You may speak but a word to a child, and in that child there may be slumbering a noble heart which shall stir the Christian Church in years to come.
Interpretation
A small influence on a child can lead to significant future impact.
This quote emphasizes the potential and value of nurturing the minds and hearts of children. Spurgeon suggests that even a brief interaction or word imparted to a child can awaken their inherent greatness, potentially leading them to enact meaningful change in society, such as revitalizing the Christian Church in the future.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, one could say, 'As Charles Spurgeon noted, you may speak but a word to a child, and that word can shape their future.'
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
In the '70s and '80s there was an attempt in K-12 to teach science through art or art through science. The challenge today is how do you build the ethos of art and design into the academy of science.
Across time and generations, books carry the thoughts and feelings, the essence, of the human spirit.
Anyone can repeat a technical explanation they read in a text-book or blog post.
When you write what you know, you stay in control. One of the first things I encourage my writing students to do is to lose control - say what they want to say, break structure.
In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.
If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.
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