Young Should be Trained to Attendance At Public Worship

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

Genesis 18:19

For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the LORD…

The question is often asked how shall we get our working-classes to attend public worship? The answer may be supplied by an incident of my boyhood. On the mantelshell of my grandmother's best parlour, among other marvels, was an apple in a phial. It quite filled up the body of the bottle, and my wondering inquiry was, "How could it have been got into its place?" By stealth I climbed a chair to see if the bottom would unscrew, or if there had been a join in the glass throughout the length of the phial. I was satisfied by careful observation that neither of these theories could be supported, and the apple remained to me an enigma and a mystery. But as it was said of that other wonder, the source of the Nile, "Nature well known, no mystery remains," so was it here. Walking in the garden I saw a phial placed on a tree bearing within it a tiny apple, which was growing within the crystal; now I saw it all; the apple was put into the bottle while it was little and grew there.

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