laymen445 to be acquainted with the lessons derived from this source; but especially for
children. For theirs is an age full of folly; and to this folly are superadded the bad examples
derived from the heathen tales, where they are made acquainted with those heroes so admired
amongst them, slaves of their passions, and cowards with regard to death; as, for example,
Achilles, when he relents, when he dies for his concubine, when another gets drunk, and
many other things of the sort. He requires therefore the remedies against these things. How
is it not absurd to send children out to trades, and to school, and to do all you can for these
objects, and yet, not to “bring them up in the chastening and admonition of the Lord”? And
for this reason truly we are the first to reap the fruits, because we bring up our children to
be insolent and profligate, disobedient, and mere vulgar fellows. Let us not then do this; no,
let us listen to this blessed Apostle’s admonition. “Let us bring them up in the chastening
and admonition of the Lord.” Let us give them a pattern. Let us make them from the earliest
age apply themselves to the reading of the Scriptures. Alas, that so constantly as I repeat
this, I am looked upon as trifling! Still, I shall not cease to do my duty. Why, tell me, do ye
not imitate them of old? Ye women, especially, emulate those admirable women. Has a child
been born to any one? Imitate Hannah’s example (1 Sam. i. 24.); look at what she did. She
brought him up at once to the temple. Who amongst you would not rather that his son
should become a Samuel than that he should be king of the whole world ten thousand times
over? “And how,” you will say, “is it possible he should become such a one?” Why is it not
possible? It is because thou dost not choose it thyself, nor committest him to the care of
those who are able to make him such a one. “And who,” it will be said, “is such a one as
this?” God. Since she put him into the hands of God. For not even Eli himself was one of
those in any great degree qualified to form him; (how could he be, he who was not able to
form even his own children?) No, it was the faith of the mother and her earnest zeal that
wrought the whole. He was her first child, and her only one, and she knew not whether she
should ever have others besides. Yet she did not say, “I will wait till the child is grown up,
that he may have a taste of the things of this life, I will allow him to have his pastime in them
a little in his childish years.” No, all these thoughts the woman repudiated, she was absorbed
in one object, how from the very beginning she might dedicate the spiritual image446 to
God. Well may we men be put to the blush at the wisdom of this woman. She offered him
up to God, and there she left him. And therefore was her married state more glorious, in
that she had made spiritual objects her first care, in that she dedicated the first-fruits to God.
Therefore was her womb fruitful, and she obtained other children besides.447 And therefore
445 τοῖς κοσμικοῖς.
446 ἄγαλμα.
447 [On the authority of three mss., Savile and other editors concurring, we have departed here from the text
of Field, which reverses the order of this and the following sentence, and leaves the sense less clear. v. 1 Sam. ii.
21.—G.A.]
285
Ephesians 6:1-3