into his lungs. A spirit of quiet confidence in God, in the practical things that pinch and push, will breathe itself into the child. A poised spirit, a keen mind, a thoughtful tongue, a cheery hopefulness, an earnest purpose, in mother and father will be taken into the childs being with every breath. And the reverse is just as true. Every child is an accurate bit of French-plate faithfully showing the likeness of mother and father and home. We must be in heart what we would have the child be in life.1 [Note: S D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 253.]
2. A successful parent will be one who makes the training of the children a constant and religious study. It is the last subject in the world to be left to haphazard. From the first a clear aim must be kept in view. Is my great object that this boy shall be a true, a noble, a God-fearing man, serving his day and generation in the way God shall appoint? That is the question which the parent puts to himself.
Among the Bishops obiter dicta on education is the following:The old heathens had very right notions about the way in which a child ought to be trained up. They had great belief in a pure domestic education. One of them said, Let nothing unclean ever enter into the house where a little child is, no drunken man, no quarrelling father or mother, no bad language, no careless, slovenly habits; let nothing of the sort be seen in the house where dwells the little child. A Roman poet has said, The greatest possible reverence is due to a child. Some parents are wonderfully careless about what sort of things they say before their children. They seem to forget that the little children are listening, and that their characters are being formed by ten thousand insensible influences that surround them day by day.1 [Note: J. W. Diggle, The Lancashire Life of Bishop Fraser, 231.]
3. Parents must live near to God if they are to make God real to their children. A mother must hold very real converse with her Lord if His reality is to become obvious to her little ones. As a child, says one, I have had a feeling that God and Jesus were such particular friends of mammas, and were honoured more than words could tell. If such an impression is to be created, depend upon it God and Jesus must be particular friends of ours. No talk, however pious, can create that impression unless the hallowed friendship actually exists.
Mrs. Haldane [the mother of James and Robert Haldane, who did so much for evangelical religion in Scotland at the beginning of the nineteenth century] belonged to a family in which there had been much true religion. She lived, said her eldest son, very near to God, and much grace was given to her. When left a widow, it became her chief concern to bring up her children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. From their infancy she laboured to instil into their minds a sense of the importance of eternity, particularly impressing upon them the necessity of prayer, and teaching them to commit to memory and understand psalms, portions of the Shorter Catechism, and of Scripture. In a memorandum found among his papers, her youngest son James says: My mother died when I was very young, I believe under six, yet I am convinced that the early impression made on my mind by her care was never entirely effaced; and to this, as an eminent means in the hand of God, I impute any serious thoughts which, in the midst of my folly would sometimes intrude upon my mind, as well as that still small voice of conscience which afterwards led me to see that all below was vanity without an interest in that inheritance which can never fade away. He adds: I mention this more particularly because it may lead Christian parents to sow in hope the seed of Divine truth in the minds of their children, and may prevent their considering their efforts unavailing even where the things which they have taught seem to have been uttered in vain. No means of grace is, I apprehend, more, perhaps none is so much, countenanced of God as early religious instruction.2 [Note: The Lives of Robert and James Alexander Haldane, 11.]
4. Without love in the home, all the parents efforts will fail. Love is the only atmosphere in which the spirits of little children can grow. Without it the wisest precepts only choke, and the best-prepared knowledge proves innutritious. It must be a large love, a wise love, an inclusive love, such as God alone can shed abroad in the heart. Love of that kind is very frequently found in huts where poor men lie, and consequently the children issuing out of them have been better trained than those whose parents have handed them over to loveless tutors or underlings.
Perhaps there is no criterion by which to estimate a Christians life and influence so just, so simple, so ungainsayable, as that of the fruits of his faith and of his works in his own family. It is a quality of virtue, as truly as it is of sin, to reproduce itself! And there is no soil so favourable for the manifestation of a mans graces as that of his home. He is master of the situation. His sway is almost unlimited. He can plant what he will, and very largely destroy what displeases him. To leave the best soil to itself is sufficient to ensure an abundant crop of weeds. But of what use is the gardener unless he uproots and replaces them with flowers? This is his business. That he can, with care, succeed, is aptly illustrated in the family history of Mrs. Booth. She commanded her children, and insisted on their obeying God, till obedience to His will developed into a blessed habit. It became early easier to be holy than to be sinful, to do good than to do evil, to sacrifice than to enjoy. The children could not fail to imbibe the lessons learnt from the lips and lives of their parents. There was an atmosphere of holy chivalry, which spurred them on to generous and noble deeds.1 [Note: F. Booth-Tucker, The Life of Catherine Booth, ii. 104.]
