Help for Distressed Parents

There is solid help for parents in this old, 36-page book; more than you'll find in much better publicized and lengthier books of today. I read this yesterday during the flight home from D.C.

The original title was much more provocative, "Counsels and Comforts for Godly Parents Afflicted with Ungodly Children." I'll structure this brief review around the key words in that title.

Mather has a test to see if you are indeed a godly parent. Godly parents are more afraid of their children being ungodly than of their being in any other way unhappy. They are afflicted for their children's contrariness unto God more than anything else. Ungodly parents, on the other hand, though the souls of their children are altogether unacquainted with the ways of God, care only that their child be dressed up in a few idle gaieties and, perhaps, some useless accomplishments (see Job 21:11, 14).

His counsel to godly parents is to remind them that their own original sin is written with deleted characters in all the ungodliness of their children. Much of the parents' actual sin can likewise be read in the children's ungodliness. Godly parents are not to forget that persons with uncircumcised hearts are born of such as had themselves experienced a circumcision of God upon their hearts.

More specifically, Mather counsels godly parents to single out the Scriptures which plainly condemn their vices and have the children read those awful Scriptures. Then charge them that, since they will answer before God, they conform themselves accordingly.

Don't humor your children with vanities that appeal to an unrenewed heart. Be as ingenious as possible at making a thorn hedge against every way of sinning attractive to your child. Be especially careful of the company they keep.

Most importantly, remember that distressed parents of old brought their diseased and disabled children unto the Lord Jesus Christ, and He healed them all. Thus, go plead before the Lord!

Have you done all this? Then do not despair, though you do not presently reap the fruit of all, delays are not denials!