Looking up to God, who claims of us supreme homage as his due, and then in his own sovereign right urges upon us to fulfil our dues to each other, we speak now of the duties of children or the honor to be rendered by them to parents.
Do any ask what are the grounds of the Commandments? The grounds are obvious, and the law, which God enacts, instead of being an arbitrary decree, is in entire harmony with the nature of things. It would perhaps be needless to dwell on these grounds, were there not something in the temper of our times, that calls them in question—in fact, certain notions of intellectual liberty among theorists, that combine with the passions and caprices of youth to unsettle many a household, and threaten the peace of society itself. Against the sentimentalist, who makes light of all natural ties to glorify the individual’s own intuitions or affinities, and against the little rebel, who comes to the same conclusion by a much shorter process, we urge the Divine law, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Honor them, because God bids it, and bids it not merely in the written code, but by the whole order of his providence, by the very constitution of society. However we may dispute about the best form or true foundation of government—maintain monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, to be the best form—declare Divine law, social compact, or popular will, to be the true foundation, all must agree in the Divine origin of the family and the Divine right of parental government. The instincts of nature, the words of revelation, the dictates of experience and expediency, all agree in this, and all illustrate the mind of God, the Creator of the family. The mind of God himself speaks or should speak through the parent to the child, so, that filial obedience is fitly another name for piety; so, that prayer itself borrows its most hallowed word from the reverence nurtured at home.
Trace out the law of dependence, and see how fully it urges the commandment—the law of dependence that rests with parents so much of the welfare of the child. Not merely food, clothing, and home, but all the higher goods of life, experience, wisdom, virtue, are to be looked for thus. As a general rule, benignant Providence itself has its chosen almoner in father and mother, and the gifts are blessed as they are received in reverence. We may indeed suppose monstrous cases, in which unnatural parents exact such folly or wrong, that obedience ceases to be a virtue. Such cases are not frequent enough to alter the general law, and even in these, a true child, in refusing to conform to what is evil in the sight of God, will do it in such a way as still to keep the commandment, and treat tenderly even a perverse father, and expostulate with his tyranny in a temper fitted more to subdue than irritate its violence. Such monstrous cases need little notice in any Christian community, where parents are generally ready enough to do the best, and give the most in their power for their children. In fact, for them, the Decalogue has no law, as if nature needed no decree to enforce parental love, and the affections of themselves pressed heavily enough downwards. The great need was and is of enforcing the obligation, that looks upward from child to parent. Our modern culture, with all its scope and refinement, has no substitute for this obligation; nay, needs it more than ever to check the wilfulness and laxity so likely to come from precocious fancy and unbridled temper. Experience is constantly showing, that even the external promise connected with the commandment meets the wants of our own times also, and now, as of old, filial obedience secures an efficient life and peaceful civilization,—“that it may be well with thee, and that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God shall give.” How many bright and dark chapters of recent history show how close is the connection between stability of society and filial respect—between allegiance to every worthy institution and the discipline that learns to regard a superior authority at home. This outward sanction the Gospel accepts, and carries it into the spiritual kingdom. By many a precept the apostles enforce the command, and by word and example, by the beatitudes of the mount, and the obedience of the cross, our Saviour imparts new blessing and worth to its observance.
We have a foundation then to build upon, and filial respect rests upon the Word of God, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. If worthy it will appear first of all as a feeling of affectionate reverence. It will not be worship as with the Chinese absolutist, nor mere friendship, as in the code of many a radical. The parent is of the same nature with the child, and is not to be adored; he is superior in age, experience and authority, and should have more than the friendly courtesy of an equal. Superior in degree, though not in kind, he is to be regarded with affectionate respect and deference. Any subjection more or less than this comes of wrong, and leads to wrong. To exact utter servitude is tyranny—to lower reasonable authority into flattery, entreaty, or apology, is an imbecile indulgence which a child should be as unwilling to ask as a parent to give.
If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put down by analysis and experience, than the sentimentalist’s notion, that the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most of the spontaneous play of genius—those which rejoice in poetry, music, and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear, that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left to itself. No—our principles have vast power over our feelings, and they who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of the very trellis which overlooks it.
The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.