II
The Child
That childhood is the proper period for education is one of the most obvious of all general truths. It is crystallized in the well-known Scottish proverb
Learn young, learn fair;
Learn auld, learn sair.
One might almost say that everything is settled by the time a boy or girl reaches fifteen or sixteen. Most of the trials and temptations, and most of the opportunities for development, still lie ahead, but the way in which the boy or girl will meet those temptations, and rise or fail to rise to those opportunities, is to a large extent decided.
1. The child ought to be trained for its own sake. And there are four things which have to be considered in this connexion.
(1) The child has a body. It will depend much upon our knowledge of its physical nature, and our action in regard to it, whether the child will have a healthy life or an unhealthy one. The foundation of many weaknesses and diseases, which the storm and stress of after life bring out, may be laid in childhood.
The body should be trained for its own sake, and for its influence higher up. It should be properly fed and cared for, and taught to obey the laws of the body, that so health may come and stay. It should be developed symmetrically, and trained to hard work. A healthful, supple body is the foundation of strong character and of skill. That is where life starts. This is beginning lowest, but not beginning low. At the lowest it is high. The body has immense influence upon mind and character, occupation and career.1 [Note: S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 237.]
(2) The child has a heart. We appeal to the affections. For the training of these the early years of the life are important. What the child will be in its affectional relations depends largely upon these first years. The childs first school-room is its mothers heart, and the child whose mother has a shrivelled and lifeless affectional nature is well-nigh sure to be spoiled.
Passion and emotion were regarded by James Mill as forms of madness, and the intense was a by-word of scorn. He advocated the restriction of the private affections and the expansion of altruistic zeal to the utmost. He accepted the dicta of his Utilitarian cult, that men are born alike, and that every childs mind is a tabula rasa on which experience registers its impressions. In harmony with this conception, education was, of course, the formative factor in determining life and shaping character. It should begin with the dawn of consciousness and be prosecuted without stint. How absolutely James Mill endorsed these views is evident from the methods he adopted in training his eldest son. There have been few more pathetic juvenile histories than that of John Stuart Mill. The story is a strange one; and were it not so well substantiated, doubts as to its accuracy would be legitimate. It has been received with feelings of amazement, mingled with those of sympathy and indignation. Despite the fact that his temperament was highly emotional and even religiously inclined, he was early compelled to face life from the purely intellectual standpoint. Before he was sufficiently mature to register a protest, his father forced him outside the pale of all sentiment, and charged him with the insolence of a philosophical system which had no limitations. Such hard and metallic treatment robbed the son of any opportunity to develop and understand the romantic side of his nature. Many of the sorrows that beset his career can be traced to this well-nigh unpardonable error.1 [Note: S. P. Cadman, Charles Darwin and Other English Thinkers, 94.]
(3) The child has a mind. Observation, perception, the first glimmerings of reason, imaginationthe lack of training in regard to any one of these things will make a gap in the life, and it may have serious results. We must train the whole mind, not the intellect only.
You will all recollect that some time ago there was a scandal and a great outcry about certain cutlasses and bayonets which had been supplied to our troops and sailors. These warlike implements were polished as bright as rubbing could make them; they were very well sharpened; they looked lovely. But when they were applied to the test of the work of war they broke and they bent and proved more likely to hurt the hand of him that used them than to do any harm to the enemy. Let me apply that analogy to the effect of education, which is a sharpening and polishing of the mind. You may develop the intellectual side of people as far as you like, and you may confer upon them all the skill that training and instruction can give; but, if there is not underneath all that outside form and superficial polish, the firm fibre of healthy manhood and earnest desire to do well, your labour is absolutely in vain.2 [Note: T. H. Huxley, Collected Essays, iii. 445.]
(4) The child has a soul. The soul is also the creature of habit. The soul learns its habits even as the body and the mind acquire theirs, by use and practice. The habit of living without God is one which may be learned by the child. It is one of the easiest of all habits to acquire. Unlike some other habits, it demands no exertion and no self-denial. But there is another, an opposite, habit of the soul, that of living to God, with God, and in God. That too is a habit, not formed so soon or so easily as the other, yet like it formed by a succession of acts, each easier than the last, and each making the next easier still.
