Introductory

We are living in an age of tremendous responsibilities, opportunities, perplexities, and possibilities. Success and victory on the one hand, failure and defeat on the other, never awaited a people with such a vast scope of meaning or with so stern a reality as they await the people of this present day. The relationship and the position of man with his fellow creature in the spiritual, the social, the domestic, and the business life bring to us opportunities and possibilities either of glorious and of eternal benefit and good, or of sad and deplorable disaster and evil. In no sense is this more real than in the domestic life, where husband and wife, father and mother, son and daughter, hold such a position and so blend their lives together as to produce character and influences that will last to all eternity. These great responsibilities rest unbidden upon us, and these great opportunities and possibilities are at our door. We must meet them, and ask God to help us make use of them in such a manner as will glorify Himself and bring joy and happiness to ourselves and all those within this domestic circle and to the generations that shall yet be born.

This present day has developed a condition that gives evil the ascendancy if we submit to it, and many a soul has in the perplexity of this condition unconsciously yielded and thereby become more and more engrossed in confusion, until the enemy of all good has brought discouragement and despair upon hearts that otherwise might be filled with courage and victory and that might turn the battle to the gates. There is much to be said on this subject of the domestic life, and much light that God will turn in upon our hearts as the perfect day sheds its glory upon the church of God, until parent and child shall more fully comprehend their true and noble position in life.

Dear fellow parent, let us solemnly look to God for His perfect will concerning us. Much has been said about us. Some have censured us for our failures; and no wonder, for they have been many. Some who have never been parents have theoretically told us our duty to our children, and some who are parents have given us their experiences of success and failure, and the precious Word of God gives us much wholesome instruction on this important part of our life. All these things are good for us, and let us pray that God may grant us wisdom to profit by the same. We will humbly receive correction where we are wrong, and instruction where we are ignorant, and endeavor to redeem the time we have lost in the past. As a parent with you, who has made many mistakes in the past, with my heart full of sympathy and love for every dear parent and child, I wish to speak. My life companion has with me decided to give our fellow parents the benefits of our success and failure of twenty years in this responsible capacity, and God has laid it upon my heart to preach and teach that which He has given me out of His holy Word. It would be quite pleasant to tell you of our success and many victories on this line, but we find it different to mention our failure and defeat; but we do it for the good of our precious brethren and sisters who are out on life’s ocean with us, and pray that our success may encourage many and our failures may be danger-signals for the protection of others who are coming along on this same way. Had we known what we by the Word of God and experience have learned, we should have less occasion to speak about failure.

Dear parents, we hold the highest and most God-honored position in this world, and to a large extent hold in our hands the destiny of our own children and that of generations to come. We are disposed to forget this solemn fact and carelessly neglect our duties and opportunities, and sometimes think our task is a burdensome one. We drift into a state of mind that our children are with us today. We look ahead and see nothing but that they will be with us for life, and think we shall have abundance of opportunity some future time to do what we ought to do today. Many a fatal neglect has occurred in this way, and hearts and homes have been saddened. Do you know that these little ones around our knee are going to be with us but a short time, and that these older ones at our table will suddenly disappear, and a painful emptiness stare at us and point us back to neglected opportunities? Oh, that God may waken us to our important duties and opportunities! They are passing by us never to be called back. We must grasp them now, and ask God to endue us with heavenly wisdom and grace, that no sad regrets will disturb our peace when our precious darlings are gone, and they look back to the hearth and home and say, “Oh, if Father and Mother had only told me!” These precious lives will be charged to our account in the day of reckoning. Do you believe it, dear parent? Neglect will bring untold regret and misery not only in this life hut through eternity. Let us never entertain the thought of our children being a burden. They are no such thing to a true parent. They are our delight and comfort, the very production of ourselves; and when we have the true understanding of ourselves we shall have it of our children.

Let us praise God for these sacred treasures of our home, and seek to become more and more to them what is this heavenly design we should be, and thus mold and fashion the life and character of our children into beautiful and noble men and women who will take our place in life, and when we have served our day and generation they may have well begun far in advance of ourselves, and carry out in the future a higher and more perfect success for God and the welfare of this fallen race of men.