Parental Desire, Duty, & Encouragement 6
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I will now CONCLUDE by addressing—
1. Those parents who altogether neglect the religious education of their children. Unnatural fathers! wicked mothers! I address you as the advocate of those whom you are solemnly bound by every tie of nature and religion to conduct to the highest bliss of which their nature is susceptible, but whom your cruel neglect abandons to the most horrid misery which they can possibly endure. This is a species of cruelty to be found no where else in the whole universe but in your bosom; every other creature teaches its young to seek the highest good which their nature can enjoy, and to exercise the chief faculties of which it is capable. "The sea monsters draw out their bosom to their young. The eagle stirs up her nest, flutters over her young, spreads abroad her wings, takes them, bears them on her wings. The young lions roar after their prey and seek their meat," taught by the parent beast; while you habitually neglect to instruct your offspring in everything which can establish and perpetuate their real felicity.
But for the kind instruction of some benevolent stranger, or the mere accident of their falling into association with others better taught than themselves, your children would to this hour have remained almost entirely ignorant that they had a soul, or that it was necessary to make any effort for its salvation. "You would not have your love for them suspected; but wretched indeed are those children who share only in a solicitude which asks, 'What shall they eat; what shall they drink; or with what shall they be clothed?' What is the body to the soul? What is time to eternity? What is it to dispose of them advantageously in life, and leave them unprepared for death; unprovided for a new, a never-ending, a changeless period of existence? Are you the instruments of bringing these hapless beings into existence--only barbarously to sacrifice them? Such parents are more cruel than Herod. He slew the children of others, these slay their own. He only destroyed the body, these destroy the soul." (Mr. Jay.)
Permit me to mention to you one of the cruel practices of the ancient Carthaginians. They had a detestable idol, to which they offered up their children in sacrifice, and which was so formed that an infant put into its hands stretched out to receive it, would immediately fall into a gulf of fire. The mothers themselves performed the dreadful rites, by giving their own offspring into the hands of the idol, and always thought it an unfortunate omen if the little victim were offered weeping, and therefore by apparently fond kisses and caresses endeavored to extort a smile at the dreadful moment when it was given into the hands of the hideous image. You shudder at the recital. You call such parents savage monsters.
But pause for a moment, and enquire if there be nothing like this in your conduct. Is not sin an idol more dreadful still? Are not its hands ever stretched out to receive its unhappy victims? Is there not a gulf of fire below, to receive them as they drop from its grasp? Are you not sacrificing your children to this dreadful idol? Is not all your concern for their temporal interest, while you neglect their souls, only a cruel solicitude that they may pass smiling into the hands of the destroyer?
Imagine, said Mr. Flavel, that you had carried the plague into your family, and lived to witness your children lie dying by the walls of your house, surely if not possessed of a tiger's heart, such a spectacle must pierce you to the very soul. Oh consider! that very scene, only of a moral kind, is before you—your children are infected with the plague of the heart, and they derived the disease from you. Yes, they have derived from you a depraved nature, and can you witness them with indifference sinking into eternal death through the malady which they caught first from you? Can you be satisfied to have been thus accessory to their ruin, and now make no effort by religious instruction to stop the spreading contagion? What cruelty! What barbarity!
If nothing else will move you to a consideration of this subject, permit me now to direct your view forward to that time when the guilt and punishment of such neglect will be felt in all their tremendous weight. The solemn period is rapidly approaching when you must meet those very children at the bar of a justly offended God, whose souls form no object of your present regard. It will be a dreadful interview. No language can describe, no imagination can conceive the horrors of that scene when they, dreadful idea, shall be your most violent and bitter accusers. In addition to all the weight and torment of your own curse, what unspeakable anguish will your hearts feel when such language as this issues from the lips of your now loving and beloved child. "There stand the guilty beings whom I once honored as my parents, but whom I now execrate as the murderers of my immortal soul! Cruel monsters! Is this the end of your parental affection? See to what misery of your own offspring you have been instrumental.
What avails it now that you provided for me a fortune? Riches, honors, pleasures, are now forever gone. Why did you keep me in fatal ignorance of true religion? Why did you choose for me only such companions as would be fellow-workers with you in the dreadful business of my ruin? When did you ever admonish me to seek the Lord? Had you attended to my soul, as you ought to have done, instead of training me up in the way of ignorance, pride, and wickedness--I might have now been with yonder happy throng, and not thus branded with the infamy and horror of the divine curse. Since you have dragged me into the vortex of perdition, you have only brought me to be your eternal tormentor; for while I feel any sense of the happiness which I have forever lost, or of the misery to which I am forever condemned, I shall never cease to execrate the names of those who had so large a share in my damnation!"
