command is given to children. True, friend, but the duty required of
children implies a corresponding duty on the part of parents. Who shall
teach children to reverence that father and mother in whose character
there is nothing to call forth such a sentiment? "Though children are
not absolved from the obligation of this commandment by the misconduct
of their parents, yet in the nature of things, it is impossible that
they should yield the same hearty respect and veneration to the unworthy
as to the worthy, nor does God require a child to pay an irrational
honor to his parents. If his parents are atheists, he cannot honor them
as Christians. If they are prayerless and profane, he cannot honor them
as religious. If they are worldly, avaricious, over-reaching,
unscrupulous as to veracity and honest dealing, he cannot honor them as
exemplary, upright, conscientious and spiritually-minded."
If parents only say, like Eli, in feeble accents, "Nay, my sons; for it
is no good report that I hear. Why do ye such things?" they will not
only have disobedient and irreverent children, but often, if not always,
they will be made to understand that their sin is grievous in the sight
of God, and he will say of them also, "I will judge his house forever
for the iniquity which he knoweth, because his sons made themselves vile
and _he restrained them not_." "And therefore have I sworn unto the
house of Eli, that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be purged with
sacrifice nor offering forever."
Unto parents God has committed the child, in utter helplessness, and
weakness, and ignorance, an unformed being. The power and the knowledge
are theirs, and on their side is He, the Almighty and infinitely wise,
with his spirit and his laws, and his promises. If they are
faithful,--if from the first they realize their responsibility, and the
advantages of their position, can the result be doubtful? But they will
not be faithful; imperfection is stamped on all earthly character, and
they will fail in this as in all other duties. What then? Blessed be
God, the Gospel has a provision for erring parents. If Sinai thunders,
Calvary whispers peace. For men, as sinners, the righteousness of Christ
prevails, and for sinners, as parents, not less shall it be found
sufficient. Line and plummet can soon measure the extent of human
perfection, but they cannot fathom the merit of that righteousness, and
when laid side by side with the most holy law, there is no deficiency.
If, then, we find ourselves daily coming short of the terms of that
covenant which God has made with us as parents, we need not despair of
his fulfilling his part, for we can plead our surety's work, and that is
ever acceptable in his eyes, and answers all his demands.
Let not, however, the negligent and willfully-ignorant parent conclude
that the spotless robe of the perfect Savior will be thrown as a shield
over his deficiencies and deformity. Let not those who have blindly and
carelessly entered on parental duties, without endeavoring to ascertain
the will of God and the requirements of his law, expect that the
blessing of obedient and sanctified children will crown their days. Let
not those who suffer their children to grow up around them like weeds,
without religious culture or pruning, who demand no obedience, who
command no reverence, who offer no earnest, ceaseless prayer, let them
not suppose that the blessing of the God who spoke from Horeb will come
upon their families. "He is in one mind and who can turn him." Not an
iota has he abated from his law since that fearful day. Not less sinful
in his eyes is disobedience to parents now, than when he commanded the
rebellious son to be "stoned with stones until he died." Yet, how far
below His standard are the ideas even of many Christian parents? "How
different," says Wilberforce, "nay, in many respects, how contradictory,
would be the two systems of mere morals, of which the one should be
formed from the commonly-received maxims of the Christian world, and the
other from the study of the Holy Scriptures;" and we are never more
forcibly impressed with this difference than when we see it exemplified
in this solemn subject.
The parents who stood at Horeb learned that God required them to train
their children to implicit and uncompromising obedience, and he who
closely studies the Word of God can find no other or lighter
requisition. How will the received opinions and customs of this age
compare with the demand?
We ask our young friends, who may perchance glance over these pages, to
pause a moment and consider: If capital punishment should now be
inflicted on every disobedient child, how many roods of earth would be
planted with the instruments of death? If every city were doomed to
destruction in which the majority of sons and daughters "set light by
father and mother," how many would remain? To every child living comes a
voice, "Know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into
judgment."
* * * * *
Original.
BROTHERLY LOVE.
BY REV. MANCIUS S. HUTTON, D.D.
Be kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love, in
honor preferring one another.
(Concluded from page 108.)
To aid you in making the effort to comply with the injunction we have
been considering, I add the following considerations:
1st. It is right, this you will all acknowledge, no matter how unkindly
a brother or sister may treat you, you will acknowledge that it is never
right for you, never pleasing to God, that you should treat them
unkindly in return. Yes, you will all (except when you are angry)
acknowledge that the injunction Be kindly affectioned one to another in
brotherly love, is right, proper, beautiful; could there be a better
reason for trying to obey the injunction?
2d. You have already often disobeyed this injunction. You cannot
remember many of the instances, but you can some where you acted
unbrotherly or unsisterly. Alas, such are the pride and selfishness of
our hearts that we begin very early to sin against our dearest friends.
Little boy, did you not get angry the other day, when your little
brother or sister took one of your playthings which you wanted
yourself, and if you did not speak unkindly or snatch it away roughly,
did you not go and complain to mother, and was that very kind and
loving? Would it not have been kinder and more brotherly to try to make
little brother and sister happy, and not to have troubled mother? Little
children, I say this especially for you, I want you all to make it a
rule to love everybody, and to try and make everybody around you happy.
That is the way to be happy yourselves. But, my young friends, you, who
are older, are in equal danger of sinning, and I am afraid that your
consciences can also condemn you. Indeed I know not but the danger of
violating this law is greater with those more advanced in life. There is
a transition period when the childhood is about losing itself in the
youth, which is often very trying to brotherly and sisterly affection.
The sister is not quite a woman, the brother not quite a young man, and
each is sometimes disposed to demand an attention which the other is not
quite willing to yield on demand--each would yield, perhaps, if it were
asked as a favor--but the spirit of an independent existence is
beginning to rise, and that spirit spurns any claim. This spirit is
generally the stronger in the brother than in the sister, and he
therefore sins most frequently against the law of love, and he will
treat his sister as he will allow no other young man to do, and will
treat every other young lady with more politeness and courtesy than he
does his own noble-hearted and loving sister. Oh, there is many a
brother, who, if any young man were to say and do what he says and does
to his sister, he would consider him to be no gentleman and a scoundrel.
Now, I would ask, does the fact of your being a brother alter the nature
of your conduct? You are her brother, and therefore may act
ungentlemanly and like a scoundrel! Why, oh, shame, cowardly shame!
because there is no one to resent your ill-treatment--there is no one to
defend a sister from the unkindness of a brother, or to defend the
brother, I may add, from the sister's unkindness; for though I speak to
the brother, let each sister who reads this, ask her conscience whether
her own sister's heart condemn her not.
Time will not allow me to enter into any great detail, in illustrating
the frequency of these violations of the law of family affection, nor
indeed is it needed. I can give you a general rule, which your own minds
will approve, and which will meet all cases. Let the sister treat no man
with more courtesy and politeness than she treats her father and her
brothers--treat no woman more kindly and politely than she does her
mother and her sisters. Let her not confine all her graces and
fascinations to strangers, and make her family to endure all her
petulance and unamiability. So let the brother treat his mother and
sisters. So let the father and mother treat each other and their
children, and you will, my readers, obtain a noble reward in the
increasing happiness and comfort of your family circles--in the
manliness which will belong to the sons--in the mental and moral graces
which will adorn the daughters. The family will thus become the school
of virtue and the bulwark of society--the reciprocal influence of
brothers and sisters thus trained will be of untold power on each
other's character.
One word further, and I close. I have been describing the legitimate
influence of religion in a family. True religion will make just such
fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. It is in this way that religion
develops itself; that religion which is beautiful abroad and has no
beauty at home, is of little worth. If, then, you would make your
families what I have described, you must yourself come under the power
of religion, must give your heart to God, and then you will find the
duties of the family becoming comparatively easy. Unless you do so, you
will find yourselves constantly failing in your most strenuous efforts,
and will be far from reaching the point which I have sought to describe.
Natural affection may indeed be much cultivated by this course, and
drawn forth in its native simplicity or regulated by the forms of
refined education, it will throw an inestimable beauty and charm around
the fireside. But it will be, after all, but merely natural affection.
It cannot rise so high nor exert such heavenly influence over the family
circle as will the power of religion. It sanctifies and exalts natural
affections. It not only restrains but actually softens the natural
asperities of the temper, harmonizes discordant feelings and interests,
and secures that happy co-operation which makes a Christian circle an
emblem of heaven. In one word, religion will make you a happy family
forever, happy here and happy in yonder world of bliss. Without religion
also, allow me to add, the very beauty and enjoyment, arising from the
exercise of these domestic virtues, will prove injurious to your eternal
interests. They will serve to strew with comforts your path leading away
from God to heaven. The powerful influence of a much loved brother is
exerted to keep the sister in the path of worldliness; while, in return,
the sister's boundless influence, for in such a family the sister's
influence may be said to be boundless, will all be added to the snares
of an ungodly world, to drive the brother onward in his neglect of God
and his own soul. My young friends, seek not only to make those around
you happy in this world, but happy forever. Give thine own heart to
Jesus, and thou mayest save thy brother and thy sister, and thou shalt
meet them on high. Refuse to do so, and thou mayest drag these loved
ones down with thee to that cold dark region, where affection is unknown
and nothing is heard but blasphemies and curses. Oh, thou kind and
loving brother and sister, can ye endure the thought of spending an
eternity in cursing each other as the instruments of each other's
destruction? Christ alone can deliver you from such a woe.
* * * * *
HABIT.--"I trust everything, under God," said Lord Brougham,
"to habit, upon which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the
schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance; habit, which makes
everything easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from a
wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful;
make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary to
the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most atrocious crimes
are to any of your lordships."
* * * * *
Original.
AN APPEAL TO BAPTIZED CHILDREN.
BY REV. WM. BANNARD.
It is presumed, young friends, that you have reached an age when you are
capable of appreciating your obligations, but have hitherto neglected
them. It is proposed, therefore, in what follows, briefly to call your
attention to your position and responsibilities. If you have considered
your privileges as the children of pious parents who have dedicated you
to God in baptism, you are now prepared to examine your duties. You have
then a name and a place in Christ's visible church; you sustain covenant
relations to God, and these, fraught as they are with manifold benefits,
cannot be without corresponding responsibilities.
You are not the children of the world but the children of the covenant.
Solemn vows have been assumed for you, and these vows are binding _upon
your consciences_. They were taken with the hope and intention that you
should assume them for yourselves when you arrived at years of
discretion. You were given to God with the expectation that you would
grow up to serve him. And this it is your duty to do. You are his
property. You are his by sacred engagement, and you cannot violate this
engagement; you cannot renounce His service, and devote yourselves to
the service of Satan or of the world, without dishonoring your parents,
doing injustice to God, and periling your own salvation. You may say
this contract was formed without my consent, and when too young to
understand its requirements. No matter; this does not release you from
obligation to perform it. Ability and responsibility are not always
co-extensive. We are bound perfectly to keep God's holy law, and yet no
man of himself is able to do it. His inability, however, does not
diminish it's binding force. God cannot abate one jot or tittle of the
law's demands, for that would be a confession of its imperfection or of
his variableness. Or, should he diminish his demands because our
wickedness has made us incapable of keeping them, then the more wicked
we become, the less binding would be his authority, and if we only grew
depraved enough we might escape from all obligation to obedience. Such
an idea, cannot, of course, be tolerated. The truth is, that under the
government of God, as well as under human government, children are held
responsible for the conduct of their parents. Parents have a right to
act for them, and children must abide by their decisions, and endure the
consequences of their acts. They cannot escape from it, for this is a
natural as well as moral law which is continually operating. The
character and destiny of the child are determined mainly by the parent.
He may educate him to be refined, intelligent and useful, or to be
vicious, debased and dangerous. This process is going on continually.
The parent may make positive engagements in behalf of his children,
which they are bound to perform, and which the law recognizes as valid.
A father dying, for example, while his children are in infancy or in
their minority, may require them to appropriate a portion of his estate
for certain ends, as a condition on which they shall receive it. Another
may require of his children a given service, on condition of receiving
his blessing; and if the requirement be not morally wrong, who would not
feel themselves bound to observe it? But there are examples, perhaps
more in point, in Scripture, in which parents have entered into formal
covenants that have had direct reference to their children. Adam
covenanted for himself and posterity. They had no personal agency in it,
in any sense, and yet all are held accountable for its transgression;
all suffer a portion of its penalty, as they might, if he had kept it,
been made possessors of its blessings. So Abraham covenanted with God
for himself and his seed; and his descendants felt themselves bound to
fulfill its requirements. They knew, in fact, that unless they did, its
benefits could not be enjoyed. The same principle holds good in
reference to the baptized. You are bound by the covenant engagements of
your parents. You cannot be released from them on the ground that you
had no agency in assuming them. They were assumed for you by those who
had the right to do it--a right recognized by both God and man--and you
cannot therefore throw them off; you cannot willfully disregard or live
contrary to them, without guilt and dishonor. The apostle urges this
principle when he testifies "to every man that is circumcised that he is
a debtor to do the whole law." His consecration to God in this rite
bound him to keep his whole law; and yet this obligation was imposed on
him when an infant only eight days old; but after arriving at maturity,
he could not shake it off. He was a debtor still, for he was placed in
that position in accordance with the divine command and by those who had
the authority over him. With equal propriety may we now testify unto you
who are baptized, that you are debtors unto Christ. You are bound to
keep the laws of his kingdom, bound to serve him to whose service you
have been set apart. You are not your own; you are not, therefore, to
live unto yourselves. The vows of God are upon _you_. You have been
sealed with his seal. And since you have attained an age at which you
can understand your position, you are bound to perform those vows; to
seek to be sealed with the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. There
is no escape from this obligation; and when, therefore, you live utterly
regardless of it, as many do, your conduct is doubly criminal. You may
have flattered yourselves that you enjoyed superior advantages, and that
you were more highly favored than others; and this is true. But you must
take into the account your corresponding responsibilities. There is a
broad distinction between your position, and that of mere worldlings,
and there ought to be a like difference in your practice. You cannot
give yourselves to the sins of youth, or the gayeties of life. You
cannot set your hearts on fashion, dress, amusements, business or any
mere worldly ends, with as much consistency, or with as little guilt, as
your unbaptized associates. _You_ cannot harden yourselves against the
truth, grieve the Holy Spirit, turn away in coldness or disdain from
the claims of Christ, without exposing yourselves to an aggravated
condemnation. Shall you who are pledged servants of Christ, who are
bound to him by solemn covenant, be regardless of these vows, or be
recreant to Him as his avowed enemies? Ah, this is approaching fearfully
near the appalling sin of "treading under foot the Son of God, of
counting the blood of his covenant an unholy thing, and doing despite
unto the Spirit of grace." You cannot, surely, have considered your
relations to Christ and to his church. You cannot have pondered the
nature of your baptismal vows which were taken for you, but which are
now binding upon your own souls. You cannot realize against what
gracious promises, what high, privileges you sin, in living contrary to
your obligations, and in remaining at heart, and by your conduct,
"strangers to God and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel." Review
your position, and remember you are placed where you cannot recede.
Duties press upon you which you cannot disregard; vows are upon you
which you cannot break with safety or with honor. It is not enough that
you lead a moral life, or that you continue in your present position.
You are required to advance. You have been pledged to God; and to
fulfill this pledge you must be His in heart. You _must choose_ His
service. You must take Christ's yoke upon you and dedicate yourselves to
Him. Nothing short of this will fulfill your covenant vows or insure
your enjoyment of its blessings. As to receding, that is utterly
inadmissible. You have been put in this relation by those who loved you
and had the right, nay, were commanded of God, to dispose of you in this
manner. You cannot then evade it. You may say you never gave it your
consent, and that it is hard to be thus bound to act contrary to your
natural inclinations; but it is right, and you cannot help it. You are
in this position, and you cannot break away but at the peril of your
salvation; nay, without the certainty of perdition. But it is not hard,
or cruel, to require you to love and obey God. You were created for
this, and your nature will never attain to its perfection until you
fulfill this its noblest destiny. A hard thing to do right! A grievous
thing to be saved from the pollution of sin and the very gulf of
perdition! A hard thing to be taken under divine protection; to be
enriched with God's blessing; to be numbered among his people on earth
and ultimately admitted to his kingdom in heaven! Impossible! You did
not think it; you did not mean to urge this as an objection to your most
obvious duty. You would not object to your parents' securing for you a
costly estate while in your minority, and why then discard the heavenly
inheritance they would provide for you? Fulfill your vows. Choose His
service, and be blessed now and forever.
* * * * *
Original.
THE PROMISE FULFILLED.
"Leave thy fatherless children with me, and I will preserve
them alive."
(Concluded from page 119.)