II. The second grand essential to the right training of children, is to receive them as SACRED TRUSTS FROM GOD TO BE NURSED FOR HIM. Whence do we think the child comes to us? What do we desire it to be, in its relation to ourselves, and to the world, and to God? A mere doll, to be dressed for the gratification of our vanity? A mere pet animal, to be fed and fondled for our amusement? A mere competitor in the race of life, to struggle for a little while after its pleasures, honours, and riches, and then pass away for ever? Or do we regard it as a being of unbounded susceptibilities, and destined to eternity, which God has committed to us to train for His glory and the enjoyment of Himself for ever? When this simple but sublime thought, that a human soul has been committed to us to be trained for God, has once possessed us, it will ally itself with our love for children working itself out without effort, and almost without thought into our daily conduct.

III. A third essential to the right training of children is THE REQUIREMENT OF UN-ANSWERING OBEDIENCE. The best answer to a child's, "Why must I do this, or abstain from that?" is "Because your father or mother requires it." If further explanations are to be given, they should come after as a reward for obedience, and not before, as its condition. The habit of unanswering obedience is easily established, and when once fixed is permanent. And it should be further remembered that this requirement of unanswering obedience is saturated and sweetened through and through by the love of children. It is exalted and lifted above the impulses of selfish petulance and passion, by a sense of the Divine trust committed to us.

IV. Parents ought DILIGENTLY TO CULTIVATE AND WIN THE ABSOLUTE CONFIDENCE AND AFFECTION OF THEIR CHILDREN. So, as years roll on, authority will broaden out into loving companionship, and obedience become a delightful conformity to the wishes of those who are dearer than themselves. Tempered and guided by the principles already announced, this plan will succeed. I do not say there will be no exceptional cases. There is a mystery in the heredity of evil and in the working of iniquity which seems at times to defy all general rules. Let parents understand this: that their children may attain the highest ends of life without wealth, without social distinction, and even without the higher forms of secular education; but they cannot inherit the richest blessings of the family relation, without being thoroughly in love with their father and mother, as the representatives and appointed agents of God, who says, "Take this child and nurse it for Me, and I will give thee thy wages."

(H. J. Van Dyke, D. D.)

(R. A. Hallam, D. D.)

2. Finally, see the value of early and specially of maternal influence, in its bearing on the religious character and life. What a power both of impulsion and of resistance it had in the case of Moses! By this means Jochebed against fearful odds was successful, more than a match for them. An obscure woman, with no more than ordinary attainments, of a proscribed race, acting in a capacity little better than menial, she was too much for all Egypt's sages, and scholars, and priests, and nobles and rulers. There were two things that gave her great advantage in the contest. She got the start of them. She worked by the law of love. Before any Egyptian influence could reach the child, she had possession of his ear and of his heart. What an encouragement is here to all mothers, to all parents! How much greater things they may be labouring for than they contemplate or foresee.

(R. A. Hallam, D. D.)

1. The object — "This child."

(1)What it may become. Philosopher, warrior, statesman, philanthropist, etc.

(2)What it must become. A responsible moral agent.

2. The duty — "Nurse it." This includes —

(1)Attention to physical wants.

(2)Cultivation of mental faculties.

(3)Religious instruction.

II. THE REWARD PROMISED — "And I will pay thee thy wages." You may be rewarded —

1. By seeing your efforts crowned with success.

2. You shall at any rate possess the consciousness of the Divine favour.

3. You shall leave your children with composure when you come to die.

4. You shall stand before them with confidence in the judgment day.

(1)Let pious parents be encouraged in the way of duty.

(2)Let negligent parents consider the cruelty of their conduct, and the bitter consequences which must result from it.

(J. Burns, D. D.)

