Pray with Spurgeon

WEEKEND EDITION

Editor’s Note: As we approach the end of 2024, I wanted to share a bonus email with extra content from Spurgeon. This article by Spurgeon is one of the most convicting resources I’ve ever found from him. While it’s nearly 150 years old, its warnings ring more true than ever before.

If you are a parent, I hope you’ll read this.

In the article, Spurgeon will argue that parents who don’t teach their kids about Christ are just as wicked as parents who offered their children to Molech, the Canaanite deity who demanded child sacrifice by fire.

If you are a parent and wanting to get serious about discipling your kids in 2025, it doesn’t have to be complicated. Make the commitment today to simply read the Bible to your kids every. Make 2025 a Year in the Word. I’ve put together some free and paid resources to help you get started.

If you want a guide to help you, please check out God Centered Family, my series of family devotionals covering every book of the Bible.

CHILDREN OFFERED TO MOLECH

An Article by Charles Spurgeon | First published in “The Sword and the Trowel,” April 1884

It is difficult to gauge the depth of depravity which led men in old time to sacrifice their children in the fire to Molech. We shudder as we think of that cruel homage to a fiend blasphemously dignified with the name of “god.” We can hardly imagine that there now lives upon the face of the earth a human being who would attempt to justify so immeasurable a crime. This seems to have been the culmination of the Israelite tribe of Manasseh’s enormous mass of sin: “He passed his sons through the fire in Ben Hinnom Valley” (2 Chronicles 33:6). Nothing can be conceived of more atrocious, and though the king himself repented, and obtained mercy of the Lord, yet in after ages this great sin of Judah’s ruler, allowed by his people, was laid to the nation’s charge, and therefore were the people removed into all kingdoms of the earth.

Now, a crime which can no longer be committed in one form may still be perpetrated in another: the essence of the transgression may abound long after one form of it has been utterly abolished. It is so with this sacrifice of children to Molech in the fire. It is practiced still; practiced by many who wear the Christian name. We grieve as we write, but the rebuke must not be withheld.

Too many professing Christians sacrifice their children’s souls to the Molech of the world. Why would you place boys in godless families as apprentices? Why are lads placed, for business advantages, where their morals are tainted and their souls defiled? In sadly too many cases the great question as to religious example is not even asked, but the one and only consideration is to get the youth into a large firm, where, by push and energy, he may rise into a position. True, he may be initiated into the foulest vice, but what of that? The principal is irreligious, and cares nothing about godliness, or even about morals; and the house might readily be known to be a hotbed of every form of evil, but what of that? The boy is doomed to go through the Molech-fire, and the father, though a member of a Christian church, pushes his boy into the flames with a hypocritical prayer that he may not be too badly burned. Perhaps his son does make a business-man, and an infidel, or a debauched young man, but what of that? How can parents avoid such calamities? We hesitate not to say that the damnation of many a son has been directly contracted for by his own father when he signed the boy’s indentures. It would be idle if we threw our child over a precipice, to kneel down, and devoutly pray that he might arrive safely at the bottom; his mangled carcass would grimly mock our detestable supplications; but when parents place their offspring under the influence of graceless employers, to live with youths of licentious character, it is just as absurd for them to talk of their pleading for their dear boys that they might be kept from the evil of the wicked city. Ghastly falseness! They thrust them into the fire, and cover their infamous act with the loathsome unction of a prayer that they may come out of the burning, fiery furnace unharmed. Nebuchadnezzar never went the length of such impiety!

The girl, too, is not safe from the cruel kindness of her parents, and in her case the mother is often much to blame. The Molech of society shall have her for its victim. Of course she must be dressed like a vain woman of the world, and taught to dance, and set to sing songs which are not those of Zion. Would you keep her out of society? She must be introduced to frivolous acquaintances and allowed to attend questionable amusements. Why not? She will by-and-by be picked up by some graceless fellow, who will make her a handsome husband and most probably devour her substance, laugh her out of every pretense of religion and make her a miserable woman; but again we ask, what of that? Society must have its victims, and it seems that she must kidnap them from Christian families, and Christian men and women must act as executioners of their own children, aiding and abetting their giving up of their souls to the most heartless and most foolish of all the world’s idols, called society. Alas, that the society of saints should be so dull, the ways of God so desolate, that to give the dear girls a little “life” they must be led over to the world’s transparent lies, and taught to find happiness amid its base enchantments.