He that has made a leap to-day can more easily make the same leap to-morrow; and he will make a longer or higher leap soon, perhaps the day after. His muscles are stretched, and are also strengthened. This we call practice. From it comes a certain state of the body. So from practice in good or evil comes a certain state of the mind. This is called habit: and it tends to the doing again with more ease what we have already done with less. The thought of that mighty engine! never slumbering, ever working: self-feeding, self-acting: powerful and awful servant of God who ordained it: powerful and restless, too, alike for the destruction and for the salvation of souls. What we do without habit we do because it pleases at the time. But what we do by habit we do even though it pleases little or not at all at the time. Place habit, then, on the side of religion. You cannot depend upon your tastes and feelings towards Divine things to be uniform: lay hold upon an instrument which will carry you over their inequalities, and keep you in the honest practice of your spiritual exercises, when but for this they would have been intermitted.1 [Note: Letters on Church and Religion of William Ewart Gladstone, ii. 419.]
2. The child ought to be trained for national reasons. The true riches of a country lie in its manhood, and the child is manhood in the germ. The promise of the future is in our children. We hear that to keep up an army and navy, to prosecute wars here and there, is necessary to open and keep open markets, and push trade. We are told that trade follows the flag, and that the Union Jack is a commercial asset. There is a more valuable commercial asset that we are in danger of ignoringthe child.
There is a story told of a procession in an ancient city. The old veterans, whose days were drawing to a close, but who had spent years in the service of their nation, walked first. They were led by a man bearing aloft the motto, We have been brave. They were followed by those in active service, the manhood of the people, who bore the motto, We are brave. The rear was brought up by the youths and lads, who bore aloft this inscription, We will be brave.2 [Note: J. W. Clayton, The Genius of God, 55.]
III
The Education of the Child
For the word here, chanok, translated train up, there are two root meanings, the one to make narrow, the other to put into the mouth for taste and nutrition. Instruction comprehends both conceptions: (1) making narrow, i.e., restraint of all wayward courses, repression of selfish desires and unruly passions; (2) the imparting of Bound intellectual nourishment with a view to the growth and vigour of mans higher life.
1. Let us consider first of all the idea of restraintthe negative side of this question of education. We know that weak and sentimental nature which shrinks from inflicting pain under any circumstances. Seizing on the ill-understood doctrine that love is the sovereign power in life and in education, it pleads in the name of love that the offender may be spared, that he may escape the due penalty of his fault. That is not a love like Gods love.
Our Heavenly Father chastens His children; by most gracious punishments He brings home to them the sense of sin, and leads them to repentance and amendment. And earthly parents, in proportion as they are led by the Spirit and filled with love, will correct their children, not for their own pleasure, but for their childrens good. The truth which underlies these apparently harsh injunctions is this: Love inflicts punishments, nor are any punishments so severe as those which love inflicts; and only the punishments which love inflicts are able to reform and to save the character of the delinquent.
One of the childs main objects in life seems to be imposing its own will on those about it, and this will which the child is always contending for is the merest caprice, and formed no grownup person can say why. Without experience one could hardly believe what a constant warfare the child wages in getting its own way. That the way of the grown-up person may conceivably be better never comes into the childs head. The child feels the grown person to be stronger, and it learns to submit without the least show of resistance, just as we submit to the weather. But the judicious, loving elder does not like to be always opposing, and is afraid of crushing the childs free action, so we naturally let the child have its way wherever we can. Then we come to a point where the childs will would cause great inconvenience, perhaps risks that cannot be faced. Then comes the tug. If the child is not coaxed to attend to something else, it sets up a howl and makes itself almost intolerable. Our children have never gained anything in this way, and they mostly understand when they have pushed their own will as far as they will be allowed, but at times they turn naughty, and the childish I shant! has to be met by force majeure.1 [Note: Life and Remains of the Rev. R. H. Quick, 300.]
2. But education has also a positive side. Wise penalties and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself causeth shame to his mother. The child must not be left to himself. The parent must bring home to his childs heart those truths of experience which the child cannot at present know. He must train the child with a view to the growth and vigour of mans higher life. How is he to set about this task?
(1) By wise observation.Children are born to go different ways. The master in a menagerie trains each animal according to its nature. He does not try to make a falcon swim, or a fish fly, or an otter climb. But the distinctions between children are no less radical, and are far more subtle and difficult to discern. Parents should remember that because they have succeeded with one child they are in danger of failing with another. They think they have only to cast each child into the same candle mould which shaped their first so well. If men would observe their children, upon whose welfare their most precious hopes depend, with half the judicious care they have bestowed upon beasts and birds and fishes and insects, great would be their reward.