II. THAT THEY MAY BE FULLY TRAINED AND PREPARED FOR THEIR WORK, THEY ARE "MADE LIKE UNTO THEIR BRETHREN."

III. THE VERY FAMILY AND PEOPLE THAT SOUGHT TO DESTROY ISRAEL ARE MADE INSTRUMENTAL IN NOURISHING AND REARING THE DELIVERER OF ISRAEL AND THE AVENGER OF HIS BRETHREN'S WRONGS. Injustice and cruelty are made to avenge themselves in the end.

IV. IN THE RAISING UP OF THE MAN MOSES WE HAVE A MOST INSTRUCTIVE EXEMPLIFICATION OF THE DOCTRINE AND WORKING OF THE DIVINE PROVIDENCE.

V. IN PHARAOH'S DAUGHTER, AND THE PART SHE TAKES, WE HAVE THE PROOF THAT HUMAN NATURE, THE HUMAN HEART, IS ONE; AND THAT ALL CLASSES OF MANKIND, ALL NATIONS, ARE DESTINED TO BECOME ONE IN GOD'S GREAT SAVING PLAN.

(Pulpit Analyst.)

2. To school its utterance.

3. To make self-denial for the good of her child.

4. To enter into the method of Providence concerning the future of her boy.

(J. S. Exell, M. A.)

2. Not arising from hard-heartedness.

3. But arising from the calm indwelling of faith.

(J. S. Exell, M. A.)

2. Because she taught him to despise injustice (ver. 12).

3. Because she taught him the folly of anger (ver. 13).

4. Because she taught him to defend the weak (ver. 17).

(J. S. Exell, M. A.)

2. Because she is more truly concerned for the right development of its moral character.

3. Because then she will have gladdening memories of its infancy and childhood.

(J. S. Exell, M. A.)

1. In the first place, it will be to keep in your own heart a constant feeling of the charge laid upon you in the child's spiritual nature. The power of this feeling will be manifested not only in express words and direct actions, but in countless and daily signs of your faith which the child is sure to understand. The unconscious part of education, especially of the education of the soul, is always, probably, the more important part, yet the least considered. In other words, what we are tells more on a child, in the long run, than what we say. Every father or mother is not only either for Christ or against Him in the house — but they are perpetually, inevitably, helping to set out and enlist their offspring for Him or against Him.

2. Again, those parents nourish the child for Christ, who, after they have presented him in holy baptism, take care not to contradict the vow they have there made by a systematic indoctrination of him into ideas and fashions which Christ abhors. They do not come here to give him up by a ceremony to his Maker, and then begin steadily to baptize him themselves into the bitter and polluted spirit of this world.

3. Turn to a more positive and attractive aspect of your obligation. You are to nourish your child into a familiar knowledge of his personal membership in Christ and his sonship in Christ's kingdom.Two other things must accompany this work; the one as a help, the other as a hope, but both of them powers, indispensable to your success.

1. The child is to be nourished with the habitual practice of intercessory prayer. Whatever you may fail of in your knowledge, or your earthly providing, or your power of religious influence otherwise, have hope in your intercessions.

2. And therefore, finally, take this child away and nourish him for Christ with the expectation of a blessing. That expectation is to be not only a comfort to you on the way, but one of the spiritual forces with which you are to prevail. This Lord, who has lent you the little one, not only loves the importunities of His people; He delights in their largest confidences.

(Bp. F. D. Huntington.)

1. God especially regards the poor.

2. The souls of the poor are as valuable as the rich.

3. God has selected from among the poor many of the most eminent characters both in the Church and in the world.

II. Now let us glance at another point of the doctrine, and that is — THE TRAINING WE ARE TO GIVE THEM. "Take this child, and nurse it for Me." We are to nurse them and train them for God. Here I would lay great emphasis. Education is an engine of great moral power. It enlarges the mind; it ennobles the individual; it furnishes him with a fund of enjoyment; it capacitates him for usefulness; it directs his energies to proper objects. But let it be well and thoroughly understood that if education be not founded on religious and on scriptural principles, you put a weapon into the hand of an individual to do more evil — to do it secretly and effectually. You render him a more expert agent to fight against God and to oppose the reign of holiness.

