I do not ask if your parents were perfect. There are no perfect people
now, and I do not suppose there were any perfect people then. Perhaps
there was sometimes too much blood in their eye when they chastised
you. But from what I know of you, you got no more than you deserved,
and perhaps a little more chastisement would have been salutary. But
you are willing to acknowledge, I think, that they wanted to do right.
From what you overheard in conversations, and from what you saw at the
family altar and at neighborhood obsequies, you know that they had
invited God into their heart and life. There was something that
sustained those old people supernaturally. You have no doubt about
their destiny. You expect if you ever get to heaven to meet them as
certainly as you expect to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.
That early association has been a charm for you. There was a time when
you got right up from a house of iniquity and walked out into the
fresh air because you thought your mother was looking at you. You
have never been very happy in sin because of a sweet old face that
would present itself. Tremulous voices from the past accosted you
until they were seemingly audible, and you looked around to see who
spoke. There was an estate not mentioned in the last will and
testament, a vast estate of prayer and holy example and Christian
entreaty and glorious memory. The survivors of the family gathered to
hear the will read, and this was to be kept, and that was to be sold,
and it was share and share alike. But there was