Discipline should be administered with i_The Christian Home As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc.

a favorite. Favoritism and consequent indulgence, will produce prejudice

against the other children. It will introduce dissension among them. This

is unworthy the Christian parent and his home. The history of Jacob and

Joseph, as regards both the subject and the victim of parental favoritism,

is a warning against such partiality. It produces, pride, envy, jealousy,

family broils and strife, in which even the parents take a part, and by

which the husband is often set against his wife, parents against children,

and children against each other.

Correction is an essential element of true discipline. "The rod and the

reproof give wisdom." There are two things in correction,--the reins and

the whip, or the command and the chastisement. The one should not take the

place of the other. The scepter must not be converted into a whip. If the

reins are properly held and used, the whip need scarcely ever be required.

If the child is timely and properly trained, commanded and chided, he will

not require much chastisement,--perhaps no corporeal punishment. It is

better to prevent crimes than to punish them; for prevention is more than

cure.

Hence the first thing in discipline is timely and wholesome command. Guide

and train your child properly, and you need seldom resort to coercion.

Training and leading are better than forcing. By the former you establish a

habit of systematic obedience which will soon become a pleasure to the

child. By the latter you jade and vex and burden him. But when the reins

will not do alone, then the whip must be resorted to. And the question at

once arises, what kind of a whip? We answer, not such as you use to your

horses and oxen in the team,--not the horse-whip. Corporeal punishment

should be used only as a last resort, when all other corrections have

failed, when the child becomes an outlaw, and his reprobate heart can be

reached only through the infliction of bodily pain. As a general thing it

is even then unavailing, because too mechanical to produce permanent good,

and not adapted to mental and moral reformation.

Sometimes, however, there is necessity in the use of this rod. "Every

child," says Dr. South, "has some brute in it, and some man in it, and just

in proportion to the brute we must whip it." When thus necessary we should

not shrink from this kind of correction. "It is pusillanimity, as well as

folly, to shrink from the crushing of the egg, but to wait composedly for

the hatching of the viper." Yet, on the other hand, in the language of Dr.

Bell, "a maximum of attainment can be made only by a minimum of

punishment."

In the discipline of home, whether by guidance or by forcing, whether by

the rein or the rod, much depends upon the manner in which it is

administered. It should always be adapted to the peculiar character and

offense of the child. You can restrain some children better by kind words

and promises than by rough admonitions and threats. Study, therefore, the

peculiarities of your child, and prudently apportion the correction to the

offense. If there are sincere penitence and confession, the correction

should be purely moral. Let the object of every correction be to produce

penitence and reformation of heart as well as of conduct, and a hatred of

the offense. Always execute your threats and fulfill your promises at the

time and on the occasion designated. Threaten as little as possible, and be

not hasty in your threats. Treat your children as rational and moral

beings:

"Be obeyed when thou commandest, but command not often;

Spare not, if thy word hath passed for punishment;

Let not thy child see thee humbled, nor learn to think thee

false."

Always examine the offense before you punish. See whether it is of

ignorance or not,--whether of the head or the heart,--whether intentional

or accidental. Examine his motives in committing the offense. If you find

he merits correction, before you inflict it, lay before him the nature and

enormity of the offense, wherein he disobeyed, the guilt of that

disobedience, its consequences, and your duty to correct him for it.

Never correct in a state of anger. Some correct only when they are in a

violent passion. This is ruling from passion, not from principle. It is

like administering medicine scalding hot, which rather burns than cures. Be

judicious and kind in all your discipline; otherwise you may engender in

your child the very propensities and improprieties of action you desire to

eradicate. A mild rebuke in the season of calmness, is better than a rod

in the heat of passion. Let your children know and see that all your

discipline is for their own good,--to arrest them from danger and ruin, and

to train them up in the way God would have them go. Let your words and

deeds show this in the form of parental kindness and sympathy and

solicitude. This will do more than the angry look, the stormy threat, and

the cruel lash.

"By kindness the wolf and the zebra become docile as the spaniel and the

horse;

The kite feedeth with the starling under the law of kindness;

That law shall tame the fiercest, bring down the battlements of pride,

Cherish the weak, control the strong, and win the fearful spirit.

Let thy carriage be the gentleness of love, not the stern front of

tyranny."

CHAPTER XX.

HOME-EXAMPLE.

"Example strikes

All human hearts! A bad example more;

More still a father's!"

Example has much to do with the interests of home. It plays an important

part in the formation of character; and its influence is felt more than

that of precept. Our object in this chapter is to show the bearing of

example upon the well-being of the Christian home. Example may be good or

bad. Its power arises out of the home-confidence and authority. Children

possess an imitative disposition. They look up to their parents as the

pattern or model of their character, and conclude what they do is right and

worthy of their imitation. Hence the parental example may lead the child to

happiness or to ruin.

"Lo! thou art a landmark on a hill; thy little ones copy thee in all

things.

Show me a child undutiful, I shall know where to look for a foolish

father;

But how can that son reverence an example he dare not follow?

Should he imitate thee in thine evil? his scorn is thy rebuke."

The power and influence of the home-example are incalculable. Example is

teaching by action. By it the child inherits the spirit and character of

the parent. Such is its influence that you can estimate the parent by the

child. Show me a child, polite, courteous, refined, moral and honorable in

all his sentiments and conduct; and I will point you to a well-conducted

nursery, to noble and high-minded parents, faithful to their offspring.

Theirs is a holy and a happy home; and the blessing of God rests upon it.

But on the other hand, in the wayward, dissolute child I discern unfaithful

parents who have no respect for religion, and who take no interest in the

spiritual welfare of their children. Thus the child is a living commentary

upon its home and its parents. The fruits of the latter will be seen in the

character of the former. The child is the moral reproduction of the parent.

Hence the pious parent is rewarded in his child, and the immoral parent is

cursed in his child. Whatsoever thou sowest in thy child, that shalt thou

also reap.

[Illustration: Sunshine of Youth.]

The precepts of home are unavailing unless enforced by a corresponding

example. Nothing is so forcible and encouraging as the "Follow me." It

proves sincerity and earnestness; and is adapted to the imitative capacity

and disposition of the child. It is all-commanding and resistless. Says

Solomon, "Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his

friend." Says Paul "It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor

anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak."

Says Shakspeare, "One drunkard loves another of the name." Says Dr. Young--

"Ambition fires ambition; love of gain

Strikes like a pestilence from breast to breast;

Riot, pride, perfidy, blue vapor's breath;

And inhumanity is caught from man,

From smiling man."

If such is the influence of example, we must admit the necessity of a true

Christian example in the family. It is necessary because it is the

condition of the efficacy of home-precepts. "During the minority of reason,

imitation is the regent of the soul, and they who are least swayed by

argument are most governed by example." We learn from example before we can

speak. Hence if we would have our children walk in the way of God's

commandments, we must go before them; we must take the lead; we must

exemplify in our action what we incorporate in our oral instructions; our

light must shine not only upon, but before them; they must see our good

works as well as hear our good precepts. Said a man once to J.A. James, "I

owe everything under God, to the eminent and consistent piety of my father.

So thoroughly consistent was he, that I could find nothing in the smallest

degree at variance with his character as a professor of religion. This kept

its hold upon me." It was the means of his conversion to God.

Thus children readily discern any discrepancy between a parent's teaching

and example. If we are professors of religion, and they see us

worldly-minded, grasping after riches, pleasures and honors; the dupes of

ungodly fashion, manifesting a malicious spirit, indolent, prayerless, and

indifferent to their spiritual welfare, what do they infer but that we are

hypocrites, and will our precepts then do them any good? No. "Line upon

line and precept upon precept" will be given to no purpose. Hence the

necessity of enforcing our precepts by Christian deportment. Speak in an

angry tone before your child; and what will it avail for you to admonish

him against anger? Many parents express surprise that all they can say to

their children does no good; they remain stubborn, self-willed and

recreant.

But if these parents will look at what they have done as well as said, they

will perhaps be less surprised. They may find a solution of the problem in

their own capricious disposition, turbulent passions and ungodly walk. The

child will soon discard a parent's precepts when they are not enforced by a

parent's example. Hence that parent who ruins his own soul can do but

little for the soul of his child. The blasphemer and sabbath-breaker is

unfit to correct his child, for swearing and sabbath-breaking. He alone who

doeth the truth can teach his children truth. He only who has good habits

can teach his children good habits. "Who loves," says William Jay, "to take

his meat from a leprous hand?" A drunkard will make a poor preacher of

sobriety. A proud, passionate father is a wretched recommender of humility

and meekness to his children. What those who are under his care, see, will

more than counteract what they hear; and all his efforts will be rejected

with the question, "Thou that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself?"

Hence parents should say to their children, "Be ye followers of me, even as

I also am of Christ." Their example should include all their precepts. In

this way they both hear and see religion in its living, moving and

breathing form before them. They should thus go in and out before them,

leading them step by step to heaven.

"As a bird each fond endearment tries

To tempt her new-fledged offspring to the skies,

They tried each art, reproved each dull delay,

Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way!"

It is also necessary because of its adaptation to the capacities and

imitative disposition of children. They judge by the organs of sense, and

by their perceptions of truth through externals. Naked abstract truth does

not sufficiently interest them. They are pleased with history, narrative,

illustration, more than with philosophy. They are awake to the first and

receive from them a lasting impression; while the impression made by the

second is dreamy and ephemeral. They will never forget your example because

it is adapted to their taste and capacity. Long after they have forgotten

your precepts upon the duty and privilege of prayer, will they remember

your prayers; and long after the influence of the former has faded, will

that of the latter rule and allure them to God. Hence the necessity of a

Christian home-example. "If any have children or nephews, let them learn

first to show piety at home."

If such, then, are its influence and necessity, we can easily infer the

duty of parents to show their children a Christian example. If they form

their character upon the approved model of their parents, then the duty to

give them a Christian model is very obvious. They will rather follow your

ungodly example than obey your godly precepts. "To give children," says

Archbishop Tillotson, "good instruction and a bad example, is but beckoning

to them with the head to show them the way to heaven--while you take them

by the hand to lead them in the way to hell."

