is?

After being superintendent of a Sunday school in Chicago for a number
of years, a school of over a thousand members, children that came from
godless homes, having mothers and fathers working against me, taking
the children off on excursions on Sunday, and doing all they could to
break up the work I was trying to do, I used to think that if I should
ever stand before an audience I would speak to no one but parents;
that would be my chief business. It is an old saying--"Get the lamb,
and you will get the sheep." I gave that up years ago. Give me the
sheep, and then I will have someone to nurse the lamb; but get a lamb
and convert him, and if he has a godless father and mother, you will
have little chance with that child. What we want is godly homes. The
home was established long before the Church.

I have no sympathy with the idea that our children have to grow up
before they are converted. Once I saw a lady with three daughters at
her side, and I stepped up to her and asked her if she was a
Christian.

"Yes, sir."

Then I asked the oldest daughter if she was a Christian. The chin
began to quiver, and the tears came into her eyes, and she said,

"I wish I was."

The mother looked very angrily at me and said, "I don't want you to
speak to my children on that subject. They don't understand." And in
great rage she took them all away from me. One daughter was fourteen
years old, one twelve, and the other ten, but they were not old enough
to be talked to about religion. Let them drift into the world and
plunge into worldly amusements, and then see how hard it is to reach
them. Many a mother is mourning to-day because her boy has gone beyond
her reach, and will not allow her to pray with him. She may pray _for_
him, but he will not let her pray or talk _with_ him. In those early
days when his mind was tender and young, she might have led him to
Christ. Bring them in. "Suffer the little children to come unto Me."
Is there a prayerless father reading this? May God let the arrow go
down into your soul! Make up your mind that, God helping you, you will
get the children in. God's order is to the father first, but if he
isn't true to his duty, then the mother should be true, and save the
children from the wreck. Now is the time to do it while you have them
under your roof. Exert your parental influence over them.

I never speak to parents but I think of two fathers, one of whom lived
on the banks of the Mississippi, the