Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

life of comparative poverty; and they would rather he should gain money
than save souls.
How strange is the infatuation, in some parents, which leads them to
desire worldly or ecclesiastical honours for their children! He must be
much in love with the cross who wishes to have his child a minister of
the gospel; for, if he be such as God approves of in the work, his life will
be a life of toil and suffering; he will be obliged to sip, at least, if not to
drink largely of the cup of Christ. We know not what we ask when, in
getting our children into the church, we take upon ourselves to answer for
their call to the sacred office, and for the salvation of the souls that are
put under their care. Blind parents! rather let your children beg their bread
than thrust them into an office to which God has not called them; and in
which they will not only ruin their souls, but be the means of damnation
to hundreds; for, if God has not sent them, they shall not profit the people
at all.
We may easily learn from the child what the man will be. In general
they give indications of those trades and callings for which they are
adapted by nature. And, on the whole, we cannot go by a surer guide in
preparing our children for future life than by observing their early
propensities. The future engineer is seen in the little handicraftsman of
two years old. Many children are crossed in these early propensities to a
particular calling, to their great prejudice, and the loss of their parents; as
they seldom settle at, or make much out at, the business to which they are
tied, and to which nature has given them no tendency. These infantine
predilections to particular callings, we should consider as indications of
divine providence, and its calling them to that work for which they are
peculiarly fitted.
I have no high opinion of Polyglot businesses, though I am an admirer
of Polyglot Bibles. A chymist, a druggist, a grocer, a bookseller, are too
much at once. A chymist, if properly understood, is a business of science
and practice, sufficient to occupy the whole of a man's life. A chymist is
a student by fire, and his eyes should ever be awake to behold the