This duty is, therefore, enforced by the most powerful motives. The

influence and benefit of a pious example; the promised rewards attending

it; the deep curse that attends its absence; the misery which a bad example

entails upon all the members of the Christian household; and especially the

fruits of both a good and bad example, in eternity,--all these

considerations should prompt you to the faithful performance of this duty.

If the members of your household may he ruined here by a bad example, what

will be its consequences in the eternal world?

"If men of good lives,

Who, by their virtuous actions, stir up others

To noble and religious imitation,

Receive the greater glory after death

As sin must needs confess; what may they feel

In height of torment, and in weight of vengeance,

Not only they themselves not doing well,

But set a light up to show men to hell?"

We see a similar inducement to this duty in the blessings and rewards of a

pious example. Its blessings are unspeakable both here and hereafter. The

temporal and eternal welfare of your home, the hope of meeting your

children in heaven, and receiving there the promised reward of your

stewardship, depend upon this duty. That family is happy as wall as holy,

where the parents rear up their children under the fostering influence of a

Christian example.

"Behold his little ones around him! they bask in the sunshine of smile;

And infant innocence and joy lighten these happy faces;

He is holy, and they honor him; he is loving; and they love him;

He is consistent, and they esteem him; he is firm, and they fear him.

His house is the palace of peace; for the Prince of peace is there.

Even so, from the bustle of life, he goeth to his well-ordered home."

A serious obstacle to the efficacy of a good example is, the too frequent

want of agreement in the example of the parents. That of the father often

conflicts with and neutralizes that of the mother. They are not one in

their example. This the children soon see, and disregard the good rather

than the bad example. "How can two walk together except they he agreed?"

The child cannot follow the pious father in the way of life, when the

ungodly mother secretly and openly draws him back. Operated upon by two

opposite influences, he will move between them.

We are here taught the imprudence, and we might add, sin, of pious persons

forming a matrimonial alliance with wicked and ungodly persons. In the

choice of a companion for life, we should consider an agreement in

religious as well as in social character. How many unhappy matches and

homes and children and parents have been made by disobedience to the divine

precept, "Be ye not unequally yoked with unbelievers?" Isaac and Rebecca

showed their appreciation of this precept in the care they took to procure

a pious wife for Jacob. "I am weary of my life," says Rebecca, "because of

the daughters of Heth; if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth, such

as these, what good shall my life do me?" This should be the solicitude of

every Christian parent. Parents should possess unanimity of spirit and

practice in making up and giving the home-example. They should walk

unitedly, like Zacharias and Elizabeth, in all the ordinances and statutes

of the Lord blameless.

CHAPTER XXI

THE CHOICE OF PURSUITS.

"For what then was I born? to fill the circling year

With daily toil for daily bread, with sordid pains and pleasures?

To walk this chequered world, alternate light and darkness,

The day-dreams of deep thought followed by the night-dreams of fancy?

To be one in a full procession?--to dig my kindred clay?

To decorate the gallery of art? to clear a few acres of forest?

For more than these, my soul, thy God hath lent thee life!"

The choice of positions and pursuits in life is one important and

responsible mission of home. Children look up to their parents to aid them

in this. They are to have them prepared for a useful citizenship in the

state. Life demands that each of us, in obedience to the law of

self-preservation and of our relations to human society, prepare for some

useful occupation, not only for a livelihood, but also for the benefit of

the state. The duty and the interest of the parent are to bring up the

child to such a pursuit as is best adapted to his circumstances and

abilities. Our character, success and happiness in life, depend upon our

obedience to this law of adaptation.

As such pursuits are chosen and prepared for, while under the guardian care

of our parents, it is evident they should take an active part both in the

choice and the preparation. They are responsible for these as far as their

influence extends. It is their duty to afford their children aid in

choosing and preparing for a useful and appropriate occupation, to fit them

for the circumstances in which the Providence of God may place them, and to

educate them for an efficient citizenship in the state.

This is but developing the principle of self-preservation in the child, and

fitting him for a proper adherence to it in after life. The home prepares

the individual for his legitimate position in the state as well as in the

church; and this implies not only his education in the principles and

practice of virtue and religion, but also in some useful and appropriate

pursuit, by which he may meet the wants and prepare for the exigencies of

life. To rear up your children therefore, in idleness and ignorance of any

useful occupation, is not only doing great injustice to the child, but also

to human society, subjecting her to expenditure and corruption in the

support and influence of paupers and criminals. Every child should learn

some trade or profession in order to self-subsistence and to the prosperity

and well-being of the state.

Hence it is a breach of moral obligation for parents, whether rich or

poor, to permit their children to grow up in idleness and vagrancy. If they

do so, and as a consequence, drag out an impoverished and miserable

existence, struggling between the importunities of want and those

precarious contingencies upon which its satisfaction is suspended; and in

the hour of despair and urgent necessity, they resort to crime in order to

meet their wants, or to dissipation in order to avert their wretchedness

for a time, is it not plain that their parents are responsible to God for

all their crime and misery?

Nothing will, therefore, justify them in their omission of this duty. No

amount of inherited wealth; no dependence upon wealthy relatives; no

honorable station in society, will excuse them from training up their

children to some useful employment by which, if circumstances demand, they

may secure a subsistence. And even if their legacy render it unnecessary to

be followed in order to subsistence, it is a duty which is due to the

state. No man can with impunity live in the state without some employment.

This would be an infringement upon her rights and an abuse of her

privileges. The individual, with all his wealth and talents, belongs to the

state, and should, therefore, make such an appropriation of these as will

be most conducive to its welfare.

And besides, we know not what disastrous changes may take place in life.

The parental legacy may soon be squandered by the child, and he be left

without funds or friends; the emergencies of the future may increase

beyond all anticipation; sickness and manifold adversities may soon sweep

away all his inheritance. And then what will become of your child if he is

ignorant of any pursuit in which to engage for a subsistence? Besides, it

is a matter of very common observation, that those who receive a large

legacy and have been brought up in idleness, become prodigal in their

expenditure, and squander their fortune by dissipation more rapidly than

their parents amassed it by industry and frugality; and then, ignorant and

helpless and profligate, they eke out a wretched existence in abject

poverty, resorting to illegitimate means for a living, until the last

fruits of their improper training may be seen in the state's prison or upon

the gibbet.

History will afford ample illustration of this. From it we may easily infer

the duty of parental interposition. The Athenians expressed their sense of

this duty in the enactment of a law that, if parents did not qualify their

children for securing a livelihood by having them learn some occupation,

the child was not bound to make provision for the parent when old and

necessitous.

In the selection of an occupation for his children, the parent should

consult their taste and talents and circumstances, and choose for them a

pursuit adapted to these. If his child is better suited for a mechanical

pursuit, he should direct his attention to it, and educate him for it. And

thus in all respects he should obey the great law of correspondence between

the taste and capacity of the child, and the occupation to be chosen for

him.

The violation of this law does great injury to the child and to society,

inasmuch as it prevents his success and contentment, and floods the state

with quacks and humbuggery. The parent should never compel the child to

learn a trade or profession which he dislikes, and for which he shows no

talents. Many parents, through a false pride, force their children into a

profession for which they have neither inclination nor capacity. While the

parent has a right to interfere in the choice of a pursuit, his

interference should not be arbitrary, neither should it run counter to the

will of the child unless for special moral and religious reasons, or on

account of inability to gratify him. However, this is often done. Even

though they acknowledge their unfitness for a profession, yet their

misguided pride prompts them to drag their children into a calling which in

after life they disgrace.

Some parents, on the other hand, through a penurious spirit, refuse to aid

their sons in their preparation for a profession for which their talents

eminently qualify them. They refuse to educate their sons for the ministry

because it is not a lucrative calling, though they give evidence of both

mental and moral adaptation for that holy office. Others, through a blind

zeal and a false pride, force their sons into this sacred calling. Mistaken

parents! rather let your children break stone upon the road, or dig in the

earth, yea, rather let them beg their bread, than thrust them into an

occupation to which God has not called them, and for which they have

neither inclination nor talents, and in which they would, perhaps, not only

ruin their own souls, but contribute to the damnation of others. "There are

diversities of gifts and of operations." All are not called nor fitted for

the ministry. Children soon give indications of specific talents and

suitableness for a calling in life. We should critically observe their

early propensities. These will indicate their peculiar talents. Unfit for

and disliking an occupation, they will become unsettled, and dissatisfied,

and at best will be but mimics and quacks. Their business will make them

sullen slaves. It is because of parental disobedience to this law of

adaptation that we have so much humbuggery in the world at the present day.

Study, therefore, the infantile predilections of your children to

particular employments. These will be an index to their providential

calling, and should govern your choice for them.

The social position of the child should also be considered. If possible,

the character of his pursuits should not conflict with those social

elements in which he has been reared up. It should not detract from his

standing in society, nor disrupt his associations in life. Many parents,

for the sake of money, will refuse to educate and fit their children for

sustaining the position they hold in society. They bring them up in

ignorance, and devote them exclusively to Mammon; and then when thrown

upon their own resources they are qualified neither in manners nor in

pursuit for a continuance in those peculiar relations to society which they

at first sustained.

The exigencies of the child should also be considered. If his home can

afford him no patrimony, it is then more important to consider the

lucrative character of the pursuit chosen, and also the demands of that

social position he is to maintain in life. Its profits should then be fully

adequate to these demands, and suited to the emergencies which are peculiar

to his circumstances. The capital required to engage in it, and its bearing

upon the health of body and mind, should also be regarded. This is an

important consideration, and not sufficiently attended to by parents. How

many children are forced into employments which they have not the means of

carrying on, and for which their state of health altogether unfits them! A

pursuit involving sedentary habits does not suit a child whose state of

health demands exercise.