Avoid this dreadful scene! Escape, I beseech you, this terrible accusation! But ah! what can I expect from you, with respect to the souls of your children, while your own soul is neglected, abandoned, and despised! Here the mischief begins. You see no danger in your own condition as a sinner, and are not likely to see any in theirs. You feel no joy, you perceive no beauty, you estimate no worth in religion, and how can we expect that you should recommend it to them. Ignorant, you cannot teach; blind, you cannot guide; dead, you cannot animate.
In your own pursuits the salvation of the soul is the last object of desire and exertion, and it is not probable that you will make it the first in your attention to them. Begin, then, I entreat you, this vital, this important, this necessary duty--by fleeing to the Savior for that mercy which you have hitherto despised. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved and your house." Do not, I beseech you, by neglecting religion, as with the same fatal dagger, commit suicide on your own soul, and murder on the souls of your children. But rather like Noah, enter into the ark provided against the deluge of divine wrath, taking with you your sons and your daughters.
2. Christian parents! you whose greatest felicity in the possession of children is derived from devoting them to God, and training them up for him, I earnestly admonish you to go forward in this good work. A variety of motives might be adduced to urge on your persevering and vigilant exertions; but I will now name only one, and that shall be, the prospect and consequences of success. What if God should hear your prayer! What if Ishmael should live before him! What if you should soon encircle in the arms of affection, children doubly yours--yours by the ties of nature, and also by the bonds of saving religion!
O with what sacred raptures of delight will you mark the dawn of reason, followed by the day of grace! O to see the character of the man gradually forming under the influence and guidance of true piety! What new pleasure will you derive from all your fellowship with your children, when you realize in them your fellow soldiers in the Christian combat, your fellow laborers in the Christian employ, your fellow travelers in the Christian pilgrimage, and your fellow heirs to the Christian inheritance. Now you feel considerable joy in leading them in your hand to the house of God, and hearing them join the sacred melody of the service, with lisping and perhaps unmeaning praises; but what is this to the joy which you will experience when you hear them exclaiming from choice, "I was glad when they said unto me let us go up into the house of the Lord!"
What new pleasure and interest will you find in our social meetings for prayer, when your own sons are the leaders of your devotion, and your advocates with God! With what fresh relish will you partake of the sacred Supper, when the very next guests at the table are your own children! With what pleasing emotions will you bow before the family altar, when you seem to hear the sincere and fervent Amen responding to your petitions from the lips of your worshiping offspring! What delight will thrill through your soul, when in your own closet you hear the soft murmurs of their secret devotions, sounding like the sweet fellowship of God and man! And when many a heartbroken parent sees his profligate son issuing forth to the midnight revel, or reeling home with the vacant stare of the drunkard, and the lascivious appearance of the debauchee, you will see yours retiring to commune with God, or descending from the mount, with his face shining with the glory of Jehovah.
Should prosperity be your lot, and a kind Providence bless all your exertions, with what pleasure will you lay up the overplus wealth, after religion and humanity have received their proportion, recollecting that it is for those who will not squander it away in the pleasures of sin, but who will use it in part for the support of the Gospel and the alleviation of human sorrow. Or should adversity be your inheritance, how soothing to all your griefs will it be to hail to the sorrowful abode your own children with the language of Scripture, "How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good tidings, who publishes peace, who brings good tidings, who publishes salvation, who says your God reigns," and thus receive the consolations of the Gospel at their hands.
Should God call you to weep around their dying beds, and close their eyes in death, you will assuage the anguish of separation, by recollecting that a few more rolling years will unite you with them, to part no more. Or perhaps you may be called to take the precedence in death and glory; then I see you struggling amidst the agonies of dissolution, yet cheered and supported, not only with the near approach of all those brilliant prospects which faith holds up to your view, but also with the sweet assurance that your children are following on in the same road to endless rest. I see you in your last encounter, as you fall beneath the stroke of death, smiling, through joy, that your sons are nobly fighting in the same field and under the same banner.
The progress of time soon sends your children after you. One after another you welcome them to the celestial city, and conduct them into the presence of the Lamb; until at length, the happy number all arrived, I see you presenting the dear objects of parental affection, and the sweet reward of parental duty, before the presence of his glory, with this grateful and adoring language, "Behold I, and the children which you have given me."
O what imagination, in its most vigorous sallies, ever yet could form any tolerable conception of the bliss which attends the meeting of a family in heaven! Like shipwrecked mariners who have survived the fury of the storm, assembling on the shore of safety, with what mutual and delightful salutations will they congratulate each other! There they shall meet beyond the power or the fear of separation; there they shall renew their accustomed communion, without any of those imperfections which disturbed it upon earth; there they shall feel their mutual attachment drawing them closer to each other, as they draw nearer to the central point of their affection; there they shall adore and triumph together, with the innumerable company that encircle the throne forever; and there, as united fires brighten each other's blaze, and as many concordant sounds make the finer harmony, so their union in bliss will make the heaven of each the more delightful. "It will be joy which no eye has seen, no ear heard, and which has never entered into the heart of man to conceive!" Amen.
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