The third compromise suggested by Pharaoh was that the adults should go (from Egypt to Canaan) but that their children should be left in Egypt. Let the grown-ups - let the old people do it if they want to but leave the children here.

This was perhaps the most subtle and the most successful of all the compromises, because even the most godly parents today desire worldly prosperity and position for their children. They want their children to stay in Egypt, they want their children to find success and approval in Egypt.

One of the greatest problems facing the church today is the fact that so many children and young people are still in Egypt with the approval and the consent of their parents.

In most cases the schools have been strictly prohibited from teaching religion. We have supposed that it is possible to provide education which is religiously neutral, to which religion can then be added in greater or lesser measure. But in fact, an education which is not religious is atheistic.There is no middle ground. If you give to your children an account of the world from which God is left out, you will teach them to understand the world without reference to God.

Now if God exists at all, it is obvious that He is the most important of all that does exist. We can understand nothing properly, until we see it in its relation to God and His purpose.

There are many devout Christian parents who have literally vowed God out of their homes. They no longer have family prayers. they have dispensed with the blessing at meals. There is no giving of thanks to God for the daily bread. Religious instruction in the home has become a thing of the past.

And yet I do not suggest that modern parents are not devoted to their children. They are anxious to have their children succeed, they are desparately concerned that their children shall be happy. The welfare of their children is very dear to them, and yet in many cases, it neglects the most important things.

Children are provided with the very best in medical, dental, and optical care. their teeth are given careful attention, their eyesight, their tonsils, their posture, are all looked after. The social graces are not neglected. They are given music lessons, instructions in expression, they are given dramatics, and music appreciation. their bodies and their minds are carefully nurtured and trained while their souls are starved and neglected.

Where are the children? Where are your children? Are they in Egypt? Are you content that they should stay in Egypt, and grow into manhood and womanhood without knowing God? Is it your desire that they shall grow up without the faith of their grandparents?

You are anxious that they shall succeed in college and obtain good grades. Well that is certainly a laudable ambition... You are anxious that they shall be endowed with all the social graces, and have friends, and be accepted in society. Well these ambitions are not to be condemned. But they are not the most important things in life, and when you have discharged them all, you have not fulfilled your obligation to your children.

Some parents have discovered that their children do not like to go to church or to Sunday School. This seems to be true of a considerable number of normal children. Now if going to church and Sunday School were the only wholesome activities to which children objected, then it might be something to alarm parents. But this is merely one of a number of things, many of them quite normal, that children do not want to do.

Some of them do not want to go to public school either, and yet one does not hear the parents say, "Dear, dear, I do not know what to do. Our children dislike public school, and so, we don't make them go, for fear they will grow up hating knowledge, and later on will not want to go to college! So we just let them go when they feel like going."

Most little boys do not like to wash their necks or to clean behind their ears. And yet when parents make this disturbing discovery, that the young gentleman reacts very violently to this wholesome activity, they do not say, "Well, we never force our little boy to wash his neck, or to wash behind his ears, because we are afraid that when he grows up he will hate soap and water, and become a dirty man who never takes a bath."

Religious trainingt and the cultivation of religious habits are even more important than the training and the cultivation of cultural habits.

Children who are brought up to feel that this is a world in which people can follow their own inclinations have been given a false view of life, which they will later have to unlearn by painful experience.

If Sunday morning should be inclement, far too many parents are inclined to say, "Well it is a very nasty day. It's a shame to send our child out on a day like this." So greatly to his delight, the little boy is allowed to stay at home. But if the inclement weather continues until the next morning, if it is inclement on Monday morning, he finds to his dismay that the same rules do not apply. You see, parents regard it as important that he should go to public school. Thus we are bringing up a generation of young people that are being taught by their parents that religion is not important, that the cultivation of the soul is not a very serious matter...

One half of all American children today receive absolutel no religious instruction whatsoever. And the alarming thing about it is that most of them belong to the privileged groups. They live in our Chevy Chase and your Gross Point. They are not children of the slums...

There are children who have been left in Egypt, who do not know God. They are not antagonistic to religion, or to the church, but to them, religion and the church are simply not important, and it is hard to see how they can be called anything other than pagan.

...a famous businessman was pacing the dark in deepest despair. A friend said, "What's on your mind?" He answered, "I'm a miserable failure." "Oh no," said the friend, "to the contrary, you're a brilliant success, so much so that every American boy who dreams of a future for himself seeks a future such as your life has been!" And the man answered, "But what's the use of it all, if your son is a fool?"

I might add another and even more searching question: What is the good of your son's phi-beta-kappa key, or your girl's successful career in music or art or journalism, if they don't know God, if they are not saved, if they have not entered into a saving relationship with God through Christ, if they are spiritually illiterate or spiritually dead?