soul love

 I recently came across "The Duties of Parents" by J.C. Ryle.  Its a pretty old piece (I think from the 1800's), and pretty heady, but has some serious parenting gems in it.  He focuses on the verse, "Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it."—Prov 22:6, and gives 17 practical ways we can apply this verse in training our children.  This one, number four, really challenged me this week.  If you're like me, it may take at least two readings to let it all sink in, and for you skimmers out there, I underlined the best stuff for you.

Train with this thought continually before your eyes — that the soul of your child is the first thing to be considered.
    Precious, no doubt, are these little ones in your eyes; but if you love them, think often of their souls.  No interest should weigh with you so much as their eternal interests.  No part of them should be so dear to you as that part which will never die. The world, with all its glory, shall pass away; the hills shall melt; the heavens shall be wrapped together as a scroll; the sun shall cease to shine.  But the spirit which dwells in those little creatures, whom you love so well, shall outlive them all, and whether in happiness or misery (to speak as a man) will depend on you.
    This is the thought that should be uppermost on your mind in all you do for your children.  In every step you take about them, in every plan, and scheme, and arrangement that concerns them, do not leave out that mighty question, "How will this affect their souls?"
    Soul love is the soul of all love.  To pet and pamper and indulge your child, as if this world was all he had to look to, and this life the only season for happiness — to do this is not true love, but cruelty.  It is treating him like some beast of the earth, which has but one world to look to, and nothing after death.  It is hiding from him that grand truth, which he ought to be made to learn from his very infancy, — that the chief end of his life is the salvation of his soul.
    A true Christian must be no slave to fashion, if he would train his child for heaven.  He must not be content to do things merely because they are the custom of the world; to teach them and instruct them in certain ways, merely because it is usual; to allow them to read books of a questionable sort, merely because everybody else reads them; to let them form habits of a doubtful tendency, merely because they are the habits of the day.  He must train with an eye to his children’s souls.  He must not be ashamed to hear his training called singular and strange.  What if it is? The time is short, — the fashion of this world passeth away.  He that has trained his children for heaven, rather than for earth, — for God, rather than for man, — he is the parent that will be called wise at last. 

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