You should make choice of but one pursuit for your child, and discourage in

him the American tendency to be "jack of all trades." One occupation,

whatever it may be, whether trade or profession, if properly pursued, will

demand all his energies, and give him no time to follow another; and

besides, it will afford him an ample subsistence. There is much truth in

the two old and quaint adages, "jack of all trades, and master of none;"

"he has too many irons in the fire,--some of them must burn!" Show your

children the truth and application of these.

But while this is one extreme, and detrimental to the interests of the

child, its opposite extreme, viz., that of bringing up the child to no

pursuit whatever, is still more injurious. We had better have too many

irons in the fire than none at all. It is a base and cowardly desertion of

duty to shrink from the task of human occupation. Constituted as human

society is, the members of it being mutually dependent upon each other for

support, it is evident that our happiness materially depends upon the

active concurrence of each individual in the general system of social

well-being. He who withholds, therefore, his cooperation and stands aloof

from all employment, destroys a link in that chain of things by which the

fabric of society is kept together and preserved. He is unfaithful to those

sacred obligations which arise out of our relations to the state and the

church, and he abuses those inalienable rights with which God has invested

the social compact. Besides, he fails to meet those conditions upon which

the vigorous development of individual life and character depends.

Indolence is no friend either to physical, mental or moral development. The

body becomes imbecile, the spirit supine and sentimental, the morals

vitiated, and the mind sinks into complete puerility. Activity is a law of

all life, and the condition of its healthy development and maturity.

Without it we resort to jejune amusement, and from amusement we are hurried

on to dissipation, to the card table and dram shop; and from dissipation

we sink to degradation, infamy and wretchedness. Idleness is thus the

fruitful mother of vice and misery. Our lives cannot exist in a state of

neutrality between active good and active evil. It is, therefore, the duty

of the Christian home to prepare her young members for some useful calling

in life, not only as a means of subsistence, but also as a safeguard

against the evils of idleness.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE HOME-PARLOR.

"The foolish floatiness of vanity, and solemn trumperies of pride,--

Harmful copings with the better, and empty-headed apings of the worse;

Vapid pleasures, the weariness of gaiety, the strife and bustle of

the world;

The hollowness of courtesies, and substance of deceits, idleness and

pastime--

All these and many more alike, thick conveying fancies,

Flit in throngs about my theme, as honey-bees at even to their hives!"

The Christian home includes the parlor. This department we must give but a

brief and passing notice. Yet it is as important and responsible as the

nursery. In it we have a view of the relations of home to society beyond

it. The parlor is set apart for social communion with the world. Much of

momentous interest is involved in this relation. The choice of companions,

the forming of attachments and matrimonial alliances, the establishment of

social position and influence in life beyond the family,--these are all

involved in the home-parlor.

If we would, therefore, escape the shackles and contamination of corrupt

society, we must hold the parlor sacred and give to it the air and bearing

of at least a moral aristocracy. Home is the first form of society. The law

of love rules and reigns there. It is enthroned in the heart, and casts

light around our existence. In that society we live above the trammels of

artificial life. In its parlor the members merge with society beyond its

sacred precincts. Hence it is the most beautiful room; the best furniture

is there; smiles adorn it; friends meet there; fashion meets there in her

silks and jewels, with her circumstance and custom, her sympathies,

antipathies and divers kinds of conversation; form and profession reign

there; flatteries and hypocrisies intrude themselves there; pledges are

given there; attachments and vows are made there; the mind and heart are

impressed and moulded there; the cobweb lines of etiquette are drawn there;

a panorama of social fascinations pass before the youthful eye

there,--these make the parlor the most dangerous department of home. There

the young receive their first introduction to society; there they see the

world in all the brilliancy of outward life, in the pomp and pageantry of a

vanity fair. All seems to them as a fairy dream, as a brilliant romance;

their hearts are allured by these outward attractions; their imaginations

are fed upon the unreal, and they learn to judge character by the external

habiliments in which its reality is concealed. They estimate worth by the

beauty of the face and form, by the cost of dress and the genuflections of

the body. They form their notions of happiness from fashion, fortune and

position. They become enslaved to love-sick novels and fashionable

amusements. There, too, they make choice of companions; there they form

matrimonial alliances; there their hearts are developed, their minds

trained for social life, their affections directed, and influence brought

to bear upon them, which will determine their weal or their woe.

If such be the influence of the home-parlor, should it not be held sacred,

and made to correspond, in all the uses for which it is set apart, with the

spirit and character of a Christian family; and should not its doors be

effectually guarded against the intrusion of spurious and demoralizing

elements of society?

Parents should teach their children all about the character, interests and

deceptions of parlor-life. They should undeceive them in their natural

proneness to judge people from the standpoint of character assumed in the

parlor. They see the lamb there, but not the lion; the smile but not the

frown; the affability of manner, but not the tyranny of spirit. They hear

the language of flattery, but not the tongue of slander. They see no weak

points, detect no evil temper and bad habits. There is an artificial screen

behind which all that is revolting and dangerous is concealed. Who would

venture to judge a person by his mechanical movements in the parlor? Many

are there the very opposite to what they are elsewhere:--

"Abroad too kind, at home 'tis steadfast hate,

And one eternal tempest of debate.

What foul eruptions from a look most meek!

What thunders bursting from a dimpled cheek!

Such dead devotion, such zeal for crimes,

Such licensed ill, such masquerading times,

Such venal faiths, such misapplied applause,

Such flattered guilt, and such inverted laws!"

One of the most dangerous periods of life is, when we leave the nursery and

school, and enter the parlor. With what solicitude, therefore, should

Christian parents guard their parlors from social corruption. They should

prepare their children for society, not only by teaching them its manners

and customs, how to act in company, how to grace a party, and move with

refined ease among companions there, but also by teaching them the dangers

and corruptions which lurk in their midst and follow in the train of

rustling silks and fashionable denouement. They should never permit their

parlor to become the scene of fashionable tyranny. The Christian parlor can

be no depot for fashion. It should be sacred to God and to the church. It

should be a true exponent of the social elements of Christianity. It should

not be a hermitage, a state of seclusion from the world; but should conform

to fashion, yet so far only as the laws of a sanctified taste and

refinement will admit.

These laws exclude all compromise and amalgamation with the ungodly spirit

and customs of the world. Allegiance to the higher and better law of God

will keep us from submission to the laws of a depraved taste and carnal

desire. We must keep ourselves unspotted from the world. Whenever we submit

with scrupulous exactness to the laws of fashion; whenever we yield a

servile complaisance to its forms and ceremonies, wink at its extremes and

immoralities and absurd expenditures, seek its flatteries and indulge in

its whims and caprices, by throwing open our parlors as the theatre of

their denouement, and introducing our children to their actors and

master-spirits, we prostitute our homes, our religion and those whom God

has given us to train up for Himself, to interests and pleasures the most

unworthy the Christian name and character.

There is much danger now of the Christian home becoming in this way

slavishly bound to the influence and attractions of society beyond the pale

of the church, until all relish for home-enjoyment is lost, and its members

no longer seek and enjoy each other's association. They drain the cup of

voluptuous pleasure to its dregs, and flee from home as jejune and supine.

The husband leaves his wife, and seeks his company in fashionable saloons,

at the card table or in halls of revelry. The wife leaves the society of

her children, and in company with a bosom companion, seeks to throw off

the tedium of home, at masquerade meetings, at the theater or in the

ball-room, where

"Vice, once by modest Nature chained,

And legal ties, expatiates unrestrained;

Without thin decency held up to view,

Naked she stalks o'er law and gospel too!"

The children follow their example; become disgusted with each other's

company, and sacrifice their time and talents to a thousand little trifles

and absurdities. Taste becomes depraved, and loses all relish for rational

enjoyment. The heart teems with idle fancies and vain imaginations.

Sentimentalism takes the place of religion; filthy literature and

fashionable cards shove the Family Bible in some obscure nook of their

parlor and their hearts. The hours devoted to family prayer are now spent

in a giddy whirl of amusement and intoxicating pleasure, in the study of

the latest fashions and of the newly-published love adventures of some

nabob in the world of refined scoundrelism. The parental solicitude, once

directed to the eternal welfare of the child, is now expended in

match-making and setting out in the world.

Thus does the Christian home often become adulterated with the world by its

indiscriminate association with unfit social elements. That portion of

society whose master-spirits are love-stricken poets, languishing girls,

amorous grandmothers, and sap-headed fiction writers, is certainly unfit

for a place in the parlor of the Christian family. We should not permit the

principles of common-sense decorum to give place to the lawless vagaries of

fancy and the hollow-hearted forms of artificial life. Under the gaudy

drapery of smiles and flounces, of rustling silks and blandishments, there

are hearts as brutish and stultified, and heads as brainless and incapable

of gentle and moral emotion, and characters as selfish and ungenerous, as

were ever concealed beneath the rags of poverty, or the uncouth manners and

rough garb of the incarcerated villain!

It is, therefore, beneath the dignity of the Christian to permit his home

to become in any way a prey to immoral and irreligious associations and

influences. Like the personal character of the Christian, it should be kept

unspotted from the world; and no spirit, no customs, no companions, opposed

to religion, should be permitted to enter its sacred limits. Heedless of

this important requisition, parents may soon see their children depart from

the ways in which they were trained in the nursery, and at last become a

curse to them, and bring down their gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

Here is indeed the great fault of many Christian parents in the present

day. They do not exert that guardian care they should over the social

relations and interests of their children. They are too unscrupulous in

their introduction to the world, and leave them in ignorance of its snares

and deceptions. What results can they look for if they permit their parlor

tables to become burdened with French novels, and their children to mingle

in company whose influence is the most detrimental to the interests of pure

and undefiled religion? Can they reflect upon their daughters for forming

improper attachments and alliances? Can they wonder if their sons become

desperadoes, and ridicule the religion of their parents? No! They permitted

them to dally with the fangs of a viper which found a ready admittance into

their parlor; and upon them, therefore, will rest the responsibility,--yea,

the deep and eternal curse! Woe unto thee, thou unfaithful parent; the

voice of thy children's blood shall send up from the hallowed ground of

home, one loud and penetrating cry to God for vengeance; and thou shalt be

"beaten with many stripes." It will not only cry out against you, but cling

to you!

