Lamplighter Publishing is a division of Cornerstone Family Ministries based in Waverley Pennsylvania. They are committed to promoting Christian family life and this particular book is one of a series of slim volumes in which they republish some older books originally written mainly for children. Most of these are simplified, at least in part, but the main body and subject matter remain the same. This particular book is thought to have been written by a young man named John Carrol who lived in England in the seventeenth century and died at the age of twenty-two. As the title suggests it is based on his experience of the scripture found in Hosea chapter two where God says, “Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns…” It is a simple but moving testimony as to how he found the mercies of God through the truth of God’s statement, he went astray but God never let him go and pricked him by many thorns. This is not a book that a little child could read unaided, rather, one that could be read by parents to and with their child. There is a great discipline attached to reading, parents frequently seem to lack wisdom in that they allow their children to walk their own paths as to what they read and do not read instead of training them from an early age to discern the value of literature that has clear moral and spiritual grounds and are a vehicle for quickening the child’s imagination, intelligence and conscience. John Carrol’s story has ingredients that are tender and serious. When he went astray from the path of the Lord his parents taught and exemplified to him, the Lord did “hedge up his way with thorns.” These became the source of God’s mercies to him. This manuscript, written by his own hand was found in his Bible on his deathbed. He had gone astray from the Lord in a way that speaks volumes as to what occurs in the lives of many young church people today only in his case that folly resulted in his death. We may say that the simplicity, pathos and spiritual power of his story will leave an indelible imprint in the hearts of both parent and child as they read it together. Perhaps it will prompt the obtaining of further books from this series.
