fathers? Is there any power for good or evil greater than the influence of him who leads the family, who propagates his own character in the persons and the souls of his children, who lives his own life over again in the lives of those whom he has begotten? Like father, like family. Set this down as a philosophical principle. Occasional exceptions do not undermine the rule; it is an organic one. The father impresses himself upon his children just as undesignedly, but just as surely, as I impress my shadow on the ground when I walk into the sunshine. The father cannot help it if he would. The father leads, by God's decree. He makes the home-law; fixes the precedents; creates the homeatmosphere, and the "odour of the house" clings to the garments of the children, if they go around the globe. "His father was a Papist, or his father was a Protestant, or his father was a Democrat before him," is the sufficient reason that determines most men's religion or their political opinions. "He is a chip of the old block," said some one, when he heard the younger Pitt's first speech. "Nay," replied Burke, "he is the old block himself." In nothing is this so true as in moral resemblances. A father's devoted godliness is often reproduced in his children. But still oftener are his errors and his vices. He commonly sets the habits of the household. Whatever "fires the father kindles, the children gather the wood." If the father rises late on the Sabbath morning, the boys come down late and ill-humoured to the table. If he goes on a Sunday excursion, they must carry the lunch and the fishing-tackle, and share in the guilty sports. If he wishes to read a Sunday paper, then George or Tom must go out to buy it. If he sips his wine at the dinner-table, they are apt to hanker for the residuary glass, or at least they grow familiar with the sight of a decanter on the board. To do that, is like hanging up lascivious pictures on the walls of the sitting-room. The lads get familiarized with evil; and woe to the youth who gets "used to" the face of the tempter. In looking over my congregation I find that, while several pious fathers have unconverted children, there are but few prayerless fathers who have converted sons. The pull of the father downward is too strong for the upward pull of the Sabbath-school and the pulpit. If the father talks money constantly, he usually rears a family for Mammon. If he talks pictures and book at his table, he is likely to awaken a thirst for literature or art. If he talks horses, and games, and prize-fights, he brings up a family of jockeys and sportsmen. If he makes his own fireside attractive in the evening, he will probably succeed in anchoring his children at home. But if he hears the clock strike eleven in the theatre or the club-house, he need not be surprised if his boys hear it strike twelve in the gambling-house, the drinking saloon, or the brothel. If he leads in irreligion, what but the grace of God can keep his imitative household from following him to perdition? The history of such a family is commonly written in that sadly-frequent description given in the Old Testament-"He walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him." I find two very different types of paternal religion. Both are nominally Christian. The one parent prays at his family-altar for the conversion of his children. He then labours to fulfil his own prayers. He makes religion prominent in his family; it is as pervasive as the atmosphere. The books that are brought home, the papers selected, the amusements chosen, the society that is sought, the aims in life that are set before those children, all bear in one direction, and that the right one. God is not invoked by that father to convert his offspring to godliness, while he is doing his utmost to pervert them to worldliness, or self-seeking, or frivolity; no more than he would ask God to restore his sick child, while he was giving the poor boy huge doses of opium or strychnine. Yet there is a class of professing Christians who do this very thing. They pray for a soul's conversion, and yet on the very evenings when revival discourses are being delivered, they take that son or daughter to the opera or the fashionable rout. They pray that their households may live for God, and then set them an example of most intense money-clutching and mammon-worship. One father prays for a son's salvation, and then flashes a wine-cup before his eyes. Another sits down with solemn face to the communion-table, and then comes home [very seldom it is hoped] to gossip, to crack jokes, to talk politics, to entertain Sunday visitors at a sumptuous feast, to do anything and everything which tends to dissipate the impressions of God's worship, and the sacramental service. Such fathers never follow up a pungent sermon, never watch for opportunities to lead their children Christward, never co-operate with God's Spirit for the conversion of an impenitent son or daughter. What must an ingenious child think of such a father's prayers. I entreat parents most solemnly