III. But there is another point which ought to be touched upon: and that is — THE REWARD WE MAY EXPECT. "I will give thee thy wages." Not "apples of gold"; not "pictures of silver"; not honours that shall adorn our brows, achieved by the victories of the noble and the wiles of the great. Not literal "wages." But still there is a reward; good, and blessed and large. And what is this reward? Wages far higher than money can bring. Is there no reward in doing good? No reward, that "when the ear hears you, then it blesses you; and when the eye sees you, it bears witness to you"? No reward, to see those dear children growing up to fill important stations in life by your instrumentality? No reward, to reflect that you have been turning many in your generation to serve God, and to serve their generation? No reward, to think that you are acting out true patriotism, and training children who shall serve their country and bless the age in which they live? But especially, is there no reward, when the Master, whose glance is life and "whose favour is better than life," shall at the last day say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it," etc.

(J. Sherman.)

I. So He speaks to the parent with A DEFINITE AND INDIVIDUAL CHARGE. He says not: "Take some child," but, This one take and train. There is no question here as to which out of the many is to be the object of your care. How that definiteness enhances the solemnity of the charge! It is the very charge you would have chosen, too. The tie of nature is a stronger one than you can make with bands of gold or fetters of brass, and when that tie receives the strengthening sanction of God's approval, it is the most enduring thing in all the world. God has organized, and He sanctions, the family and its sweet bonds.

II. For in these words of Pharaoh's daughter, taken as the King's own word to us, we find THE SECRET OF THE TRAINING OF THE CHILD. "Nurse it for Me." Not for yourself are you to train this child entrusted to your care. It was not given for your amusement or your service. Nor may you train them for themselves, as though the world was made for them and all their business was to please themselves with it. The only right and worthy object of our labours for the children, and it should be an aim clearly before us, is to bring them up for God. We surely cannot do it unless it be our definite purpose. Train it not for, but in, Christian faith and love and obedience, and teach it always to live to please the Lord that bought us. The New Testament teaching is like the Old: based on the same principles, uttered in similar form — "And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."

III. And so we shall receive THE REWARD. "I will give thee thy wages." It was the daughter of the king who promised thus to Moses' mother. It is the King Himself who gives His word to us. He pays us for taking care not of our children, but of His. Here is the worst mistake of all, if we do not recognize them as God's children and we as only nurses in His employ. The promise is as definite as the charge. "I will pay thee." It is the faithful parent or the faithful teacher who wilt be rewarded.

(G. M. Boynton.)

1. A realizing, heartfelt conviction that they are His property, His children, rather than ours; and that He commits them for a time to our care, merely for the purpose of education, as we place children under the care of human instructors for the same purpose.

2. A cordial and solemn dedication or surrender of them to Him, to be His for ever.

3. We must do all that we do for them from right motives.

4. If we would educate our children for God, we must educate them for His service.

(1)This implies that we pay more attention to the soul than to the body.

(2)It implies that we pay more attention to the heart or disposition than to the mind.

(3)It implies that we educate them for eternity rather than for time; for a future world — rather than for this.

II. THE REWARD WHICH HE GIVES TO THOSE WHO PERFORM THIS DUTY ARIGHT. This reward consists —

1. In the pleasure which attends every attempt to educate children for God.

2. Another part of the reward which God bestows on those who educate their children for Him, is the happiness which they enjoy when they see their labours crowned with success.

(E. Payson, D. D.)

1. In the first place, then, a part of the reward of fidelity in religiously educating your children consists in the pleasure of the work. It is an innocent, an interesting, and an honourable occupation.

