Solicitude of Parents
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS.
Our thoughts turn now more particularly to the circle of home relations, and we propose to give some plain views of them with an especial eye to the temptations of city life. The duty of parents is the topic first in order.
Few if any words are given in the Scriptures to persuading parents to love their children, or to wish to provide for them. The affection is taken for granted, and they who have it not are set aside by themselves as monsters. If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.
It is not upon the parental sentiment itself, but upon its due direction, that Christianity rests its emphasis; as well it may, for what sentiment has gone more astray from the true mark, and in mistaken kindness hurt those whom it would most bless. “What man,” asks our Saviour, “would give his son a stone instead of bread, or a serpent instead of a fish?” Not one, if he really knew it or saw it. Yet what is more frequent than such wrong indirectly done?
Take the first and most obvious form of parental solicitude, the form literally connected with the question just cited—we mean the physical maintenance of children. It would be wasting words in this or any respectable assembly, to try to prove that parents should provide food and clothing for their offspring. Yet here, and every where, in our mode of making this provision, many very grave questions may arise. Kind feeling is not enough. Without knowledge and forethought, we may hurt where we wish to help—we may kill where we wish to cure. At every step we need better counsel than any instinctive fondness, or childish caprice, or worldly fashion. The Creator has a lesson for us in the use of all his gifts, and if we do not heed it, what we give as bread may turn out a stone, and what seems to us a fish may sting like a serpent.