Guard your parlor, therefore, from the corrupting influence of all immoral

associations. Be not carried away by the pomp and glare of refined and

decorated wickedness. Let not the ornaments and magnificence of mere

outward life divert your attention from those hidden principles which

prompt to action. In the choice of companions for your children in the

parlor, look to the ornaments of the heart rather than to those of the

body. Be not allured by the parade of circumstance and position in life: Be

not carried away by that which may intoxicate for a moment, and then leave

the heart in more wretchedness than before. Ever remember that the future

condition of your children, their domestic character and happiness, will

depend upon the kind of company you admit in your parlor. This leads us to

the consideration of the part Christian parents should take in the marriage

of their children. This we shall investigate in our next chapter under the

head of "Match-making."

CHAPTER XXIII.

MATCH-MAKING.

SECTION I.

THE RELATION OF PARENTS TO THE MARRIAGE CHOICE OF THEIR CHILDREN.

"Youth longeth for a kindred spirit, and yet yearneth for a

heart that can commune with his own;

Take heed that what charmeth thee is real, nor springeth of

thine own imagination;

And suffer not trifles to win thy love; for a wife is thine unto

death!"

One of the most affecting scenes of home-life is that of the bridal hour!

Though in one sense it is a scene of joy and festivity; yet in another, it

is one of deep sadness. When all is adorned with flowers and smiles, and

the parlor becomes the theater of conviviality and parade, even then hearts

are oppressed with sorrow at the thought of that separation which is soon

to take place.

The bridal is a home-crisis. It is the breaking up of home-ties and

communion, a separation from home scenes, a lopping off from the parent

vine, an engrafting into a strange vine, and alas! too often, into a

degenerate vine. As the youthful bride stands beside her affianced husband,

to be wedded to him for life, and reflects that the short ceremonial of

that occasion will tear her forever from the loved, objects and scenes of

her childhood-home, what tears of bitter sorrow adorn the bridal cheek, and

what pungent feelings are awakened by her last farewell!

"'I leave thee, sister! we have played

Through many a joyous hour,

Where the silvery gleam of the olive shade

Hung dim o'er fount and bower.'

"Yes! I leave thee, sister, with all that we have enjoyed together; I leave

thee in the memory of our childhood-haunts and song and prayer. We cannot

be as we have been. I leave thee now, and all that has bound us together as

one; and hereafter memory alone can hail thee, and will do so with her

burning tear; therefore, kind sister, let me weep!

"I leave thee, father! Eve's bright moon,

Must now light other feet,

With the gathered grapes, and the lyre in tune,

Thy homeward steps to greet."

"Yes, I leave thee, father! I receive thy last blessing; no longer shall

thy protecting hand guide me; no longer shall thy smile be music to my ear.

I leave thee, oh, therefore, let me weep!

"'Mother! I leave thee! on thy breast,

Pouring out joy and woe;

I have found that holy place of rest

Still changeless--yet I go!"

"Yes, I go from thee, mother! Though you have watched over me in helpless

infancy with all a mother's love and care, and 'lulled me with your

strain;' and though earth may not afford me a love like yours; yet I go!

Oh, therefore, sweet mother, let me weep!"

"'Oh, friends regretted, scenes forever dear

Remembrance hails you with her burning tear;

Drooping she bends o'er pensive fancy's urn,

To trace the hours which ne'er can return.'"

If momentous interests' are involved in marriage, then, we think that

parents should take an important part in the matrimonial alliances of their

children. When they grow up, they naturally seek a companion for life. The

making choice of that companion is a crisis in their history, and will

determine their future interest and happiness. If separation from home is a

great sacrifice, then we should look well to the grounds of our

justification in making that sacrifice.

We propose, under the head of "match-making," to consider the part which

parents should take in the marriage of their children; and also the false

and true standards of judgment both for parents and their children, in

making the marriage choice and alliance.

Have parents a right to take any part in the marriage choice and alliance

of their children? Have they a right to interfere in any respect with the

marriage of their children? That they do possess such a right, and are

justified in the exercise of it within just and reasonable limits, is, we

think, undisputed by any one acquainted with the Word of God. It is one of

the cardinal prerogatives and duties of the Christian parent. His relation

to his children invests him with it. The age and inexperience of the child,

on the one hand; and the seductions of the world, on the other; imply it.

Children need counsel and admonition; and this is a needs be for the

interposition of the parent's superior wisdom and greater experience.

This right is plainly exemplified in sacred history. Abraham interfered in

Isaac's selection of a companion. Isaac and Rebecca aided in the choice of

a wife for Jacob. And indeed throughout the patriarchal age, you find this

right recognized and practiced. It was also acknowledged and exercised in

all the subsequent ages of Judaism, in the age of primitive Christianity,

and even down to the present time, in every true Christian household. The

right still exists, and receives the sanction of the church. The great

dereliction of parents now is, that they do not exercise it; and of

children, that they do not recognize it. "A wise son heareth his father's

instructions." "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey

his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pluck it out, and the young

eagles shall eat it."

What now is the extent, and what are the duties of that right to

interfere? This is a difficult question, and can receive but an imperfect

answer. In infancy the authority of the parent is exercised without any

reference to the will of the child, because reason is not yet developed.

But when he reaches the age of personal accountability, the control of the

parent is exercised on more liberal principles; and when, by age, he

becomes a responsible citizen, the legal authority of the parent ceases.

Still he possesses moral authority, and has a right to exert a restraining

influence over the child. This does not, of course, involve a right to

compel him to yield to the parent's arbitrary will. He can exert but a

moral control over him; and it is the child's duty to yield to this, so

long as it is consistent with scripture and the maxims of sound reason and

conscience. He should consult his parents, receive them into his

confidence, and give priority to their judgment and counsels.

Parents have the right to use coercive measures to prevent an imprudent

marriage by their children before they have arrived at age; for until they

are of age they are both legally and morally under the authority and

government of their parents, who are responsible for them. Hence the child

should recognize and submit to their authority. But this right to the use

of coercive measures extends only to the prevention of unhappy

marriages,--not to the forming of what the parents may regard happy

alliances, against the will of the child. No parent has the right to

compel a child under age to marry, because the marriage alliance implies

the age and free choice of the child.

But when the child reaches legal maturity, the coercive authority of the

parent ceases. His interposition then should not involve coercive, but

persuasive measures. Then a mere mechanical prevention of an unhappy

marriage would have no good moral effect, but would be productive of great

evil, inasmuch as it not only involves parental despotism, but the

restriction of a manifest and conceded right of the child. It would destroy

the sense of personal dignity and responsibility.

Persuasive measures will then accomplish more than all the efforts of the

parent to prevent an unhappy union, by threats of disinheritance and

expulsion from home. In this way parents often extend their interference to

most unreasonable extremes, and to the great detriment of the interests and

happiness of their children; while at the same time they often bring

disgrace and misery upon their own heads and home. They set themselves up

as the choosers of companions for their children, presuming that they

should passively submit to their selection whatever it may be. This is

taking away the free moral agency of the child, making no account of his

taste, judgment, or affections; and forming between him and the object thus

chosen a mere outward union, with no inward affinity.

In such cases it most generally happens that parents are prompted by

sinister motives and a false pride, as that of wealth, honor, and social

position. They do not consult the law of suitability, but that of

availability. They think that wealth and family distinction will compensate

for the absence of all moral and amiable qualities, that if outward

circumstances are favorable, there need not be inward adaptation of

character. Hence they will dictate to their children, make their marriage

alliance a mere business matter, and demand implicit obedience on the

penalty of expulsion from the parental home, and disinheritance forever.

They are thus willing to prostitute the domestic peace and happiness of

their offspring to the gratification of their own sordid and inordinate

lust for gain and empty distinction.

Who does not perceive and acknowledge the evil of such a course? It

involves unfeeling despotism on the one hand, and a servile obedience on

the other. The affections are abused; the idea and sacredness of marriage

are left out of view; the conditions of domestic felicity are not met. All

is supremely selfish; the power exercised is arbitrary; the submission is

slavish and demoralizing; the obedience involuntary and degrading; and the

result of it all is, an outrage against nature, against marriage, and

against God.

On the other hand, the interference of the parent should be persuasive, and

the obedience of the child, voluntary. The parent should reason with and

counsel the child; and seek by mild and affectionate means to secure

obedience to his advice. And if the child then persist in his own course,

the parent, we think, has discharged his duty, and the responsibility will

rest upon the child. He should not expel and disinherit him, and thus add

the hard-heartedness of the parent to the folly and perversity of the

child. He should love him still, and seek by parental tenderness to

alleviate the sad fruits of filial recklessness. Parents should so train

their children in the nursery and parlor, by instilling in them correct

principles of judgment in the choice of a companion, as to secure them ever

after from an imprudent choice. Here is the place to begin. Parents too

often omit this duty, until alas, it is too late.

We have now seen that the parent has no right to destroy the domestic

happiness of a child by uniting him forcibly in wedlock to one for whom he

has no true affection. On the other hand, the child should pay due

deference to the parent's moral suasion, and seek, if possible, to follow

his counsels. "A child," says Paley, "who respects his parent's judgment,

and is, as he ought to be, tender of their happiness, owes, at least, so

much deference to their will, as to try fairly and faithfully, in one case,

whether time and absence will not cool an affection which they disapprove.

After a sincere but ineffectual endeavor by the child, to accommodate his

inclination to his parent's pleasure, he ought not to suffer in his

parent's affections, or in his fortunes. The parent, when he has

reasonable proof of this, should acquiesce; at all events, the child is

then at liberty to provide, for his own happiness."