not to stand in the way of their children's salvation. If you do not help the good work, pray do not hinder it. The selfish or inconsistent life of some fathers is enough to neutralize all the teachings and appeals of both pulpit and Sabbath-school. To Paul's question, "How knowest thou, oh! wife, if thou mayst save thy husband?" we would add the startling query, "How knowest thou, oh! father, but thou mayst damn thy own children ?" How many a devoted, praying wife is struggling to lead her children heavenward, and finds her every effort nullified by the open irreligion of an ungodly father! She toils on alone, prays on alone, works alone, and weeps alone, over their perils and the fatal example at their own fireside. God pity, and support her! She is striving to bear her children on her own shoulders toward virtue, toward purity and Christ; but to-day her sad failure is written in the homely adage, Like father like family. to THE MOUNTAIN AND THE CLOSET. "And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart and when the evening was come, pray: he was there alone." (Matt. xiv. 23.) He left the crowded shore, the thronged highway, and crossing the turfy fields, came to the edges of the mountains. His pulse throbbed and his breath quickened as he clomb, as ours does when we climb. The sparrow, not knowing its Creator and Protector, flew away from his coming. His form cast its shadow, as he passed, over bush, and flower, and grass, and they knew not that their Maker overshadowed them. Sounds grew fainter behind him. Those who had followed him, one by one, dropped off, and the last eye that looked after him had lost his form amid the wavering leaves, and was withdrawn. He was in the mountain, and alone. The day was passing. The last red light followed him, and stained the air of the forest with ruddy hues. At length the sun went down, and it was twilight in the mountains, though bright yet in the open field. But when it was twilight in the field, it was already dark in the mountain. The stars were coming forward and filling the heavens. No longer drawn outward by the wants of the crowd, what were the thoughts of such a soul? And what were the prayers? Even if Christ were but a man, such an errand of such a man would be sublime. But how foolish are all words which would approach the grandeur of Christ's solitude upon the mountain when we regard him as very God, though incarnated, communing with his co-equal Father ! What was the varied prayer? What tears were shed, what groans were breathed, what silent yearnings, what voiceless utterances of desire, no man may know. Walking to and fro, or sitting upon some fallen rock, or prostrate in overpowering emotion, the hours passed on until morning dawned. When he went down to his disciples, they neither inquired nor did he speak of his mountain watch. If prayer be the communion of the soul with God, it is but a little part of it that can be uttered in words; and - still less that will take form of words in the presence of others. Of outward wants, of outward things, of one's purely earthly estate, we can speak freely. But of the soul's inward life-of its struggles with itself-its hopes, yearnings, griefs, loves, joys-of its very personality-it is reserved to such a degree, that there can be no prayer expressive of the inward life, until we have entered into the closet and shut to the door. Every Christian whose life has developed itself into great experience of secret prayer, knows that the hidden things of the closet transcend all uttered prayer as much in depth, richness, and power, as they do in volume and space. Sometimes we mourn the loss of old books in ancient libraries; we marvel what more the world would have had if the Alexandrian library had not perished; we regret the decay of parchments, the rude waste of monks with their stupid palimpsests. We sorrow for the lost arts, and grieve that the fairest portions of Grecian art lie buried from research; that the Parthenon should come down within two hundred years of our time, with its wealth of magnificence, a voice in stone from the old world to the new, and yet perish almost before our eyes! But when one reflects upon the secret history which has transpired in men's thoughts, and that the noblest natures have been they whose richest experiences could never have been drawn forth through the open, or recorded in books, but have found utterance through prayer and before the conscious glory of the Invisible Presence-I am persuaded that the silent literature of the closet is infinitely more wonderful in every attribute of excellence, than all that has been sung in song, or recorded in literature, or lost in all the concussions of time. If rarest classical fragments, the perished histories and poets of every people could be revived, they would be as nothing in comparison with the effusions of the closet, could they be gathered and recorded. The noblest natures it is that resort to this study. The rarest inspiration rests upon them. Flying between the heavens and the earth, with winged faith, they reach out into glories which do not descend to the lower spheres of thought. How many souls, so large and noble, that they rose up in those days of persecution, and left home and love for the faith of Christ, and went to the wilderness and dwelt therein, gave forth in prayer their whole life! Doubtless their daily prayers were rich and deep in spiritual life. But there are peculiar days to all-days of vision-days when we see all human life as in a picture and all future life as in a vision; and when the reason, the imagination, the affections, and the experiences of life, are so tempered together, that we consciously live more in an hour than at other times in months. Every man has his mountains of transfiguration, and sees and talks with the revealed and radiant dead. In such experiences, what must have been the wonders of prayer, when the noblest natures-rich in all goodness, deeply cultured in knowledge, refined in all taste, and enriched in pure lives, but driven out among the wild shaking leaves of the wilderness for their faith's sake-poured out their whole soul before God; their conscious weakness and sinfulness; their yearnings and trials; their hopes and strivings; their sense of this life, and their view of the other; their longing for God's church on earth, and their prospect of the glorified church in heaven! What, if some listener had made haste to put down the prayers of Luther, with all his strong crying and tears, if that could be possible! How many noble natures gave up to celibacy and virginity the wondrous treasures of multitudinous affections. And when at periods of heart-swellings, in hours when the secret tide set in upon men from the eternal ocean, and carried them upon mighty longings and yearnings toward God, before whom they poured forth in mingled sobs and words those affections which were meant to be cased in the relations of life, but which hindered and choked, found tumultuous vent in mighty prayer to God! Consider what mother's hearts have always been. How many thousand thousand of them have watched day and night over the cradle till the body failed, but the spirit waxed even keener; and, with what wondrous gushes of words, such as would disdain to be called eloquence, have they besought God, with every persuasion, for the life of the child! We judge these things by our own experience. All the words that were ever spoken, and all the thoughts that we have conceived, are unfit to bear up the skirt of those prayers, which burst, with out words, right out of our hearts, for the life of dying children! Consider what a heavenly wonder must be the Book of Prayer that lies before God? For groans are interpreted there. Mute joys gain tongue before God. Unutterable desires, that go silently up from the heart, burst forth into divine pleadings, when, touched by the Spirit, their imprisoned nature comes forth! Could thoughts or aspirations be made visible, could they assume a form that befitted their nature, what an endless procession would be seen going toward the throne of God, day and night! Consider the wrestlings of all the wretched, the cry of orphans, the ceaseless pleadings of the bereaved, and those fearing bereavement; the prayer of trust betrayed; of hope darkened; of home deserted; of joy quenched; the prayers of faithful men from dungeons and prison houses; the prayers of slaves, who found man, law, and the church around and against them, and had no way left to look but upward toward God! The hearts of men by myriads have been pressed by the world, as grapes in a wine-press, and have given forth a heavenly wine. Beds of long sickness have learned such thoughts of resignation, and such patient trust and joy, that the heavenly book is bright with the footprints of their prayers! The very silence of sickness is often more full of richest thoughts than all the books of earth have ever been! "And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and the four-and-twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of the saints." And the other magnificence of the scene one may read in the fifth chapter of that gorgeous Book of Divine Pictures, the Revelation! How remarkable would it seem, if it were revealed to us that there dwelt in the air a race of fine and fairy spirits, whose work it was to watch all flowers of the earth, and catch their perfumed breath and preserve it in golden vials for heavenly But how much more grand is the thought that all over the earth, God's use! Friend, thou must trust in Him who trod before The desolate paths of life; Must bear in meekness, as He meekly bore, Sorrow, and pain, and strife! Think how the Son of God These thorny paths has trod; Think how He longed to go, Yet tarried out for thee the appointed woe; Think of his weariness, in places dim, Where no man comforted or cared for Him; Think of the blood-like sweat, With which his brow was wet, Yet how He prayed, unaided and alone, In that great agony,-Thy will be done! Friend, do not thou despair, Christ, from his heaven of heavens, answers prayer. |