Popular Instructions to Parents on the Bringing Up of Children

Truth does not change and the duties of parents to their children do not change with the times. This work on bringing up children is in this respect timeless. Consider the solemn obligation of parents to bring their children up properly, an obligation so sorely neglected in these days of the Great Apostasy. This book will be useful not only to parents who are raising children, but also to couples contemplating entering the holy state of matrimony. Indeed marriage is a great sacrament and the foundation of a strong society and of civilization itself. Let the family be destroyed and civilization will cease to exist! This work commences: "DEAR Christian parents, your responsibility as parents is indeed great. As individuals, you are answerable for your own souls; but as parents, you shall be required to give the Sovereign Judge a strict account of the souls of your children. It is your sacred duty so to train your children that they may become not merely good citizens and useful members of society, but more- especially faithful members of Christ's body on earth, viz., the holy Catholic Church, in order that after this life they may be saints in God's heavenly kingdom. If they become good practical Christians, they will most certainly prove useful to society, and be law abiding and patriotic citizens. Comparatively few parents thoroughly appreciate the full extent of their responsibility. Were young men and young women, before marriage, fully to realize the extent of the obligations incumbent on parents, many would shrink from entering a state so encumbered with duties and crosses. In the bringing up of children both the father and mother should act in concert. If you neglect your parental duties in whole or in part, or if in their discharge you act separately from or in opposition or to each other, the tree of your marriage will produce only thorns and thistles, and your children will be, nei ther good Christians nor useful citizens, and, far from becoming the prop and consolation of your old age, they will bring down your gray hair with sorrow to the tomb.