Come Ye Children

It is Charles Spurgeon's book for parents and Sunday-school teachers on the Christian training of children. Taking its title from Psalm 34:11 — “Come, ye children, hearken unto me: I will teach you the fear of the Lord” — it urges that children be brought to Christ early, taught the gospel plainly, and expected to be truly converted.

For adults who have the care of children: fathers and mothers, Sunday-school teachers, and ministers. It is not a children's book but a book about children — a charge to those who teach them, with practical counsel on gaining their attention, winning their love, and keeping the cross at the centre of every lesson.

He takes Christ's words to Peter in John 21 as a commission to the whole church. The lambs are the young of the flock, and Spurgeon argues that feeding them is no lesser work but one that needs the best Christians, a heart that loves Christ, and teaching that is full of the gospel rather than mere moral lessons.

Yes, emphatically. He calls the idea that children must wait until they are older to come to Christ as wrong as wrong can be, and he warns teachers against hindering the little ones. He tells of children he had known who gave clear evidence of grace, and he insists that adults must become like little children to enter the kingdom at all.

Many. Spurgeon writes on Jesus blessing the little children, the child Timothy taught the Scriptures by his mother and grandmother, Samuel in the temple, Obadiah who feared the Lord from his youth, the young Abijah in whom was found “some good thing toward the Lord God of Israel,” and Elisha raising the Shunammite woman's son as a picture of the teacher's work with a soul.

To get the children to come, to win their love, and to hold their attention — with illustrations, anecdotes and plain words. Above all he urges teachers to keep Christ crucified at the centre, to teach the ruin of sin, redemption by the blood, and regeneration by the Spirit, and to pray earnestly for the conversion of every child in their care.