2. There enters into the reward of religiously educating children, the pleasure which arises from doing good to society.

3. There is high honour in cooperating with God, and great happiness in conforming to the intentions of His providence.

4. The good of his children is what every parent purposes to himself, as the object, perhaps, of his fondest desire, as the motive to all his parental conduct. And herein is a large part of the wages of fidelity in religiously educating them, that thereby their great good in this life will be most effectually promoted. It is a perilous and unhappy world into which you introduce them. And yet the misfortune is, that in education respect is more generally had to its pleasures than its sorrows, to its honours than its snares. The great question concerning your offspring is, where in it shall wisdom be found, and where is the place of satisfaction? Look around you. See in what path they shall be most likely to find peace. Examine the claims of wealth, of honour, of rank, of power, of pleasure. Turn to religion. Institute a comparison between her claims and theirs. Inquire which of them has most efficacy to quell the passions, which are the parents of evil; to soothe the sorrows, which are the offspring of our condition; to open sources of happiness at which the weary spirit may always be refreshed; and to take the barbs from the arrows of death? Such a comparison will assuredly produce a result in favour of a Christian education.

5. The faithful parent has a recompense for his care in the religious education of his children, in the greater security of his own happiness. It is through the child that the heart of a parent is most vulnerable. The hour comes when your children shall stand around you, and you will perceive that you are leaving them without you in this evil world. What can mitigate this anguish of death? What but to be able to say of them, when you cast on them your final look, "I am going unto my Father, and their Father; and to my God, and their God." They will honour me in their lives when I shall be gone. The Almighty is their Friend and He will protect them.

6. But not in this life is the reward of the faithful in any case complete. By far the largest part of the "wages," which God, in His mercy, has promised to any of their good works, is reserved to be given them in the great day of the final consummation.

(Bp. Dehon.)

     5428   nurse

Exodus 2:1-10

     5652   babies
     7775   prophets, lives

Home as a Stewardship.
"Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages."--EXODUS II., 9. "For look, how many souls in thy house be, With just as many souls God trusteth thee!" The Christian home is a stewardship. The parents are stewards of God. A steward is a servant of a particular kind, to whom the master commits a certain portion of his interest to be prosecuted in his name and by his authority, and according to his laws and regulations. The steward must act according to the will of his …
Samuel Philips—The Christian Home

The Upbringing of Jewish Children
The tenderness of the bond which united Jewish parents to their children appears even in the multiplicity and pictorialness of the expressions by which the various stages of child-life are designated in the Hebrew. Besides such general words as "ben" and "bath"--"son" and "daughter"--we find no fewer than nine different terms, each depicting a fresh stage of life. The first of these simply designates the babe as the newly--"born"--the "jeled," or, in the feminine, "jaldah"--as in Exodus 2:3, 6, 8. …
Alfred Edersheim—Sketches of Jewish Social Life

The Secret of Its Greatness
[Illustration: (drop cap G) The Great Pyramid] God always chooses the right kind of people to do His work. Not only so, He always gives to those whom He chooses just the sort of life which will best prepare them for the work He will one day call them to do. That is why God put it into the heart of Pharaoh's daughter to bring up Moses as her own son in the Egyptian palace. The most important part of Moses' training was that his heart should be right with God, and therefore he was allowed to remain …
Mildred Duff—The Bible in its Making

Motives to Holy Mourning
Let me exhort Christians to holy mourning. I now persuade to such a mourning as will prepare the soul for blessedness. Oh that our hearts were spiritual limbecs, distilling the water of holy tears! Christ's doves weep. They that escape shall be like doves of the valleys, all of them mourning, every one for his iniquity' (Ezekiel 7:16). There are several divine motives to holy mourning: 1 Tears cannot be put to a better use. If you weep for outward losses, you lose your tears. It is like a shower …
Thomas Watson—The Beatitudes: An Exposition of Matthew 5:1-12

The Faith of Moses.
"By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to be evil entreated with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; accounting the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he looked unto the recompense of reward. By faith he forsook …
Thomas Charles Edwards—The Expositor's Bible: The Epistle to the Hebrews