SECTION II.

FALSE TESTS IN THE SELECTION OF A COMPANION FOR LIFE.

Before we advert to some of those biblical principles upon which parents

and children should proceed in the marriage choice, we shall take a

negative view of the subject, and mention some of those false principles

and considerations which have in the present day gained a fearful

ascendancy over the better judgment of many professed Christians.

In the matter of marriage, too many are influenced by the pomp and parade

of the mere outward. The glitter of gold, the smile of beauty, and the

array of titled distinction and circumstance, act like a charm upon the

feelings and sentiments of many well-meaning parents and children. But it

is not all gold that glitters. We must not think that those are happy in

their marriage union, because they are obsequious in their attentions to

each other, and live together in splendor, overloaded with fashionable

congratulations. We cannot determine the character of a marriage from its

pomp and pageantry. We rather determine the many unhappy matches from the

false principles upon which the parties acted in making choice of each

other. What are some of these? We answer--

1. The manner of paying addresses involves a false principle of procedure.

These are either too long or too short, and paid in an improper spirit and

manner. There are too much flirtation and romance connected with them. The

religious element is not taken up and considered. They do not involve the

true idea of preparation, but have an air of mere sentimentalism about

them. The object in view is not fully seen. The most reprehensible motives

and the most shocking thoughtlessness pervade them throughout. These

addresses carry with them an air of trifling, a want of seriousness and

frankness, which betrays the absence of all sense of responsibility, and of

all proper views of the sacredness of marriage and of its momentous

consequences both for time and for eternity.

2. The habit of match-making involves a false principle. This we see more

fully among the higher classes of society. It is the work of designing and

interested persons, who, for self-interest, intrude their unwelcome

interposition. Its whole procedure implies that marriage is simply a legal

matter, a piece of business policy, a domestic speculation. It strikes out

the great law of mutual, moral love, and personal adaptation. It makes

marriage artificial, and apprehends it as only a mechanical copartnership

of interest and life. It is sinister in spirit, and selfish in the end.

Many are prompted from motives of novelty to make matches among their

friends. All their schemes tend to wrest from the parties interested all

true judgment and dispassionate consideration. They are deceived by base

misrepresentation, allured by over-wrought pictures of conjugal felicity,

so that when the marriage is consummated, they soon find their golden

dreams vanish away, and with them, their hopes and their happiness forever.

But there are not only personal match-makers, in the form of tyrannical

fathers, sentimental mothers, amorous grandmothers, and obsequious friends;

but also book match-makers, in the form of love-sick tales and poetry,

containing Eugene-Aram adventures, and scrapes of languishing girls with

titled swains running off, calculated to heat the youthful imagination,

distort the pictures of fancy, giving to marriage the air of a romantic

adventure, and throwing over it a gaudy drapery, leading the young into a

world of dreams and nonentities, where all is but a bubble of variegated

colors and fantastic forms, which explodes before them as soon as it is

touched by the finger of reality and experience.

These are the most dangerous match-makers. Their sister companions in this

evil are, the ball-room, the giddy dance and masquerade, the fashionable

wine-cup and the costly apparel. Let me affectionately exhort the members

of the Christian home to keep all these at a distance. Touch not, taste

not, handle not! They will poison the spirit and the affections, and

encircle you with a viper's coil from which there is no hope of escape.

Here parents have a right, and it is their duty, to interfere. They can do

so effectually by not allowing such filthy match-making intruders to pass

the threshold of their homes. What can you expect out an unhappy marriage,

if you permit your sons and daughters to spend their time in converse with

love-sick tales and languishing swains? They will become love-sick, too,

and long for marriage with one who is like the hero of their last-read

romance. Perhaps they will not think their matrimonial debut sufficiently

flavored with romantic essence, unless they run off with some

self-constituted count, or at least with their papa's Irish groom!

3. We might advert, finally, to some of those false influences which are

frequently brought to bear upon the children's choice of a companion for

life. The term smitten is here significant and deserves our serious

consideration. It carries in its pregnant meaning the evidence of a

spurious feeling, and a false foundation of love and union. Be it

remembered that there must always be something to smite one. We may be

smitten by a scoundrel, or by something unworthy our affections. Empty

titles and mustaches often smite the susceptible young. Sometimes the heart

is smitten by a pretty face and form; and sometimes by a rod of gold. The

simple fact that we are smitten is not enough; we should know who or what

it is that smites us. When we are drawn to each other, it should be by a

true cord, and by an influence which binds and cements for life. The

influence of mere outward beauty is a false one. Those who are smitten by

it, and drawn thus into a matrimonial union by an interest which is but

skin-deep, and which may fade like the morning flower, are allured by a

dazzling meteor, by a mere bubble, beautifully formed and colored, but

empty within. It may dazzle the eye, but it blinds us to all its blemishes

and inward infirmities. It is deceptive. Often beneath its gaudy veil there

lies the viper, ready to poison all the sweets of home-life, and cause its

victim to lament over his folly with bitter tears and heart-burning

remorse. How soon may beauty fade; and what then, if it was the only basis

of your marriage choice? The union which rested upon it must then be at

least morally dissolved; and that which once flitted like an impersonated

charm before your admiring eye, now becomes an object of disgust and a

source of misery.

To fall in love, therefore, with mere outward beauty is, to dandle with a

doll, to fawn upon a picture, to rest your hopes upon a plaything, to

pursue a phantom which, as soon as you embrace it, may vanish into nothing.

Look not to external beauty alone; but also to the ornaments of an inward

spirit, of a noble mind, and an amiable and pious heart. "If," says the

Rev. H. Harbaugh, "you will be foolish, follow the gilded butterfly of

beauty, drive it a long chase; it will land you at last at some stagnant

mud-pond of the highway."

Neither is impulsive passion a true basis of marriage. This is falling in

love at first sight, which often proves to be a very dangerous and

degrading fall,--a fall from the clouds to the clods, producing both

humiliation and misery. It is indeed a fearful leap,--a leap without

judgment or forethought; and, therefore, a leap in the dark. It is too

precipitate, and shows the infatuation of the victim. Falling in love is

not always falling in the embraces of domestic felicity. Such leaping is an

act of intoxication. The drunkard, falling in the mire, often thinks that

he is embracing his best friend, whereas it is but descending to fellowship

with the swine. It is blind love, which is no love, but passion without

reason. It is crazy, fitful, stormy, raising the feelings up to boiling

point, and bringing the affections under the influence of the high-pressure

system. Consequently it is raving, frothy, of a mushroom growth, making

mere bubbles, and completing its work in an evaporation of all that it

operated upon, passing away like the morning cloud and the early dew.

True love is very different. It is substantial, reasonable, moral, acting

according to law, temperate in all things, keeping the heart from extremes,

permanent, and based upon principle. Passion, without love, may keep you in

a state of pleasurable intoxication until the knot is tied, when you will

soon get sober again, only to see, however, your folly and to contemplate

the height from which you have fallen, and then, with the recklessness of

sullen despair, to pass over into the opposite extreme of stoical

indifference and misery. All emotions are transient, and hence no proper

standard of judgment in the serious matter of a marriage choice. The heart,

unguided by the head, is, in its emotions, like the flaming meteor that

passes in its rapid, fiery train across the heavens. It flames only for a

time, and soon passes away, leaving the heavens in greater darkness than

before.

Neither is wealth a true basis for the marriage choice. "The love of money

is the root of all evil;" and when it is the primary desideratum in

marriage, it acts like a canker-worm upon domestic peace and happiness.

With too many in this day of money-making, marriage is but a pecuniary

speculation, a mere gold and silver affair; and their match-making is but a

money-making, that is, money makes the match. Many parents (but we don't

call such Christians,) sacrifice their children upon the altar of mammon,

and prostitute their earthly and eternal happiness to their love of filthy

lucre.

Fatal mistake! Will money make your children happy? Is it for money you

have them led to the bridal altar? Ah! that sordid dust may cover the grave

of their fondest hopes and connubial felicity. Wed not your children to

mere dollars and cents. The hand that holds a purse and shakes it before

you for your child, may hold also a dagger for both the child and the

parent. "Look not only for riches, lest thou be mated with misery." Wealth

is good in its place, and we should not object to it, other things being

equal. But it never was nor can be good as an inducement to marry. What a

miserable policy it is, to make it the test of a proper match! "Do not make

the metals of earth the cord of the marriage tie." They are too brittle in

their nature to do so. They take to themselves wings and fly away. The fine

gold becomes dim; their cords are like ropes of glass-sand,--

"Like the spider's most attenuated thread,

They break at every breeze."

Rank also is a false standard of judgment in the forming of a marriage

alliance. Many look only to position in society, make it everything, and

think that acknowledged social distinction will compensate for the want of

all other interests. While there should be a social adaptation of

character, and while you should--

"Be joined to thy equal in rank, or the foot of pride will kick at thee,"

yet there is nothing to justify marrying a person because of his or her

social position. The evils of this may be seen in the first classes of

English society, where rank is mechanical, and where law forbids a trespass

upon its bastard prerogatives; and as a consequence, relatives intermarry,

until their descendants have degenerated into complete physical and mental

imbecility. Such nepotism as this is replete with untold disaster both in

the family and in the state. Too many in our democratic country ape this,

look to rank, and are blind to all things else. The fruits of this are seen

in that codfish aristocracy which floats with self-inflated importance upon

the troubled waters of society, causing too many of the little fish to

float after them, until they land themselves in the deep and muddy waters

of domestic ruin.

SECTION III.

TRUE TESTS IN THE SELECTION OF A COMPANION FOR LIFE.

Having considered some of the false standards of judgment in the choice of

a companion for life, we now revert to those true tests which are given us

in the Word of God. There we have the institution and true idea of

marriage, and the principles upon which we should proceed in making the

marriage choice.