The motherly love of the penguin which smothers its offspring was not hers. She saw that mistaken concern illustrated in many a household which was a model of motherly care in the eyes of a blind world. The result of leading-strings and culture under glass was a feeble manhood and a silly womanhood, was failure of the most dire and dreadful kind. Her little folks were treasures given to her to guard and protect, not to mould into her own image. They had personalities of their own, and inheritances of their own. They were individuals not appendages, and it was her duty, she thought, to enrich them by teaching them how to use their own talents and faculties. Hers was to provide an atmosphere for them to breathe, a purity for them to feel, a liberty for them to employ. She seemed to say: I am at hand to hold and to help you if necessary, but I want you to develop your own little selves so that when you are men and women you will be persons of a free will and not creatures of circumstance. She believed in discipline, but not the discipline of force, not the bowing to an outside order which imposed itself by punishment, but the discipline of spiritual desire, of reasoned conduct, of moral control of emotion and appetite. The words she used in a sentence in the letter she wrote telling her children that their grandmother had died were very significant, We must try to comfort each other.1 [Note: J. Ramsay MacDonald, Margaret Ethel MacDonald, 130.]
(2) By good instruction.A character which is not built up on the basis of truth, and in which there are not deep and strong convictions of truth, will seldom stand the test of this world, and most assuredly will not stand the test of the next. Truth is as much the natural staff of life for the soul as bread is for the body. It cannot be strong and healthy without it. Ignorance is the starvation of the soul; error is its poison; truth is its food and healing medicine.
You are bound to initiate your children, not merely to the joys and desires of life, but to life itself; to its duties, and to its moral Law of Government. Few mothers, few fathers, in this irreligious ageand even especially in the wealthier classesunderstand the true gravity of their educational mission. Few mothers, few fathers, remember that the numerous victims, the incessant struggles, and the lifelong martyrdom of our day, are in a great measure the fruit of the egotism instilled thirty years back by the weak mothers and heedless fathers who allowed their children to accustom themselves to regard life, not as a mission and a duty, but as a search after happiness, and a study of their own well-being.2 [Note: Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini, iv. 287.]
(a) God.It cannot be inculcated with too much force and frequency that the very highest truths are those which should be imparted at the earliest possible period in a childs history. It is important that as soon as the laws of a childs mind can admit the thought, it should be taught concerning Him who made it and all things, and who rules in heaven and on earth.
A child takes in nothing more easily than the thought of One who made the flowers of the earth and the stars of the sky; and as it early comes to know what is meant by love to its parents, it may easily be taught to know what is meant by love to God.1 [Note: E. Mellor, The Hem of Christs Garment, 63.]
(b) Christ.If we are in the wrong way, the more vigorously we prosecute the journey the sooner will disaster come. If we do not train children in truth and righteousness, it would be better that we should not train them at all. Christ is the truth, and the Scriptures the standard by which truth may be known. This is not only religiously the best solution of the question, but philosophically the only solution that can be given.
I have no right to pray for my children unless I am, by my lips and by my life, labouring ceaselessly to lead them to the Saviours feet. Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak ye to the children! I never read that text without thinking of Susanna Wesley. Was there ever a mother like that mother of the Wesleys? One night she had been praying for her great family. At last, she says, it came into my mind that I might do more than I do. I resolved to begin. I will take such proportion of time as I can best spare every night to discourse with each child by itself. How Susanna Wesley kept that good resolution, and with what tremendous and earth-shaking results, the whole world very well knows.2 [Note: F. W. Boreham, Mountains in the Mist, 251.]
(c) The Bible.If we do not adopt the Bible as our standard in training the young, moral training is impossible. If in moral principles every man is his own lawgiver, there is no law at all, and no authority. You may train a fruit-tree by nailing its branches to a wall, or by tying them to an espalier railing; but the tree whose branches have nothing to lean on but air is not trained at all. It is not a dispute between the Scriptures and some other rival standard, for no such standard exists or is proposed. It is a question between the Bible as a standard, and no standard at all.
With all my heart I believe that the best basis for education, with which no other documents, catechetical or otherwise, can be compared, is the Holy Scriptures. I should deplore, with more sorrow than I can express, if the time should ever come when these sacred Scripturesthe most simple, as they are the highest literature in the world, the most fitted to instil goodness into the mind of the child, as they are the most fitted to inspire all nobleness and piety and charity in the heart of man,I should deplore if the time ever came when the reading and teaching of these Scriptures should form no longer a part of our common educational system. I believe absolutely in the power of the teacher to read and explain the Holy Scriptures without any sectarian admixture. I believe that all that has been said on this point is simply theory, and that practically there is no difficulty. Sectarianism! why the whole spirit of the Bible is opposed to sectarianism. Its living study, its simple reading, are the best correction of sectarianism; and our Churches, one and all, are only sectarian in so far as they have departed from the Bible and thrown it aside.1 [Note: Principal Tulloch, in Memoir, by Mrs. Oliphant, 266.]
