The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1880-12-30

unchangeability. They viii make an elab-
crate argument to prove that they think
now Just as they did twenty years ago. 1t
Is charged to frailty or fraud if man
changes his sentiments in politics or in
religion, aud it is this determination of soul
that 50 often drives back the gospel from q
mans heart. 1t is so hard to make avarice
charitable, and fraud honest and pride
humble aud skepticism Christian. The
sword of Gods truth seems to glance of
from these mailed warriors, and the helmet
seems battle-proof against Gods battle ak.
But childhood how susceptible to example
| and TO instruction. You are not surprised
at the record 60 Abraham begat Isaac and
Isaac begat Jacob, - for when religion starts
in a family it is apt to go all through.
JeZabel, the murderess, you are not sur
prised to find her son, Jehoram, attempting
assassination. Oh, what a responsibility
upon the parent and the teacher The
musician touches the keys, and the response
of those keys is away off amid the pipes and
the chords, and you wonder at the distance
between the key and the chords. And so it
Is in life; you touch a child, the results
| will come back from manhood or old age,
telling just the tune played, whether the
dirge of great sorrow or the anthem of
great joy. The word that the Sabbath
school teacher uttered this afternoon will
be echoed back from everlasting ages of
light or darkness. The home or the school
decide the republic or the despotism, the
barbarian SIN or the civilization, the up
building of an empire or the overthrowing
of it. Higher than Parliament or Congress
are the school and the family; and the
sound of a child's foot may mean more than
the tramp of host
! WHAT, THEN, ARE YOU DOING
for the purpose of bringing your children
/ Al l. e LIS ~
susceptible, and if this is the very best time
to act upon their external interest, what are
you doing by way of right impulsion?
There were some harvesters in the fields of
Scotland one hot day; Hannah Lemond
was helping them gather the hay. She laid
her babe under tree. While she was busy
| in the field there was a fiutter of wings in
| the air, and a golden eagle clutched the
swaddling band of the babe and few away
with it to the mountain eyrie. All the har- |
vesters and Hannah LemOnd started for the |
cliffs. Getting there, who dared to mount |
the cliff? No human foot had ever trod it. |
There were sailors there who had gone up |
the mast in the day of the terrible tempest |
but they did not dare risk it. Hannah |
Lemond sat there for awhile and looked up |
and saw the eagle in the eyrie, and then she |
leaped to her feet and she started up where |
no human foot had ever trod, crag above |
crag, catching hold of this root or that root,
until she reached the eyrie and caught her
babe, the eagle sweeping in fierceness all
around about her. Fastening the child to
her back she started for her friends and for
her home. Oh, what dizzy decent! Sliding
from this crag to that crag catching by that
vine, by that root, coming down further and
further, the most dangerous pass, where she
found a goat and some kids. She said
"Now, FL follow the goat; the goat will
know just which is the safest way down."
and she was led by the animal down to the
plain. ''Thank God thank God p'-her
strength not giving way until the rescue
was effected; and they cried: 'Stand back,
now Give her ARP Oh, if a woman will
do that for the physical life of her child,
what will you do for the eternal life of your
boy and your girl? Let it not be told in
the great day of eternity thai Hannah
Lemond put forth more exertiOn for the
saving of the physical life of her child than
you, 0 parent, have ever put forth for the
eternal life of your little one. God help
you.
pass on to consider the power
WHICH A CHILD YIELDS
over the parental heart. We often talk
about the influence of parents upon chill
dren. | never hear ANYTHING said about the
influence of children upon their parents.
You go to school to them. You no more
educate them than they educate you.
With their little hands they have caught
hold of your entire nature, and you can not
wrench yourself away from their grasp.
You are different men and women from
what you were before they gave you the
first lesson. They have rev0lutiOnized your
soul. Thre are fountains of joy in your
heart which would never have been
discovered had they not discovered
them. Life is to you a more stipend
GUS thing than it was before those lit
tie feet started on the pathway to eternity.
Oh, how many hopes, how many solicitudes
that little one has created in your soul.
You go to school every day-a school of self
denial, a school of patience, in which you
are getting wiser every day; and that in
huence of the child over you will increase :
and increase; and though your children
may die, from the very throne of God they
will reach down an influence to your soul,
leading you on and leading you up until
you mingle with their voices and sit beside
their thrones.
The grasp which the child's has over the
parents heart is seen in what the parent
will do for the child. Storm and darkness
and heat and cold are nothing to you if
they stand between you and your child's
welfare. A great lawyer, when yet un-
known, one day stood in the court room and
made an eloquent plea before some man of
great legal attachments, and the gentleman
said to him afterward GLOW could you be
so calm standing in that august presence %
"Oh," said Erskine, 81 felt my children
pulling at my skirts, crying for bread"
What stream will you not swim, what cav
ern will you not enter, what battle will you
not fight, what hunger will you not endure,
for your childrenY' Your children must
have bread though you starve your children
must be we'll clothed though you go in rags.
You say, "My children shall be educated,
though l never had any chance" What
to you are weary limbs and aching head,
and hands hardened and callous, if only the
welfare of your children can be wrought
out by it? Their sorrow is your sorrow,
their Joy, their advancement, your victory.
And, oh when the last sickness comes how
you fight back the march of disease and it
is only after tremendous struggle that you
surrender; and then when the spirit has
fed the great deep is broken up and Rachel
will not be comforted because her children
are not, and David goes up the palace stairs
crying, go Absalom, my son, my son
would to God l had died for thee. 0, Alb
SALON., my son, my son"
There is not a large family or hardly a
large family in this church this evening
that has not bent over such a treasure and
lost it. In the family fold is there no dead
lamb? | have seen many such cases of
sorrow. There is one pre-eminent in my
memory as pastor
sCovILLE HAYNES M'cULLUM.
The story of his death has brought hundreds
unto God. He belonged to my parish in
the West. A thorough boy, nine or ten
years of age. Nothing morbid, nothing dull
about him. His voice loudest and his foot
swiftest on the play ground Often he has
come into my house and thrown himself
down on the floor in the exhaustion of boy
ish mirth: and yet he was a Christian con-
secrated to God, keeping his command
ments. That is the kind of childish piety
believe in When the days of sickness
came suddenly he was told that he could
not get we'll; he said: "Jesus alone can
save me. Jesus will save me. He has
"a Ill 1