Perseverance
in the Teaching of Children

Mr Spurgeon uses an old practice of planting beans to illustrate the steady perseverance needed in the teaching of children.

“The old practice,” he tells us, “was to put three beans in each hole: one for the worm, one for the crew, and one to live and produce the crop.” So it is, he says, in teaching children: “we must give line upon line, precept upon precept, repeating the truth which we would inculcate, till it becomes impossible for the child to forget it. We may well give the lesson once, expecting the child’s frail memory (like some worm) to lose it; twice, reckoning that the devil, like some ill bird, will steal it; thrice, hoping that it will take root downward, and bring forth fruit upward to the glory of God.”

So be it. But it is not only the teaching of children with perseverance that the old practice illustrates. How often we fail to take into account the kind of conditions of heart and mind in which the gospel is to live and grow by the grace of God, so that when we make one little effort and there doesn’t seem to be any immediate “success,” we leave off to be faithful.

Better to take into account “the worm,” and the crow,” and labour accordingly. We may remember what Paul said about not wearying in well doing, for in due season ye shall reap, if ye faint not. It was a tremendously unlikely place that the man in the 72nd psalm sowed his “handful of corn:” – “upon the top of the mountains.” But “the fruit thereof” was to “shake like Lebanon.” The human heart is a devouring worm – the old devil is a swooping bird, but we may yet sow on, looking for that seed that will “take root downward, and bring forth fruit upward to the glory of God.”