Jesus Sets Out from Judæa for Galilee.
Subdivision B. At Jacob's Well, and at Sychar. ^D John IV. 5-42. ^d 5 So he cometh to a city of Samaria, called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 and Jacob's well was there. [Commentators long made the mistake of supposing that Shechem, now called Nablous, was the town here called Sychar. Sheckem lies a mile and a half west of Jacob's well, while the real Sychar, now called 'Askar, lies scarcely half a mile north of the well. It was a small town, loosely called …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Consolations against Impatience in Sickness.
If in thy sickness by extremity of pain thou be driven to impatience, meditate-- 1. That thy sins have deserved the pains of hell; therefore thou mayest with greater patience endure these fatherly corrections. 2. That these are the scourges of thy heavenly Father, and the rod is in his hand. If thou didst suffer with reverence, being a child, the corrections of thy earthly parents, how much rather shouldst thou now subject thyself, being the child of God, to the chastisement of thy heavenly Father, …
Lewis Bayly—The Practice of Piety

Man's Misery by the Fall
Q-19: WHAT IS THE MISERY OF THAT ESTATE WHEREINTO MAN FELL? A: All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever. 'And were by nature children of wrath.' Eph 2:2. Adam left an unhappy portion to his posterity, Sin and Misery. Having considered the first of these, original sin, we shall now advert to the misery of that state. In the first, we have seen mankind offending; …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Genealogy According to Luke.
^C Luke III. 23-38. ^c 23 And Jesus himself [Luke has been speaking about John the Baptist, he now turns to speak of Jesus himself], when he began to teach, was about thirty years of age [the age when a Levite entered upon God's service--Num. iv. 46, 47], being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son [this may mean that Jesus was grandson of Heli, or that Joseph was counted as a son of Heli because he was his son-in-law] of Heli, 24 the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Adoption
'As many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.' John 1:12. Having spoken of the great points of faith and justification, we come next to adoption. The qualification of the persons is, As many as received him.' Receiving is put for believing, as is clear by the last words, to them that believe in his name.' The specification of the privilege is, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.' The Greek word for power, exousia, signifies …
Thomas Watson—A Body of Divinity

Appendix xii. The Baptism of Proselytes
ONLY those who have made study of it can have any idea how large, and sometimes bewildering, is the literature on the subject of Jewish Proselytes and their Baptism. Our present remarks will be confined to the Baptism of Proselytes. 1. Generally, as regards proselytes (Gerim) we have to distinguish between the Ger ha-Shaar (proselyte of the gate) and Ger Toshabh (sojourner,' settled among Israel), and again the Ger hatstsedeq (proselyte of righteousness) and Ger habberith (proselyte of the covenant). …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

Appendix ii. Philo of Alexandria and Rabbinic Theology.
(Ad. vol. i. p. 42, note 4.) In comparing the allegorical Canons of Philo with those of Jewish traditionalism, we think first of all of the seven exegetical canons which are ascribed to Hillel. These bear chiefly the character of logical deductions, and as such were largely applied in the Halakhah. These seven canons were next expanded by R. Ishmael (in the first century) into thirteen, by the analysis of one of them (the 5th) into six, and the addition of this sound exegetical rule, that where two …
Alfred Edersheim—The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah

John the Baptist's Person and Preaching.
(in the Wilderness of Judæa, and on the Banks of the Jordan, Occupying Several Months, Probably a.d. 25 or 26.) ^A Matt. III. 1-12; ^B Mark I. 1-8; ^C Luke III. 1-18. ^b 1 The beginning of the gospel [John begins his Gospel from eternity, where the Word is found coexistent with God. Matthew begins with Jesus, the humanly generated son of Abraham and David, born in the days of Herod the king. Luke begins with the birth of John the Baptist, the Messiah's herald; and Mark begins with the ministry …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Exodus
The book of Exodus--so named in the Greek version from the march of Israel out of Egypt--opens upon a scene of oppression very different from the prosperity and triumph in which Genesis had closed. Israel is being cruelly crushed by the new dynasty which has arisen in Egypt (i.) and the story of the book is the story of her redemption. Ultimately it is Israel's God that is her redeemer, but He operates largely by human means; and the first step is the preparation of a deliverer, Moses, whose parentage, …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament