confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of
superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that
lighten a father or mother's care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in
the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined
deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of
drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! What power
over the pains of sickness, or the languor of convalescence, in the
solicitude and consideration which children may show, and showing, may
bring to the weary pillow a balm more healing than medical art! And if
stinted means require frugal expenditures, or even the active labor of the
young, what worth in the filial thoughtfulness that anticipates the
necessary economy, instead of repining encourages frugality, and asks to
be useful instead of insisting on being indulged.
And when fortune, station, or intellectual eminence reward youthful
aspiration, the aspirant never wins more respect than when he makes his
parents his confidants and companions. Here our common nature is not at
fault, for whenever in any public exercise or examination a young person
does remarkably well, we all think at once of the parents, and the
pleasure of the assembly is not complete until the people have confirmed
their own enjoyment by sympathy with the father and mother. There is great
power in this fact, and what it implies--great power in the fact that
children honor parents by being truly honorable, and repay best the
sacrifices of so many anxious years by making their own lives a credit and
comfort to father and mother. This benefit lasts as long as life itself,
and the integrity and efficiency of mature years carries out to the limit
of existence the affectionate reverence of childhood.
Here the whole world is one, and the human heart is the same in all ages,
and history and experience meet. What state of society can be blind to the
meaning of the imprecation which was pronounced at the entrance into the
promised land, and joined in the same doom the idolator and him who should
"set light by his father and mother?" What philosophy can gainsay the sage
of the Book of Proverbs, whose sententious moralizing rises into prophetic
grandeur as he speaks of the unnatural son: "The eye that mocketh at his
father or refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick
it out, and the young eagles shall eat it." Who needs any interpretation
of the feelings of David, or Joseph, or Solomon, in their joy or trial?
How heartrending was the grief of the Psalmist over his recreant
son--"Would to God, I had died for thee, my son, my son!" What beauty, as
well as simplicity in the inquiry of Joseph for his father, when the prime
minister of Egypt dismissed his courtly train, and weeping aloud, could
only ask "Doth my father yet live?" What grandeur far above its gold and
gems surrounded the throne of Solomon, when he rose to meet his mother,
and called her to a seat at his right hand. "And the king said unto her,
Ask on, my mother, for I will not say thee nay." What pathos and sublimity
in the Saviour of men, when, embracing home and heaven in his parting
words on the Cross, he commended his spirit to the Eternal Father, and
intrusted his mother to the beloved disciple's care. We need no more than
this to show how the gospel glorifies the law, and crowns its morality and
piety alike in its perfect love--"Woman, behold thy son"--"Disciple,
behold thy mother."
Hear the amen that goes from Calvary to Sinai--and Honor thy father and
thy mother!
Brothers and Sisters.
BROTHERS AND SISTERS.
When Cain asked "Am I my brother's keeper?" it seemed a very strange
question to come from a man who had just murdered his brother and held him
so cruelly in his keeping. Fear led Cain to disguise his guilt by
repudiating his obligation, through an interrogation more negative than a
flat denial. What he said in guilty fear, many are now ready to say in
pretended humanity, and it is one of the conceits of our time to make
light of ties of kindred in the name of a world-wide philanthropy. A
melo-dramatic patriotism not particularly famous for domestic attachment
has been ready to swear brotherhood to the whole nation, perhaps the whole
race, and many a scape-grace who has been a sad plague to his own kindred,
has been heard shouting at the top of his voice the three noble watchwords
of which fraternity is a climax. Philanthropists sometimes labor under a
similar error, and people who have had no especial solicitude or felicity
in helping their own families and neighbors, presume to despise such near
at hand interests as trivial, and seek to reform the world in a wholesale
way. Professed Christians are not wholly free from the error. Some
certainly there are who are ready to _brother_ and _sister_ all
Christendom with most profuse generosity of tongue, who show their little
sense of the meaning of the term by pinching selfishness towards those of
their own blood, that seems to say, "Am I my brother's keeper?"
It is well, that large views of social obligation are making headway, and
that Christianity has so mightily rebuked the narrowness of exclusive
cliques and clanships. But if humanity is to be true in its progress, it
must be true in its source; and if a man love not his brother whom he hath
seen, how can he love not merely God whom he hath not seen, but the
brother whom he hath not seen? In fact what is regard for our brother but
the first and most obvious application of the second of the two great
commandments? Our brother is our next neighbor, and even our humanity must
begin with him, that it may be really worth any thing. We turn now to the
collateral relations of the household, or the duties of brothers and
sisters. Sacred and suggestive subject, speaking to each of us in the
tones of our own peculiar experience. Let it speak to the conscience as
well as to the sensibilities and the memory.
* * * * *
Where shall we begin but at the beginning, that is with the will of God,
which is the ground of every duty? The family, as we have seen and
believe, is the first form of society, a government founded by the
Creator. All that can be said in favor of its peace and order, goes to set
forth its collateral as well as its ascending and descending ties--to urge
the obligations of brothers and sisters as well as parents and children.
Co-operation between the former is as essential to the home, as are
protection and dependence between the latter.
But to come more closely to the point, is it not true that proper respect
for parents urges the duty now under consideration and just filial love
must needs be fraternal? Children cannot be true to their parents without
being true to each other, and the welfare and charm of the household
depends in no small degree upon the mutual help and moral harmony of its
younger members. Children are not regarded as so many separate units, but
as an organic whole, as members one of another; and when they are
considerate and harmonious, they have new grace and worth in the parent's
eye, more so to his heart, than the features of the fairest landscape
where the particulars combine in the whole, and light, shade, grove and
river, hill and valley--fair in themselves, are fairer together, can
possibly have to the eye of the lover of nature. What under the heavens is
more pleasant and lovely than brethren who with all their differences of
taste and temperament still agree in aim and spirit? It is indeed like the
dew of Hermon, that threw its silver veil over mountain and valley, and
refreshed and beautified each tree and flower with a baptism from heaven.
But this relation of fraternal love to filial is but one of its aspects.
Brothers and sisters are related by what they owe directly to each other,
as well as by what they owe to parents. The will of God, that bids them
agree for their parents' sake, bids them also agree for their own sake.
Mutual educators of each other they must be, and by means far more
powerful than school-books or lessons. They are constantly together, and
this intercourse must be a selfish collision, if it be not a friendly
reciprocity. In childhood, they must needs be frequent rivals for the
favors and duties of the home, subjects of indulgences or sacrifices, that
must awaken strife, unless they are shared in mutual deference. With
childhood, however, the relation does not end, but may have in mature
years its gravest importance, for in the order of nature parents are
likely to be first taken from the world, and to all human view they may be
beyond the reach of kindness or unkindness. But the relation of children
to each other promises to last far longer, may create between the elder
and younger a relation parental as well as filial, and for good or ill it
must in some way continue as long as life itself. How essential, then,
that a tie so enduring should be rightly regarded, and that in childhood,
youth and maturity, it should keep its benignant hold over the family!
Nor does its importance end here. The method of God is, that the
affections shall grow outward from within, and that being trained in
kindness at home, men should be prepared to show good will to each other
in all the concerns of life. As the patriarchal dispensation, in the grand
course of ages, widened into the universality of the gospel, so in every
true life, a just family culture is to expand into a generous humanity,
that learns at home how to speak of a broader brotherhood, and a higher
fatherhood. Whether God's method is not wiser than man's let experience
show by contracting the windy declamation, that mistakes rhetorical
generalities for comprehensive benevolence, and the judicious,
unostentatious beneficence that carries out in all its relations the sober
good will cherished in a wholesome household discipline, and so on a true
pattern strives to build up the larger household of faith. The one begins
at the root, and so branches out in blessing--the other would begin with
the branches, which wither away when parted from the root.
* * * * *
So then in the will of God, revealed in the constitution of the family,
the welfare of its members, the spirit of humanity, we find the foundation
of the duties of brothers and sisters. The fraternal sentiment must be in
accordance. In all our affections, there must needs be some lights and
shades that depend upon the individual's gifts and experience, for no man
is a rule for all, and we must differ in our likings as in our looks. Yet
all primal obligations have essential features in common; and the
fraternal sentiment, although less instructive than the parental, and more
complex than the filial, has quite as decidedly a character of its own.
The phrenologist may not locate it in a special organ of the brain, and
the metaphysician may not make of it an instinct by itself, but it has its
root none the less in nature, and loses no interest from expanding so
generously under true associations and culture. When true, the fraternal
sentiment unites congeniality with consanguinity, and developes friendship
from kindred blood, as the parted branches open into leaves, and
blossoms, and fruits, kindred in their aims as their source. Its nature is
better shown by tracing out its just influence than by attempting to
arrest its flitting shades of hue, or to analyze its constituent elements.
Here, too, is the practical bearing of the subject, a bearing which many
slight far more from thoughtlessness than from indifference. In what light
are brothers or sisters called to regard each other?
Their first obvious duty is that of due consideration for each other. They
are to consider each other's circumstances, needs, trials, dispositions,
opportunities, and never allow selfishness or indifference to blind them
to what belongs to them in common. Does this need to be said of persons
who are so near, as of necessity to be always in each other's thoughts?
Ah, what is more frequent and obvious, than that familiarity tempts
indifference, and that our very primal duties, like the stars which are
their emblems, are easily forgotten because they may at any time be seen?
The things most significant are likely to be near at hand, and religion,
like philosophy, finds its chief triumphs in opening the meaning of what
God has brought to our very door. A part of the power of absence from home
lies in breaking the spell of familiarity, and leading the absent one to
look impartially upon the familiar circle, and upon his own place and
conduct there. Many a youth or maiden has returned from a journey or
voyage wiser far in sense of home duties than proud of the accomplishments
of travel. True consideration will not need absence to teach this lesson,
but from its calm point of view the absent one will survey the common
spheres of life, and try to live for others as under the eye of God.
In each family there will be decided need for mutual consideration, and
there must be strife, unless there is mutual deference. All cannot have
all the favors, and the division of them may embroil a household as
bitterly as the division of an empire has embroiled rival heirs of
thrones. Where means are limited, mutual sacrifices not always easy must
be made, and few families pass many years without feeling the power of
consideration, or of selfishness in meeting the privations that must go
round their circle. When means are abundant, and every wish has ready
wealth at its command, the form of forbearance may change, but its
essential spirit is none the less needed. There will still be differences
of talent, looks, manners, opportunities, health, experience, that require
in the most prosperous household the same virtues, that give the humblest
cottage its dignity and peace. In every family, there will be some call
for peculiar consideration or regard to some member of it, according as
sickness, infirmity, youth, age, deficient or extraordinary ability, may
call upon the stronger to serve the weaker. What wretchedness when the
call is slighted, even by one! Who can calculate the mischief wrought by a
sensual or reckless brother, who makes every thing secondary to his own
passions and pleasures, or by a frivolous and heartless sister, who makes
a god of fashion and enslaves the whole house to her monstrous vanity!
Who, too, can calculate the influence of a high-minded brother in guiding
and cheering the younger members of the family, or of a devoted and
judicious sister in soothing every impatient humor with a face in which
shines, perhaps, the light of the sainted mother's countenance? When all
unite in some common solicitude, God gives their daily bread and cup a
sacramental grace, and from some sufferer whom they watch over together, a
mighty blessing, uniting, exalting them all, comes forth, and seems to say
in the sacred name, "Ye have done it unto me."
Consideration will lead to confidence, and will banish deceit, that viper
of society, from the hearth-stone, which too often warms it into life. Let
confidence begin early, move the lips first lisping for utterance, and
continue in maturity, when the world's folly that sometimes names itself
experience shall try to teach disguise as prudence, and artifice as
wisdom. Whatever we may think of the confessor, as an official person,
confession is founded in the nature of things, and God bids us confess our
faults one to another. Who ought to be confidential, if not those whose
experience and destiny so unite their lives? I cannot even glance at the
chief forms of this confidential relation. One aspect may be specified
which is too often forgotten--that between brother and sister. If these
were more candid advisers, each would be better for it--each imparting to
each the counsel that each can give. With feminine insight and purity,
what a kind and gentle, yet strict and earnest censor of youthful excess,
the one may be. With manly judgment and honor, what a firm and scrupulous,
yet tender and considerate adviser in reference to many follies and
dangers may the other be. Giddy as young people often are in their
pleasures and caprices, it has sometimes seemed to me, that if a plan of
life were to be drawn up by the youth of a family for each other, few
treatises of morals would surpass it in purity of spirit or rectitude of
principle. Some follies would be sure to fall. Where would intemperance
and its kindred vices be, if sisters were taken as counsellors? Where
would indecent costumes, immodest dances, equivocal friendships be, if
brothers were more frequent advisers? This negative influence is not a
tithe of the worth of the relation, which God in his infinite tenderness
and wisdom has decreed--a relation so able to enrich ties of nature by
every grace of mind and heart, and from likeness and unlikeness of
constitution to develope one of the finest harmonies of our being. Its
beauty cheers many a dark age of ancient rudeness, and adorns many of the
brightest chapters of our modern culture. Would we know what brother and
sister have been to each other, listen to the triumphal song of Miriam, as
she braced anew the great heart of the law-giver with timbrel and psalm;
or look to the grave of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha stood with Him who
was the Resurrection and the Life. Do we ask more modern instances, stand
under the open heavens and remember how Caroline Herschel shared the
vigils of their illustrious explorer--open the pages of Neander, and think
of her whose devotedness made a pleasant home of his otherwise solitary
study, and encouraged him in his noble work of tracing out the progress of
the divine life throughout all the mazes of theological controversy, and
making church history a book of the heart, instead of the disputatious
understanding. Do we need more--only conjecture the number of cases nearer
at hand in which youth have been counselled and helped on through years of
preparation to their calling or profession by a sacrifice that looked not
to the world for motive, and asked not of the world reward for its
success.
