THE CHRISTIAN MOTHER By John Abbot- 1833, Chapter 5: Religious Instruction, Part Five

The Christian Mother

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

by John Abbott, 1833, Worcester, Mass. Published by the American Tract Society

Read Chapter 1 : The Mothers Responsibility

Read Chapter 2 : The Mothers Authority

Read Chapter 3 : The Mother's DIFFICULTIES:

Read Chapter 4: FAULTS and ERRORS:

Chapter 5 : Part Five:

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION

6. Make the Bible your text book in the religious instructions of your children.
Few moderns have attained greater celebrity than Lamartine. As a poet, a statesman, an orator, he has filled the world with his renown. When a child, his mother was his intellectual guide, and the Bible the book from which she taught him. She inspired him with all that is noble in his nature, arousing his affections, en-kindling his mind, guiding his thoughts, forming his tastes.
The Bible was her text book. Under its guidance, she led her noble and ardent boy through the groves and by the crystal streams of Eden. With her he gathered the fruit, and plucked the flowers, or listened to the songs of Paradise. He saw depicted before him Adam and Eve in their innocence and bliss, and in their condition and history he saw and felt the beauty of holiness.
The Fall came with its gloom and withering curse. In the howling tempest, the desolation of the garden of Eden, and the weary wanderings of our first parents when ejected from their early home—he saw the hatefulness of sin. The Deluge then follows with its blackness of darkness, and its surging billows overwhelming a struggling world.
The heart of the child throbs in the conception of the dreadful scene as a mother's lips tell the tale. His mind is expanded, and his whole spirit elevated by the terrific idea. Babel rises before his eye. The story of Joseph and his adventurous life inspires him with lofty desires. Daniel, the heroic and the noble, awakens in his bosom the firm resolve that he also will be a Christian hero, daring to do and to suffer, though the famished lion roar, and the heated furnace glow.
The Savior, in all the perfection of moral loveliness, and in all the grandeur of moral sublimity, becomes the object of his youthful love and admiration. His bosom glows with lofty emotions at the recital of the eventful lives of the Apostles.

His character is thus formed upon the model of the sacred heroes. The mother, with the Bible, aided by God's blessing, has ennobled and saved the boy.

At length, she dies and molders to the dust. Life, with its tempests, rolls over her son. Temptations crowd around his path in blooming youth and in vigorous manhood. But there is a guardian angel ever hovering over him. That gentle and familiar voice which taught him in infancy never dies upon his ear. That sweet maternal smile never fades from his eye.

After long years of toil and conflict have passed away, Lamartine resolves to visit in person the land to which the instructions of his mother had so often led his youthful mind. The evening twilight is just settling down over the hills of Judea as he catches the first dim glimpse of their outline. The fresh breeze urges the ship over the blue expanse of the Mediterranean, and the moon rises brightly over Carmel and Olivet and Lebanon. His mother first guided his spirit to the Holy Land. And now his thoughts involuntarily turn to her. "My mother," he says, "surely looks down at such an hour as this upon her happy son." With a soul swelling with emotion, with eyes swimming in tears, he looks upon the unveiled Heavens above him and exclaims, "Mother! dear, dear mother! here am I drawing near to your own loved Jerusalem. I am to weep upon Olivet and upon Calvary. Upon the shores of the river and the lake I am to tread in the footsteps which your Savior and my Savior have trodden. Mother, dear mother! I know that you are with me, and that you sympathize in the joy of your child." -- (Note from Sarah-Preachers At Home- Praying to his dead Mother is not Biblical- nowhere in the Bible does God teach us the dead can hear us or is with us. My Mother died 10 years ago, I remember her teaching me things of God and the memory lives on, but I would never talk to her now!- John Abbot has some very good teachings here and most are Biblical or I would not post them.)

Thus does the spiritual sympathy which binds the heart of a child to a mother, survive, and continue to exercise its power, long after that mother has been slumbering in the grave. The Bible is the strongest of all influences in the creation of that sympathy. There is, in its relations the union of all that is intellectually exciting, and all that is spiritually sacred. Its narratives, its imagery, its precepts, its thrilling and heroic incidents, all more powerfully move the human heart than any other agency.

We have not sufficient faith in the potency of the Bible. It should be to the parent her manual, her armory, a treasury for her of every blessed influence. The infant mind eagerly listens to the recital of the biography and the history with which its pages are filled. Tell your child the stories of Eden—of the Fall, and of the Deluge—of the cities of the plain, wrapped in fire—of Samuel, and Joseph, and Moses, and David, and Ruth, and Daniel. Read to them these narratives in the beautiful simplicity with which the pen of inspiration has recorded them, and you will awaken a strong and abiding interest in his mind; you will fortify him against the wiles of infidelity, with arguments more potent than all the demonstrations of philosophy; and you will ally your name, a mother's name, with the Bible, with angels, with heaven, with God.

The mother must not surrender the instruction of her children in the narratives and truths of the Bible, to others—to the Sabbath-school teacher or her pastor. Grateful as she may be for the Sabbath school, and the church, and all the kindhearted influences which they exert—it is her privilege, her peculiar privilege, her inestimable privilege—a privilege of which no one may deprive her, to take her child by the hand herself and lead him to the Savior. She must reveal to the tender and awakened spirit—death and its struggles—the grave and its corruption—the archangel's trumpet—the morning of the resurrection—the sublimity and the terror of the final judgment. A mother's loving voice must guide the mind to the garden of God on high—its blessed mansions—its still waters—its green pastures—its fullness of never-fading joy.

A mother's gentle tones must reveal all that is dreadful in the retribution of a righteous God—and the remorse and the despair, which, like an undying worm and a quenchless flame, must consume the sinner's heart. In doing this, the Bible should ever be the parent's storehouse of religious influence. It is the mighty power of God.

To Continue Chapter 5: Part Six