Upon both boys and girls this child sacrifice is frequently practiced under the pretense of giving them a first-rate education. At home, a school is selected only because of its fashionable reputation; and at next vacation time the young people have already learned so much that they ask why they may not go to the theatre, for they have greatly enjoyed private theatricals; and soon it oozes out that they are schooled in all kinds of evil through the zealous tutorship of their peers, for which no antidote has been found in the holy warnings of earnest teachers, for the teachers have also helped them as far into worldliness and gaiety as they decorously could. But the fashion is to send young people abroad to learn modern languages, and with these they learn a great many vices and errors, both ancient and modern. It is a Catholic school, what of that? What of anything, indeed? If not a Catholic school, the teaching is tainted with German unbelief, what of that? These are only sparks of the Molech fire. Can we have a burning without smoke and black? These Puritan scruples are old-fashioned. The young people must know French and German, even if they go to hell in the process. And this is the silent thought of church-members, deacons, and, must we add, ministers? It is even so. Surely the prayers of such saints for their children’s salvation must make even pandemonium laugh. Such a fine farce, such a rare comedy, must be an entertainment such as the prince of darkness could not readily get up for his royal delectation in the Opera Comique of hell if he had not the help of Christian professors. When worldly parents do thus with their children none can blame them; but this from men and women who talk of holiness and communion with the Lord Jesus! This from those who aspire to be soul-winners! Why, it must seem to Beelzebub to be too much of a good thing.

[Editor’s note: This next example may not seem relevant today, but think about how zealously we pass our hobbies and interests onto our children, without thought about if they are healthy or helpful.]

This mischief may be detected in another form, in the too common drinking customs, which are still cherished in a few families. Children are taught to drink, encouraged to drink, and praised for drinking; the glass is even made a reward for good conduct. It will be little wonder if they grow up to equal, and surpass their seniors, when precept and example are pointed by contemptuous jests aimed at abstainers. We have heard Christian people declare that if their children acquired a taste for strong drink it should be in afterlife but they would not bear the responsibility of training them in it; and we have thought this to be true common sense. But what is that spirit which leads a professed believer in Christ to put the bottle to his neighbor’s mouth, nay, to his child’s mouth? What is that spirit which has induced some to trample upon the scruples of the little one, and exclaim in anger, “I will have none of such nonsense. Are you going to teach your parents, and set up to be better than they?” Thousands of boys are the victims of Bacchus, for their fathers train them to take their share of beer; this is mostly among the working-classes but are there not too many in all ranks of society who in other shapes offer their children upon the altar of the fiery fiend? Let the careful parent think this matter over before he further allows wine at juvenile parties or at holiday festivals. It may seem a trifle and in itself it may be so, but when the son becomes a sot, it will afford his father no pleasure to remember that he told him to “stick to his beer,” or taught him how to know a glass of fine old port. If men will resolve to be the slaves of sin, it is not of necessity that the sin should be intoxication, which exerts so baneful an influence upon those around them, and so fearfully opens the door to other vices. Yet it is to this most groveling of idols that multitudes of the young are offered up a living sacrifice; and the question is—Shall this be done by those who claim to be members of the body of Christ? Oh, that the answer might be a negative,—emphatic, unanimous, decisive!

Murder is a deed most foul. Soul-murder cannot be put into a secondary class of guilt. The soul-murder of our own children must be a crime which reeks to heaven. Will not every one, who fears that he may have been chargeable therewith, cry out before the Lord, “Save me from the guilt of bloodshed, God—God of my salvation” (Psalm 51:14)?

As it will be our crown to win souls, so will it be a dishonor and a blot to cause a soul to perish. The Lord hold us back from so grave a crime.

Amen.