Encouragement for Mothers

The Puritan Thomas Manton, in the introduction to the Westminster Confession of Faith, tells of the importance of women in family worship and management:

"Especially women should be careful of this duty; because as they are most about their children, and have early and frequent opportunities to instruct them, so this is the principal service they can do to God in this world...  And doubtless many an excellent magistrate hath been sent into the Common-wealth, and many an excellent pastor into the Church, and many a precious saint to heaven, through the happy preparataions of a holy education, perhaps by a woman that thought herself useless and unserviceable to the Church.  Would parents but... labor to affect the hearts of their children with the great matters of everlasting life, and to acquant them with the substance of the doctrine of Christ, and, when they find in them the knowledge and love of Christ, would bring them then to the pastors of the Church to be tried, confirmed, and admitted to the further privileges of the Church, what happy, well-ordered Churches might we have!"