(3) By a good example.Good instruction is sunlight, but it will not of itself develop and mature a godly life. Children are far less influenced by precept than by example, and it is often the saddest feature in home training that there is so glaring a disparity between the instructions of parents and their own visible and unmistakable life. Our lives are the forces which are in most constant operation upon the minds and hearts of our children. Our character is a stream, a river flowing down upon our children hour by hour. What we do here and there to carry an opposing influence is, at best, only a ripple that we make on the surface of the stream; it reveals the sweep of the current, nothing more. If we expect our children to go with the ripple instead of the stream we shall be disappointed.
Example is one of the most important of instructors, though it teaches without a tongue. Precept may point the way, but it is silent, continuous example, conveyed to us by habits and living with us, that carries us along. Good advice has its weight, but without the accompaniment of a good example it is of comparatively small influence: and it will be found that the common saying of Do as I say, not as I do, is usually reversed in the actual experience of life. All persons are more apt to learn through the eye rather than the ear, and whatever is seen in fact makes a deeper impression than anything that is read or heard. This is especially the case in early life, when the eye is the chief inlet of knowledge. Whatever children see they unconsciously imitate, and they insensibly become like to those who are about them. Hence the importance of domestic training. For, however efficient our schools, the examples set in our homes must always be of greater influence in forming the characters of our future men and women; and from that source, be it pure or tainted, issue the habits and principles which govern public as well as private life. From this central spot the human sympathies radiate to an ever-widening circle until the world is embraced: for though true philanthropy, like charity, begins at home, assuredly it does not end there.1 [Note: S. Smiles, Self-Help.]
3. This training is indeed a work of watchful anxiety, attended with painful, and often long-protracted, exercise of faith and patience. Who can hold on to it, but for the Divine support of the parental promiseWhen he is old he shall not depart from it? The man will be as the child is trained. Education is utterly distinct from grace. But when conducted in the spirit, and on the principles, of the Word of God, it is a means of imparting it. Sometimes the fruit is immediate, uniform, and permanent. But in many cases the bread cast upon the waters of the covenant is found, not till after many days, perhaps not till the godly parent has been laid in the grave. Yet the fruit, though late, will be not the less sure.
In the year 1746, on a small island lying off the western coast of Africa, there might be seen a young man of English birth living in a condition of the most abject misery. He was the servant, it might almost be said the slave, of a trafficker in human flesh, who was himself, through his vile lusts, under the bondage of a ferocious negress, by whom his establishment was ruled. Against the English youth her heart was specially set. She starved him; she caused him to be unjustly beaten; she instigated his master against him by false accusations; she refused him when burning with fever even a draught of cold water. Such was the barbarity to which she subjected him that, but for a naturally strong constitution, and the secret assistance of some of the poor slaves of the household, he must have perished. What had brought this youth, who was the son of respectable parents and who had received a good education in his native country, to this deplorable condition? It was chiefly his own wickedness, recklessness, and folly. He had been a wild, ungovernable youth, and had plunged himself into such an abyss of evil that his friends felt it was hopeless to strive to save him, and so they left him to sink. Who that saw that youth in his misery and his wickedness could have believed it possible that ere many years had passed he should be one of the most influential clergymen in the British Metropolis, a man of devout piety and zeal for God, a man loved, respected, looked up to by the whole religious world of his day, a man who should leave the stamp of his goodness on the nation at large? And yet all that and more came to pass. The youth was John Newton, the friend of Cowper, the author along with him of the Olney Hymns, and the most venerable name among the Evangelical clergy of the Church of England. And to what did John Newton owe his rescue from the terrible pit into which he had fallen? His mother had died when he was only six years of age, and had been spared the misery of witnessing his career of vice, folly, degradation. But she was a godly woman, and during these six years she had stored his mind with Divine truth, and her earnest prayers for him had gone up for a memorial before God. These early lessons, he himself records, he never could get rid of, even during the wildest part of his career. Do what he would there they were, stamped indelibly on his soul, and ever and anon they would thrust themselves upon his notice. And when at length his heart was softened, and his spirit bowed to seek the Lord, the words spoken by that gentle mother in the nursery, long years before, came sounding in his ears again, as words of power, and life, and purity.1 [Note: W. Lindsay Alexander, Christian Thought and Work, 268.]
