Faithful Be, For the Children’s Sake

When I first began to implement Miss Mason’s methods I may have thought, a time or two, that things must have been so much easier for the mothers and governesses in Mason’s time. The mothers were all upper class gentlewomen, right? Wrong, actually. But did that really matter anyway? Even for the women who had several maids and a full kitchen staff, was it any easier to bring up a child? For the governesses trained in Mason’s school, trained by Mason herself, was their task any less daunting? Has it ever been easy to lead a child along the narrow way that leads to life? And when faced with the enormity of the task, understanding the chief thing we have to do, should we expect it to cost us any less than everything we have?

I hope that you will be encouraged, as I have been, by this hymn written by Miss Mason’s biographer, Essex Cholmondeley.

 

For the Children’s Sake

“For their sakes I sanctify myself” (John 17:19)

Ye who for the truth contending,

love the path which Jesus trod,

Help the children who are wending

that same way to worship God.

Wake! Awake!

Keep the road for the children’s sake!

On through wilderness or garden,

Blackest night or fairest day,

Casting out the cares which harden,

Tread the path, prepare the way,

Courage take!

Faithful be! For the children’s sake.

Cultivate the desert places,

Plough sand so the fallow ground,

Plant with joy the barren spaces

Which in every realm abound.

Wake! Awake!

Labour now! For the children’s sake.

Seek not ease, and love not leisure,

Give to Caesar all his due,

Lay not up the earthly treasure,

Other gold they need of you.

All forsake!

Follow Christ — For the children’s sake.

You who see the acorn lying

Humbly in the cool spring earth

Learn to share its patient dying,

Learn to wait its glorious birth.

Sleep — to wake!

Lose yourselves for the children’s sake.

In the precious months of training,

In the patient years of toil,

When at length you re attaining

Master of air and soil.

God’s hand take,

Hold it fast, for the children’s sake.

Essex Cholmondeley