But, fathers, might you not do better than you do? Suppose you should
make the effort to have _an hour_ each day to aid your wife in giving a
right moral direction to your little ones? How you would encourage her!
What an impulse would you give to her efforts! Now, how often has she a
burden imposed upon her, which she is unable to bear! What uneasiness
and worry--what care and trouble are caused her, by having, in this
matter of training the children, to go on single-handed! whereas, were
your parental authority added to her maternal tenderness, your children
would prove the joy of your hearts and the comfort of your declining
years. But as you manage--or rather as you neglect to manage them, a
hundred chances to one if they do not prove your sorrow, when in years
you are not able well to sustain it. Gather a lesson, my friend, from
the conduct of David in respect to Absolom. He neglected him--he
indulged him, and what was the consequence? The bright, beautiful,
gifted Absolom planted thorns in his father's crown,--he attempted to
dethrone him,--he was a fratricide,--he would have been a parricide: and
what an end! Oh, what an end! Listen to the sorrowful outpourings of a
fond, too fond, unfaithful parent: "My son, oh, my son Absolom,--would
to God I had died for thee, oh, Absolom, my son, my son!"
Take another example, and may it prove a warning to such indulgence and
such neglect! Eli had sons, and they grew up, and they walked in
forbidden ways, and he restrained them not; yet he was a good man: but
good men are sometimes most unfaithful fathers, and what can they
expect? Shall we sin because grace abounds? Shall we neglect our
children in expectation that the grace of God will intervene to rescue
them in times of peril? That expectation were vain while we neglect our
duty.
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