Literature
Clayton (J. W.), The Genius of God, 50.
Horton (R. F.), The Book of Proverbs (Expositors Bible), 303.
Mackey (H. O.), Miniature Sermons, 62.
Mellor (E.), The Hem of Christs Garment, 52.
Miller (J.), Sermons, i. 137.
Murray (A.), The Children for Christ, 170.
Norton (J. N.), Old Paths, 479.
Rutherford (J. S.), The Seriousness of Life, 167.
Ryle (J. C.), The Upper Room, 282.
Vaughan (C. J.), Memorials of Harrow Sundays, 215.
Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 124.
Christian World Pulpit, xxxiv. 341 (H. Jones).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
Train up: or, Catechize
a child: Gen 18:19, Deu 4:9, Deu 6:7, Psa 78:3-6, Eph 6:4, 2Ti 3:15
the way: Heb. his way
when: 1Sa 1:28, 1Sa 2:26, 1Sa 12:2, 1Sa 12:3
Reciprocal: Deu 6:20 – when thy son Deu 31:13 – General Jdg 13:12 – How shall we order the child 2Ki 2:23 – little children Psa 34:11 – Come Pro 4:4 – He Pro 29:15 – General Ecc 12:1 – Remember
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Pro 22:6. Train up Hebrew, , initiate, or instruct; a child in the way he should go Or, according to his way, that is, in that course or manner of life which thou wouldest have him to choose and follow. Or, as some render the clause, in the beginning of his way, that is, in his tender years, as soon as he is capable of receiving instruction, the Hebrew , signifying, literally, in the mouth of his way, and the mouth being often put for the beginning or entrance of a place or thing. And when he is old, he will not depart from it Namely, not easily and ordinarily. The impressions made in his childish years will remain, unless some extraordinary cause occur to erase them. Instruct a child, says Bishop Patrick, as soon as ever he is capable, and season his mind with the principles of virtue before he receive other impressions, and it is most likely they will grow up with him; so that when he is older he will not forsake them, but retain them as long as he lives.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
22:6 Train up a child {d} in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
(d) Bring him up virtuously and he will continue so.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
"Train" (Heb. hanak) means to dedicate (cf. Deu 20:5; 1Ki 8:63; 2Ch 7:5; Dan 3:2). It has the idea of narrowing and in this verse implies channeling the child’s conduct into the way of wisdom. That guidance might include dedicating him or her to God and preparing the child for future responsibilities and adulthood. [Note: Gleason L. Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties, p. 252.]
"In the way he should go" is literally "according to his way." It may mean according to his personality, temperament, responses, or stage in life. On the other hand, it could mean the way in which he ought to go. The Hebrew grammar permits either interpretation. However the context favors the latter view. "Way" in Proverbs usually means the path a person takes through life, not one’s personality, disposition, or stage in life. Consequently, the verse is saying the parent should train up a child in the way of wisdom, i.e., to live in the fear of God. [Note: Ross, pp. 1061-62; Toy, p. 415; McKane, p. 564; Kidner, p. 147; and Greenstone, p. 234.]
The second part of this verse has challenged the faith of many a godly parent. Obviously many children who have received good training have repudiated the way of wisdom later in life. The explanation for this seemingly broken promise lies in a correct understanding of what a proverb is.
"A proverb is a literary device whereby a general truth is brought to bear on a specific situation. Many of the proverbs are not absolute guarantees for they express truths that are necessarily conditioned by prevailing circumstances. For example, Pro 22:3-4; Pro 22:9; Pro 22:11; Pro 22:16; Pro 22:29 do not express promises that are always binding. Though the proverbs are generally and usually true, occasional exceptions may be noted. This may be because of the self-will or deliberate disobedience of an individual who chooses to go his own way-the way of folly instead of the way of wisdom . . . It is generally true, however, that most children who are brought up in Christian homes, under the influence of godly parents who teach and live God’s standards (cf. Eph 6:4), follow that training." [Note: Buzzell, p. 953.]
This proverb clearly does not state a Scriptural promise. Rather, the revelation of Scripture elsewhere is that God allows people to make their own decisions. He does not force them to do what is right (cf. Pro 2:11-15; Pro 5:11-14; Eze 18:20).
"In sum, the proverb promises the educator that his original, and early, moral initiative has a permanent effect on a person for good. But that is not the whole truth about religious education." [Note: Waltke, The Book . . . 31, p. 206.]