fact and does his part, there will be developed, very early, the
truest confidence and trust in Christ, and the purest love to God.
From the germs will grow the beautiful plant of child-trust and
child-love. The graces of the new life may be thus early drawn out, so
that the child, in after years, will never know of a time when it did
not trust and love, and as a result of this love, hate sin. This is
the ideal of God's Word. It is the ideal which every Christian parent
should strive to realize in the children given by God, and given to
God in His own ordinance. How can it be done? Of this, more in the
next chapter.




CHAPTER VI.

HOME INFLUENCE AND TRAINING IN THEIR RELATION TO
THE KEEPING OF THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT.

According to the last chapter, it is indeed a high and holy ideal
that every Christian parent should set before him in regard to his
children. Every child that God gives to a Christian parent is to be so
treated that, from the hour of its baptism, it is to be a son or
daughter of God. It is to be so fostered and nurtured and trained
that, from its earliest self-consciousness, it is to grow day by day
in knowledge and in Grace. As it increases in stature, so it is to
increase in wisdom and in favor with God and man.

In order that this may be realized, it is first of all necessary
that there be the proper surroundings. We cannot expect that parent to