fixed when it begins to acknowledge influence. LECT. IX. It drinks in germs of moral life from its mother's How the very bosom.

moral

nature

Therefore, I say, the duty of the parent comes. grows. before that of the child. As it is the deep law of God that the child should grow up full of reverence, so it becomes the duty of the parent to be honourable; full, that is, of the qualities which beget reverence. Parents were the channel of the lower life, let them preside also over the birth of spirit. For the power of reverence is latent in the child, and it is only developed by actual contact with what is honourable. It may never awaken if there be nothing to quicken it; it may even be perverted if it be attracted towards the unworthy. Example daily beheld wins its sympathies and moulds its judgments. If the influence be good it elevates, if evil it perverts. Therefore I say that the command is reflexive. Therefore It speaks to the child and says, "Honour;" but in command that very word it springs back upon the parent and says, "Be honourable; because in your honourableness your child shall grow reverent." Of all things in this world the soul of a reverent child is the most beautiful and precious, and therefore of all things in this world honourable parents are the most important.

An honourable parent! what a picture to draw!

the

reflexive.

A true parent.

LECT, IX. Would that I could paint the portrait so as to win admiration! I should have to paint one whose foundations of character are the fear of God and trust in Him; one who makes it felt by a steady consistent course of conduct that he acts by principle, and not by the standard of worldly expediency; one who with children is neither too fond nor too severe, so gentle as to make "his displeasure a worse fear than his correction," so much of the child that he is able at once to be a man and a child with his sons and daughters, attracting by sympathy and yet wise

A happy child.

to teach.

دو

The life of such an one is like a sweet perfume which pervades a place we know not how, and which influences with an almost unconscious power. I once heard George Macdonald say, "It is a grand thing to have been born of decent, honest, God-fearing parents. A saying simple enough, but profoundly true. Blessed is that youth who is proud of his father on moral grounds, who can say in after years with sparkling eye," he never did a shabby trick, nor profited by a lie; he loved his home, his country, and his God." Blessed is that daughter whose lot it is to have a mother who is the impersonation of the sweet and tender, the pure and the compassionate; whose heart melts when she thinks of mother,

and fills with the desire of being something like LECT. IX. her. Yes, blessed beyond gold and silver, houses and lands, are the parents who by their daily walk and conversation succeed in building up this conviction in the hearts of their dear ones, ""Tis only noble to be good, to be true and strong like father, to be pure and loving like mother." What a priceless dowry is the memory of true parentage! If there were more heroes and heroines at home there would be more heroes and heroines everywhere, in all the spheres of social and national life which need them.

detects

One thing cannot be too strongly insisted on. The child Parental goodness must be genuine and unaffected, unreality. of the heart, flowing easily through the life, in order to evoke reverence. Unreality is sure to be detected by-and-by, and when children find out unreality in those who stand in the place of God-God help them! It never does to give precept instead of example. For want of example the precept becomes hateful, and down into contempt goes the honour of parents. Of all mistaken things the most mistaken is for parents to pretend religiousness with children, and once every now and then on a Sunday to talk to them in an unnatural, goody-good way about God and heaven, and to come to Church with them, for example's sake, as the saying is.

LECT. IX.

Be real.

If religious be genial.

A bad habit.

Parents, if you don't care about God and salvation for your own selves, if you don't value Church for its own sake, don't pretend. It is worse than useless. Pretence can evoke no real reverence. Children have strangely sensitive natures. They don't see through pretence, but after a while they do more, they feel it. Better never come near Church at all, and be honest and sincere as far as you go, than come and be decorous, yet only performing a part. Religion is a great something; he who makes it nothing passes sentence upon himself, and others read it.

But still further, even genuine religiousness needs advice. Let it be not only real but genial also. Goodness should strive to be attractive. Some parents seem to think that in order to do their duty by their children they must be always ready with a fault to keep them properly humble; and that children must of course be suspected, and snubbed, and denied, and called naughty on any and every possible occasion. It works badly. It ruins confidence; it withers up sympathy; it builds up an awful barrier between heart and heart. The parent never gets to understand the child; fortunate is he if he do not unconsciously force it into deceit. Such treatment may secure for a while an outward compliance, but it begets an inner repugnance; and the teaching thus enforced

is often secretly rejected by the heart, and that, LECT. IX. alas! for ever.

with kind

ness.

Gravity, self-respect, a certain amount of re- Gravity serve, are indeed very necessary with children. Undue "familiarity may too much embolden them;" but all must be kindly, and the feeling of love must pervade even the word of deepest reproof.

So far I have spoken of parents individually: let me now speak of them unitedly, that is, of their mutual behaviour before their children.

The power of mutual courtesy between father and mother is unspeakable. If one is the Christian lady and the other the Christian gentleman, each to each, in genuine respect, it creates an atmosphere in the home which begets a natural reverence in the soul of the little ones. It may even be said that it becomes easy for them to grow up good; half the battle is over when parents by their "conversation" thus silently impress the feelings of their children. If the husband, according to St. Peter, can be won "without the word," by the chaste and obedient conduct of the wife, how much more children. The world little knows how near it is to wonderful happiness, what a thin line, as it were, separates the light and the dark. If we had only true parents in every home!

Parents to each other.

be true to

How to household

make &

safe.