I need only name the crowning duty of brothers and sisters--the duty of
being mutual helpers, for this is implied in what we have said of
consideration and confidence. They whom God has so united should stand by
each other in every worthy way--not selfishly exacting favors, but earnest
to do good. Too often the contrary has indeed been the case, and history
in most conspicuous passages, from the death of Abel and the exposure of
Joseph to the wars of the Plantagenets and the feuds of the Bourbons,
shows that strifes are bitterest when nearest home, and "a brother
offended is indeed harder to be won than a strong city, and their
contentions are like the bars of a castle." Less conspicuous, because less
monstrous, are the opposite cases, and Christianity itself leads the noble
list of fraternal worthies, by presenting in its first disciples so many
who carried ties of blood into bonds of faith, and strove together to the
last for the kingdom that would make all brothers in God. The various
forms of fraternal aid need not be specified, nor the cases described in
which the death of parents or peculiar circumstances enhance the
obligation, and the responsibility of parents devolves upon the elder
children. Whatever the age, the welfare of children is closely connected
with their mutual conduct, and its power reaches not merely to the
division of time and cares, but to the highest interests of mind and
heart. Firm principle, spiritual faith, devoted purposes, act and react
collaterally with great power, and in the social as in the natural world,
it is the side light and warmth that most applies the cheering rays from
above. Happy the home where true peace dwells between kindred, and all
various gifts are held in unity of spirit! While the circle remains
unbroken, it is strong against the world. When broken it is still not
desolate, and the orphan is not without a helper. There is love enough on
earth to join with the love that has gone heavenward to make life
cheerful, and keep hope firm.
Let all apply these thoughts. Children, apply them, and be kind in all you
do and say. Youth, apply them, and be thoughtful where you are often
tempted to be reckless. Elders, apply them, and never allow care or
worldliness to chill the better affections of early days. Deep in the
heart let the old home live, and its pleasant memories, brightened by
kindly offices, open ever into immortal hopes. Old things must pass away,
but from the Christian they can only pass away by being all made new--new
in a spirit, that remembers best when progressing most, and crowns all
friendships with charity divine.
Marriage.
MARRIAGE.
It is a remarkable fact, that He who came to be the Saviour from sin,
whose name is coupled with the sorrow that he would alleviate, began his
public ministry at a marriage, and gave the first proof of his powers
amidst its festivities. Yet why wonder at it--for where should the Gospel
begin its work if not with the union that founds the family and should
secure every social and moral good? How, moreover, could the genius of
Christianity better show itself than by such a practical rebuke of the
asceticism that scorned the social affections, and would make of life a
ghostly austerity, just as if man were heavenly by being unearthly? It
needs no great ingenuity to imagine our Lord's feelings, as with his
kindly and majestic thought he looked upon that scene, and gave his
blessing to the youth and maiden who were probably of his own kin. He saw
all the serious and trying aspects of human life even in its best estate,
yet none the less gave them joy upon their union.
It is well that he was at that feast. The ages since have remembered his
presence, and his sacred name, heard still at the marriage, deepens its
memory, and consecrates its joy. The two ideas thus connected in fact are
connected in principle, and the moralist need not in any enlightened
community fear to speak of the Christian view of marriage, or care at all
either for the giggling levity that sees nothing solemn in the subject, or
for the sanctimonious gravity, that considers religion profaned by being
made practical. There are some difficulties in the way of a frank
treatment of the subject; I know our customs do not favor the homely
simplicity of the language of the Bible in the discussion of marriage, and
he must be very adventurous who undertakes to use the plain speech of the
old divines, whether in the quaint aphorisms of Thomas Fuller or the
jewelled periods of Jeremy Taylor. Yet it is not well to be very
fastidious or mystify any subject by ingenious circumlocution, and we
propose to say some plain words on the relation of husbands and wives in
continuation of these thoughts upon home duties.
* * * * *
Not much need be said upon the foundation of this relation. It rests
clearly upon the will of God, the best good of the parties, and the
welfare of society.
As the Creator and Preserver of mankind, as the Lord of Nature and the
Father of Spirits, God has made us social beings, and decreed that the
most important association should be a lasting one. The natural law, which
in lower creatures establishes a transient union, enacts the permanence of
the higher relation, and when profoundly studied agrees with the precepts
of Revelation and the results of the best experience.