We are taught in the holy scriptures, the primary importance of judicious

views of the nature and responsibilities of the marriage institution

itself. We should apprehend it, not from its mere worldly standpoint, not

as a simple legal alliance, not only as a scheme for temporal welfare and

happiness, but as a divine institute, a religious alliance, involving

moral responsibilities, and momentous consequences for eternity as well as

for time, for soul as well as for body. We are commanded to look to its

religious elements and duties; and to regard it with that solemnity of

feeling which it truly demands. When the light of the bridal day throws

upon the cheek its brightest colors, even then we should rejoice with

trembling, and our joy and festivity should be only in the Lord.

"Joy, serious and sublime,

Such as doth nerve the energies of prayer,

Should swell the bosom, when a maiden's hand,

Filled with life's dewy flowerets, girdeth on

That harness which the ministry of death

Alone unlooseth, but whose fearful power

May stamp the sentence of eternity."

In the days of our forefathers, marriage was thus held sacred, as a divine

institution, involving moral and religious duties and responsibilities; and

their celebration of it was, therefore, a religious one. They realized its

momentous import, and its bearing upon their future welfare. It was not,

therefore, without heavings of deep moral emotion and the flow of tears as

well as of joyful spirits, that they put the wedding garment on.

"There are smiles and tears in that gathering band,

Where the heart is pledged with the trembling hand

What trying thoughts in the bosom swell,

As the bride bids parents and home farewell!

Kneel down by the side of the tearful fair,

And strengthen the perilous hour with prayer!"

True love in each, and reciprocated by each, must determine the marriage

choice. The marriage of children should not be forced. Mutual love is the

basis of a proper union, because marriage is a voluntary compact. When

parents, therefore, force their children into an alliance, they usurp their

undoubted natural and religious rights. Hence there should be no _must_,

where there is no _will_, on the part of the child. That choice which is

made upon any other than reciprocated affection, is an unreasonable and

irreligious one. "Parents have no right," says Paley, "to urge their

children upon marriage to which they are averse;" "add to this," says he,

"that compulsion in marriage necessarily leads to prevarication; as the

reluctant party promises an affection, which neither exists, nor is

expected to take place." To proceed to marriage, therefore in the face of

absolute dislike and revulsion, is irrational and sinful.

As true, mutual love is the basis of marriage, so also should it be a

standard of our judgment in the marriage choice. Without it, neither

beauty, wealth, nor rank will make home happy. True love should be such as

is upheld in scripture. It is above mere passion. It never faileth. It is

life-like and never dies out. It is an evergreen in the bosom of home. It

has moral stamina, is regulated by moral law, has a moral end, contains

moral principle, and rises superior to mere prudential considerations. It

is more than mere feeling or emotion; it is not blind, but rational, and

above deception, having its ground in our moral and religious nature. It

extends to the whole person, to body, mind, and spirit, to the character as

well as to the face and form. It is tempered with respect, yea, vitalized,

purified, directed and elevated by true piety. Such love alone will survive

the charms and allurements of novelty, the fascinations of sense, the

ravages of disease and time, and will receive the sanction of heaven.

Mutual adaption of character and position is another scripture standard of

judgment. Is that person suited for me? Will that character make my home

happy? Could I be happy with such an one? Are we congenial in spirit,

sentiment, principle, cultivation, education, morals and religion? Can we

sympathize and work harmoniously together in mind and heart and will and

taste? Are we complemental to each other? These are questions of far

greater importance than the question of wealth, of beauty, or of rank.

Fitness of circumstances, means, and age should be also considered. Am I

able to support a family? Can I discharge the duties of a household? Where

there is ignorance of household duties, indolence, the want of any visible

means of supporting a family, no trade, no education, no energy, and no

prospects, there is no reason to think there can be a proper marriage.

Thus, then, mutual love, adaptation of character, of means, of

circumstances, of position, and of age, should be considered, in the

formation of a marriage alliance.

But the standard of judgment to which the scriptures especially direct our

attention is, that of religions equality, or spiritual adaptation. "Be not

unequally yoked together with unbelievers." The positive command here is,

that Christians should marry only in the Lord. Here is a test in the

selection of a companion for life, from which neither parents nor children

should ever depart. It evidently forbids a matrimonial union with those who

have no sympathy with religion. We should make more account of religious

equality than of equality of rank and wealth. Is not true piety of more

importance than education, affluence or social distinction? When husband

and wife are unequally yoked together in soul and grace, their home must

suffer spiritually as well as temporally. The performance of religious

duties and the enjoyment of religious privileges, will be impossible. The

unbeliever will discourage, oppose, and often ridicule, the pious efforts

of the believer. Partiality will be produced, and godliness will decline;

for, says Peter, unless we dwell as heirs together of the grace of life,

our prayers will be hindered. The pious one cannot rule in such a home.

Thus divided and striving with each other, their house must fall. Where one

draws heavenward and the other hellward, opposite attractions will be

presented, and the believer will find constant obstructions to growth in

grace, to the discharge of parental duty, and to the cultivation of

Christian graces in the heart. How can the unbeliever return, like David,

to bless his household? How can he bring up his children in the nurture and

admonition of the Lord? Can he be the head of a Christian home? And, tell

me, does the true Christian desire any other than a Christian home? "How

can two walk together, except they be agreed?" And are you, then, in your

marriage, agreed to walk with the unbeliever in the broad road of sin and

death? You are not, if you are a true Christian!

We see, therefore, the importance of a rigid adherence to the scripture

standard, "Be not unequally yoked, together with unbelievers." It is even

desirable that husband and wife belong to the same branch of the church,

that they may walk together on the sabbath to the house of God. There is

indeed something repugnant to the feelings of a Christian to see the

husband go in one direction to worship, and the wife in another. They

cannot be thus divided, without serious injury to the religious interests

of their family, as well as of their own souls. It is impossible for them

to train up their children successfully when they are separated by

denominational differences. It is a matter of very common observation that

when persons thus divided, marry, the one or the other suffers in religious

interest. From these and other considerations, we think it Is expedient to

marry, if possible, within the pales of our own branch of the church. Then,

being agreed, they can walk together with one mind and one purpose.

But how much more important that they be united in their pilgrim walk to

eternity,--united In the Lord Jesus Christ, by a common life and faith and

hope! We believe that Christians commit a sin when they violate this law of

religious equality, and unite themselves in matrimony with those who pay no

regard to religion. Who can estimate the peril of that home in which one of

its members is walking in the narrow way to heaven, while the other one is

traveling in the broad road to perdition! Whom, think you, will the

children follow? Let the sad experience of a thousand homes respond. Let

the blighted hopes and the unrequited affections of the pious wife, reply.

Let those children whose infamy and wretchedness have broken the devout

mother's heart, or brought the gray hairs of the pious father down with

sorrow to the grave, speak forth the answer. It will show the importance of

the scripture rule before us, and will declare the sin of violating that

rule.

And does not, therefore, a terrible judgment accompany that indiscriminate

matrimonial union with the unbelieving world, of which so many Christians,

in the present day, are guilty? Parents encourage their pious children to

marry unbelievers, though they are well aware that such unholy mixtures are

expressly forbidden, and that spiritual harmony is essential to their

happiness. "She is at liberty to be married to whom she will, only in the

Lord!" Those who violate this cardinal law of marriage, must expect to

suffer the penalties attached to it. History is the record of these. The

disappointed hopes, and the miseries of unnumbered homes speak forth their

execution. This great scripture law has its foundation in the very nature

of marriage itself. If marriage involves the law of spiritual harmony; if,

in the language of the Roman law, it is "the union of a man and woman,

constituting an united habitual course of life, never to be separated;" if

it is a partnership of the whole life,--a mutual sharing in all rights,

human and divine; if they are one flesh,--one in all the elements of their

moral being, as Christ and His church are one; if it is a mystery of man's

being, antecedent to all human law; if, in a word, man and woman in

marriage, are no more twain, but one flesh; and if the oneness of our

nature is framed of the body, the soul, and the spirit, then is it not

plain that when two persons marry, who possess no spiritual fitness for, or

harmony with, each other, they violate the fundamental law of wedlock; and

their marriage cannot meet the scripture conception of matrimonial union or

oneness. There will be no adaptation of the whole nature for each other;

they will not appreciate the sacred mysteriousness of marriage; instead of

the moral and religious development of the spiritual nature, there will be

the evolution of selfishness and sensuality as the leading motives of

domestic life. We see, then, that the Christian cannot with impunity,

violate the scripture law, "Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers."

Shall the Christian parent and child disregard this prohibition of God?

Will you ridicule this fundamental principle of Christian marriage? Will

the children of God not hesitate to marry the children of the devil? Can

these walk together, in domestic union and harmony? Can saint and sinner be

of one mind, one spirit, one life, one hope, one interest? Can the children

of the light and the children of darkness, opposite in character and in

their apprehension of things, become flesh of each other's flesh, and by

the force of their blended light and darkness shed, around their

home-fireside the cheerfulness of a mutual love, of a common life and hope,

and of a progressive spiritual work?

Parents! it is your right and duty to interfere when your children violate

this law. Bring them up from infancy to respect it. In the parlor, train

them to appreciate its religious importance. Show them that God will visit

the iniquity of their departure from it, unto the third and fourth

generation. You are stimulated to do so by the divine promise that when

they grow old, they will not depart from it.

Such unequal matches are not made in heaven. "God's hand is over such

matches, not in them." "What fellowship hath light with darkness?" If love,

in Christian marriages, is holy and includes the religious element, then it

is evident that the Christian alliance with, one between whom and himself

there is no religious affinity whatever, is not only an outrage against the

marriage institution, but also exposes his home to the curse of God, making

it a Babel of confusion and of moral antipathies.

Both the old and the new testaments give explicit testimony to the law of

spiritual harmony in marriage. Thus the law of Moses forbid the children of

Israel to intermarry among heathen nations. "Neither shalt thou make

marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his

daughter shalt thou take unto thy son."--Deut. vii., 3. Abraham obeyed this

law in the part he took in the marriage of his son Isaac, as recorded in

the twenty-fourth, chapter of Genesis. His obedience was reproduced in

Isaac and Rebecca, who manifested the same desire, and took the same care

that Jacob should take a wife from among the covenant people of God. See

twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis.

