“Your Word is a lamp to my feet, and a light for my path!” Psalm 119:105
In many houses you will see beautiful Bibles bound handsomely in morocco leather, with gilt edges, and full of bright pictures. I love to see a beautiful Bible in a home, especially if it is not kept too clean and unsoiled. But the most beautiful form in which a household Bible can be bound, is in the holy life of godly parents. There is no tinted, gold-edged paper so lovely as the pages God gives us on which to write our daily record.
The precepts and lessons of the inspired Word sound very sweetly when read out of a richly-covered volume–but they sound far more sweetly, when the child can spell them out of the parent’s daily life.
It is well for a parent to read to his child from the inspired page about the beauty of holiness; but it is better still when the child can see that beauty shining out transfigured in every feature of his parent’s character.
It is well for him to read of the patience, gentleness, meekness, forbearance, and love of Christ; but it is better when he exemplifies all of these traits.
It is well for him to teach the child what the Bible says about lying, profanity, intemperance, and all sins; it is better when his life proclaims all these lessons.
No family Bible is so well printed and bound, as the one that is printed on the heart, and bound up in the life of a godly parent. I would recommend to all parents this kind of Bible, and to keep the dust off it always by constant use. This is the best kind for a lamp to the children’s feet.
A beautiful Christian life is a living epistle written by the hand of God which the youngest child can read before it has learned to spell out the shortest words of the language. It is a sermon that preaches Christ all day long, seven days in the week!
There is no heresy so dangerous to childhood as heresies lived in the home!
– C. H. Spurgeon