The evil consequences of the violation of this law may be seen in the

history of Solomon,--i. Kings, chap. 11; also in the case mentioned in the

10th chap.; and in Nehemiah, chap. 13. Paul upholds this law when he

exhorts the Corinthians to marry "only in the Lord." Reason itself

advocates this law. The true Christian labors for heaven and walks in the

path of the just; the unbelieving labor for earth, mind only the things of

this world, and walk in the broad road to ruin. Can these now walk

together, live in harmony, when so widely different in spirit, in their

aims and pursuits? "What fellowship hath righteousness with

unrighteousness? What part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what

agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the

living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them; and I will be their

God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and

be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will

receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and

daughters."

The primitive Christians developed this law in their families. They forbade

marriage with Jews, Pagans, Mohammedans, and ungodly persons. With them,

piety was the first desideratum in marriage. The sense of the Christian

church has ever been against religious inequality in marriage. It has

always been felt to be detrimental to personal piety and to the general

interests of Christianity. It limits and neutralizes the influence of the

church, brings overwhelming temptations to lukewarmness in family religion,

and is, in a word, in almost every instance, the fruitful cause of

spiritual declension wherever it is practiced.

Let me, then, exhort you to marry only in the Lord. Such an union will be

blessed. Daughter of Zion! marry such a man as will, like David, return to

bless his household. Son of the Christian home! marry no woman who has not

in her heart the casket of piety. Make this your standard; and your home

shall be a happy, as well as a holy home, and

"In the blissful vision, each shall share

As much of glory as his soul can bear!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE CHILDREN'S PATRIMONY.

"Give me enough, saith wisdom; for he feareth to ask for more;

And that by the sweat of my brow, addeth stout-hearted independence;

Give me enough, and not less; for want is leagued with the tempter;

Poverty shall make a man desperate, and hurry him ruthless into crime;

Give me enough, and not more, saving for the children of distress;

Wealth oftentimes killeth, where want but hindereth the budding."

The children's patrimony is a vital subject. It involves the great

question, what should Christian parents leave to their children as a true

inheritance from the Christian home? We shall return but a very brief and

general answer.

The idea of the home-inheritance is generally confined to the amount of

wealth which descends from the parent to the child. And this is indeed too

often the only inheritance of which children can boast. Many parents, who

even claim to be Christians, enslave both themselves and their families,

to secure for their offspring a large pecuniary patrimony. They prostitute

every thing else to this. And hence it often happens that the greatest

money-inheritance becomes the children's greatest curse, running them into

all the wild and immoral excesses of prodigality; and ending in abject

poverty, licentiousness, and disgrace; or perhaps making them like their

deluded parents, penurious, covetous, and contracted in all their views and

sentiments.

We think, therefore, that the children's patrimony should be more than gold

and silver. This may pamper the body, but will afford no food for the mind

and spirit. We do not mean by these remarks, that their patrimony should

not include wealth. On the other hand, we believe that parents should make

pecuniary provision for them, that they may not begin life totally

destitute. But we mean, that when this is the only patrimony they receive,

it often proves a curse, because it tends to destroy their sympathy with

higher interests, exposes them to the uncertainties of wealth, and makes

them dependent upon that alone. If it should elude their grasp, all is

gone, and they become poor and helpless indeed.

What, therefore, besides wealth, should be the children's patrimony from

the Christian home? We briefly answer.

1. A good character. This is more valuable than wealth; for a good name is

rather to be chosen than great riches. This character should be physical,

intellectual, and moral. Give your children the boon of good health by a

proper training to exercise and industry. Transmit to them the patrimony of

good physical habits by educating their bodies, and developing their

material existence according to the principles of natural law. Develop

their intellectual faculties, and enrich them with, the treasures of

knowledge. Give character to their minds as well as to their bodies; and

they will be blessed with an intellectual dowry which cannot be taken from

them, and which will bring them an adequate recompense. Give to your

children the patrimony of good and just principles. Train the heart to good

morals; fill it with the treasures of virtue, of truth, of justice and of

honor. Give it moral stamina. Educate the moral sense of your children.

Direct the unfolding powers of their conscience; in a word, develop their

moral faculties, and supply them with appropriate nutriment; mould their

will; cultivate their emotions; rule their desires and passions; and thus

unfold their moral nature according to the rules of God's revealed law.

Such a character, involving a true and vigorous evolution of body, mind and

spirit, is an effectual safeguard against the evils of prodigality, the

disgrace of penuriousness, and the woes of vice and crime. Their property

may burn down, and they may he robbed of their gold; but neither the flame

nor the robber can deprive them of their character; their intellectual and

moral worth, is beyond the power of man to destroy; no enemy can rob them

of those virtues which a well-developed mind and heart afford; they will

be to them a standing capital to enrich them in all that is essential to

human happiness.

2. A good occupation is another patrimony which should descend to the

children of a Christian home. Bring up your children to some useful

employment by which they may be able to make a comfortable living; and you

thereby give them hundreds, and, perhaps, thousands of dollars per year;

you give them a boon which cannot he taken from them. Many parents, hoping

to secure for their children a large pecuniary patrimony, will not permit

them to learn either a trade or a profession; but let them grow up in

indolence and ignorance, unable as well as unwilling, to be useful either

to themselves or to others, living for no purpose, and unfit even to take

care of what they leave. And when their wealth descends to them, they soon

spend it all in a life of dissipation; so that in a few years they find

themselves poor, and friendless, and ignorant of all means of a livelihood,

without character, without home, without hope, a nuisance to society, a

disgrace to their parents, a curse to themselves! But as we have already

dwelt upon this subject in the chapter on the choice of pursuits, we shall

not enlarge upon it here.

3. True religion is another inheritance which should descend to the

children of the Christian home. This is an undefiled and imperishable

treasure, which does not become worthless at the grave, but which will

continue to increase in preciousness as long as the ages of eternity shall

roll on. If through the parent's pious agency, the child comes into

possession of this invaluable blessing, there is given to him more than

earthly treasure, more than pecuniary competency, more than a good name, or

a fair reputation, or a high social position in this life; he receives a

title to and personal meetness for, the undefiled and imperishable

inheritance of heaven, composed of glittering crowns of glory, of

unspeakable joys, and sweet communion with all the loved and cherished

there. Thus the fruits of a parent's labor for the salvation of his

children constitute an infinitely more valuable patrimony than all the

accumulated fruits of his industry in behalf of wealth. All the wealth, and

rank, and reputation which may descend from parent to child, can not

supersede the necessity of a spiritual patrimony. It is only, as we have

seen in a former chapter, when you minister to the spiritual wants of your

children and tinge all their thoughts and feelings with a sense of

eternity; when your home is made a spiritual nursery; and you work for

their eternal benefit, and thereby secure for them the fulfillment of those

blessed promises which God has given concerning the children of believing

parents, that you leave them a patrimony worthy the Christian home. Such a

spiritual patrimony it is within the power of all Christian parents to

bestow. And without its enjoyment by your children, you fail to minister

unto them as a faithful steward of God. You may minister to their bodies

and minds; you may amass for them a fortune; you may give them an

education; you may establish them in the most lucrative business; you may

fit them for an honorable and responsible position; you may leave them the

heritage of social and political influence; and you may caress them with

all the passionate fondness of the parental heart and hand; yet, without

the heritage of true piety,--of the true piety of the parent reproduced, in

the heart and character of the child, all will be worse than vain, yea, a

curse to both the parent and the children.

Having thus briefly pointed out some of the essential features of the

children's patrimony, as physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual, we

shall now advert to the principles upon which parents should proceed in the

distribution of their property to their children.

They should not give them more than a competency. That they should lay by

something for them is conceded by all. This is both a right and a duty. It

is included in the obligation to provide for them; and he who does it not

"hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel." Natural affection, as

well as supernatural faith, stimulates the parent to provide thus for his

offspring.

But this does not demand a great fortune; but a simple competency, that is,

just enough to meet their immediate wants and emergencies when they enter

the world and begin business-life. This competence should correspond with

the social position they occupied under the parental roof. It should not

go beyond this; it should be just enough to meet the social and financial

exigencies of the child. It should be measured also by the peculiar

necessities of the child, by his health, abilities and circumstances. "A

parent is justified," says Paley in his Moral and Political Philosophy, "in

making a difference between his children according as they stand in greater

or less need of the assistance of his fortune, in consequence of the

difference of their age or sex, or of the situations in which they are

placed, or the various success which they have met with."

Now the law of competence does not demand, yea, it forbids, more than a

sufficiency to meet these peculiar exigencies of the child. Those parents

who seek for more, become parsimonious, unfaithful to the moral interests

of their household, and indifferent to all legitimate objects of charity

and benevolence. These are indeed but the necessary fruits of

unfaithfulness to this law; for the course of God's providence indicates

the impossibility of our faithfulness to the duty of Christian beneficence,

and at the same time lay up for our children more than a sufficiency. We

find indeed, that in almost every instance in which parents have

transcended the limits of competence, and thus raised their children above

the necessity of doing anything themselves for a subsistence, God has

cursed the act, and the canker of His displeasure has consumed this

ill-saved property. That curse we see often in the prodigality and

dissipation of the children. They walk in the slippery paths of sin, kneel

at the altar of Mammon, fare sumptuously every day, as prodigal in spending

their fortune as their parents were penurious in amassing it, until at last

they come to want, rush into crime, and end their unhappy life in the

state's prison, or upon the gibbet.

We see, therefore, that when parents give their children more than what

they actually need, they place in their possession the instruments with

which, they ruin themselves. History shows that the most wealthy men

started out in the world with barely enough, and some, with, nothing; and

that generally those who started with an independent fortune ended with

less than they started, and many closed their earthly career in abject

poverty and misery. Besides, the man who made his fortune knows how to keep

and expend it; and in point of happiness derived from property, "there is

no comparison between a fortune which, a man acquires by well applied

industry, or by a series of success in his business, and one found in his

possession or received from another." Let, therefore, the property you

leave your children be just enough to meet the exigencies of their

situations, and no more; for

"Wealth hath never given happiness, but often hastened misery;

Enough hath never caused misery, but often quickened happiness;

Enough is less than thy thought, O pampered creature of society,

And he that hath more than enough, is a thief of the rights of

his brother!"

Parents should be impartial in the distribution of their patrimony among

their children. They should never give one more than another unless for

very plausible and Christian reasons, such as bad health, peculiar

circumstances, of want, &c. They should have no pets, no favorites among

them; and care more for one than for another, or indulge one more than

another. Neither should they withhold a dowry, from a child as a

punishment, unless his crime and character are of such an execrable nature

as to warrant the assurance that its bestowment would but enhance his

misery. Then indeed, it would be a blessing to withhold it. "A child's

vices may be of that sort," says Paley in his Philosophy, "and his vicious

habits so incorrigible, as to afford much the same reason for believing

that he will waste or misemploy the fortune put into his power, as if he

were mad or idiotish, in which, case a parent may treat him as a madman, or

an idiot; that is, may deem it sufficient to provide for his support by an

annuity equal to his wants and innocent enjoyments, and which he may be

restrained from alienating. This seems to be the only case in which a

disinherison, nearly absolute, is justifiable."

Neither should parents be capricious in the distribution of their property

among their children. They have no right to withhold a dowry from children

because they have married against their will, no more than they have a

right, for this reason, to disown, them. This would be distributing their

property upon the principle of revenge or reward. No parent has a right to

indulge a preference founded on such an unreasonable and criminal feeling

as revenge. Neither has he a right to distribute his property from

considerations of age, sex, merit, or situation. The idea of giving all to

the eldest son to perpetuate family wealth, and distinction; or of giving;

all to the sons, and withholding from the daughters; or of giving to those

children only who were more obsequious in their adherence to their parent's

tyrannical requisitions,--is unreasonable, unchristian, and against the

generous dictates of natural affection.

From this whole subject we may infer the infatuation of those parents who

toil as the slave in the galley, to amass a large fortune for their

children. To accomplish this object they become drudges all their life.

They rise early and retire late, deny themselves even the ordinary comforts

of life, expend all the time and strength of their manhood, make slaves of

their wives and children, and live retired from all society, in order to

lay up a fortune for their offspring. To this end they make all things

subordinate and subservient; and, indeed, they so greatly neglect their

children as to deprive them of even the capacity of enjoying intellectually

or morally the patrimony they thus secure for them. They bring them up in

gross ignorance of every thing save work: and money. They teach them

close-fisted parsimony, and prepare them to lead a life as servile and

infatuated as their own. Miserable delusion! "What shall it profit a man

if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"

"O cursed lust of gold! when for thy sake

The fool throws up his interest in both worlds;

First starved in this, then damned in that to come!"

CHAPTER XXV.

THE PROMISES OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.

"The promise is unto you, and to your children."

ACTS II., 39.

"Parent who plantedst in the joy of love,

Yet hast not gather'd fruit,--save rankling thorns,

Or Sodom's bitter apples,--hast thou read

Heaven's promise to the seeker? Thou may'st bring

Those o'er whose cradle thou didst watch with pride,

And lay them at thy Savior's feet, for lo!

His shadow falling on the wayward soul,

May give it holy health. And when thou kneel'st

Low at the pavement of sweet Mercy's gate,

Beseeching for thine erring ones, unfold

The passport of the King,--'Ask, and receive!

Knock,--and it shall be opened!"'

The promises of the Christian home may be divided into two kinds, viz.:

Those which God has given to the family; and those which Christian parents

have made to God.

God has not only laid His requisitions upon the Christian home, but given

his promises. Every command is accompanied with a promise. These promises

give color to all the hopes of home.

When the dark cloud of tribulation overhangs the parent's heart; when the

overwhelming storm of misfortune rages around his habitation, uprooting his

hopes and demolishing his interests; when the ruthless hand of death tears

from his embrace the wife of his bosom and the children of his love;--even

in hours of bereavement like these, the promises of God dispel the gloom,

and surround his home and his heart with the sunshine of peace and joy.

His promises extend to both the parents and their offspring. "Unto you, and

unto your children," "I will pour my spirit on thy seed, and my blessing on

thine offspring; and they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by

the watercourses. One shall say, I am the Lord's; and another shall call

himself by the name of Jacob; and another shall subscribe with his hand

unto the Lord, and surname himself by the name of Israel." His promises

extend to children's children; and whatever they may be for the parent,

they are "visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation."

Now these divine promises are of two kinds,--the promise of punishment, and

the promise of reward. He promises to punish the unfaithful parent, and to

reward the faithful parent. He also promises to visit both the evil and the

good of the parents upon their children. Such is the constitution of the

family, and such are the vital relations which the members sustain to each

other, that by the law of natural and moral reproduction, the child is

either blessed or cursed in the parent. What the parent does will run out

in its legitimate consequences to the child, either as a malediction or as

a benediction.

We have divine promises to punish the unfaithful members of the Christian

home. If the parent becomes guilty of iniquity, it will be visited upon the

children from generation to generation. There is no consideration which

should more effectually restrain parents from unfaithfulness than this. Let

them become selfish, sensual, indolent, and dissipated, and soon these

elements of iniquity will be transmitted to their offspring. What the

parent sows, the child will reap. If the former sow to the flesh, the

latter shall of the flesh reap corruption. Thus, whatsoever the parent sows

in the child he shall reap from the child. The promised curse of the

parent's wickedness is deposited in the child so far as that wickedness

affected the child's character. This is all based upon the great principle

that the promises are unto you, and to your children.

But while this great principle is ominous of terror to the ungodly, it is a

pleasing theme to the pious and faithful. Home is a stewardship; and if

faithful to its high and holy vocation, it has a good reward for its labor

of love. "If ye sow to the spirit ye shall of the spirit reap life

everlasting." This promise of reward is "to you and to your children."

"Many souls shall be given for its hire." Their children shall reap the

reward of the faithfulness of the parents. Of them it shall be said, "this

is the seed which the Lord hath blessed." Faithful parents have thus a

glorious recompense of reward. God shall reward thee openly. Make your

household a true nursery for the soul; and He will give thee thy wages. The

blessing of the Most High will descend like dew upon you and your children.

And when they grow up to manhood, He will make them His agents in rewarding

you. They will honor and comfort you in your declining years. They will not

depart from the ways of the Lord in which you trained them. Though they may

be in a distant land,--far from you and the cherished home of their

childhood, yet they will obey your admonitions, gratefully remember your

kindness; and their grateful obedience and remembrance will be your great

reward from them. They will rise up and call you blessed.

"Though we dwell apart,

Thy loving words are with me evermore,--

Thy precious loving words. Thy hand, and heart.

And earnest soul of love, are here impressed,

For me, a dear memorial through all time.

Mother! I cannot recompense thy love,

But thy reward is sure, for thou hast done

Thy duty perfectly, and we rise up

And call thee blessed; and the Lord shall give

Thy pious cares and labors rich reward."

And when you descend to the grave and are gathered to your fathers, the

assurance of fidelity to your home-trust, the prospect of meeting your

children in heaven, and all the brilliant hopes that loom up before you,

full of the light and glory of the eternal world, will furnish you a great

recompense of reward.

Parents can rely upon these promises of God with the full assurance of

faith; for His promises are yea and amen. Let them but lay hold upon the

promises, and act upon the conditions of their fulfillment, and then leave

the rest to God. Abraham and Joshua, and David, acted upon this principle

in their families. Let the members of the Christian home do the same, and

the blessing of God will rest upon them.

God promises to reward parents in this life. We find their fulfillment in

the peace, the hopes, the interests, and the pleasures of the faithful

household. The members are happy in each other's love, in each other's

virtue, in each other's worth, in each other's hopes, in each other's

interests, in each other's confidence, in each other's piety, in each

other's fidelity, in each other's happiness. Thus God shall reward thee

openly. He has never said to the seed of Jacob seek ye me in vain. "Verily

there is a reward for the righteous." "This is the seed which the Lord hath

blessed."

The promised reward of faithful parents may be seen in their children. They

are in the true Christian home a precious heritage from the Lord. Thus a

parent's faithfulness was rewarded in the piety of Baxter, and Doddridge,

and Watts. What a rich reward did Elkanah and Hannah receive by their

training up Samuel! And were not Lois and Eunice rewarded for their

faithfulness to young Timothy? What a glorious reward the mother of John Q.

Adams received from God, in that great and good man! God blessed her

fidelity, by making him worthy of such a mother. He himself was conscious

that he was his mother's reward, as may be seen from the following anecdote

of him. Governor Briggs of Massachusetts, after reading with great interest

the letters of John Q. Adam's mother, one day went over to his seat in

Congress, and said to him:

"Mr. Adams, I have found out who made you!"

"What do you mean?" said he.

"I have been reading the letters of your mother," was the reply.

With a flashing eye and glowing face, he started, and in his peculiar

manner, said: "Yes, Briggs, all that is good in me, I owe to my mother!"

But God promises to reward faithful parents in the life to come. Their

great reward is in heaven. The departure of every pious member of their

home but increases the heavenly reward. The little child that dies in its

mother's arms, and is borne up to the God who gave it, but increases by its

sainted presence there, her joyful anticipations of the eternal reward.

"And when, by father's lonely bed,

You place me in the ground,

And his green turf, with daisies spread,

Has also wrapt me round;

Rejoice to think, to you 'tis given,

To have a ransomed child in heaven!"

The Christian Home As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc. · 第 31 / 32 章

Discipline should be administered with impartiality. Never make one child