The Opelousas courier., 1890-04-19
REV. DR.. TALMAGE
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON.
r,h;eet: "Parents' Treatment of Chill
dren."

dreu."
TExT: "a foolish son is the heaviness of
liz mother. proverbs x, l.
An narents want their children to turn
.na we'll. However poorly father and mother
NAV have done themselves, they want their
cons and daughters to do splendidly. Up to
fortv years Of age parents may nave am
bitions for themselves, after that their chief
ambitions are for their children. Some of
fhe old time names indicate this. The name
Of Abner indicates his father stamp" The
name Abigail means her fathers joy"
And what a parental delight was Solomon to
David, and Samuel to Hannah, and Joseph
10 Jacob! The best earthly staff that a father
has to lean on is a good son and the strongest
arm a mother has to help her down the steep
Of years is that of a grateful child.
But it is not a rare thing to find people un-
flial, and often the parents are themselves
to blame. Aged persons sometimes become
auerulous and snappy and the children have
are old people so disagreeable that they have
nearly broken up some homes. The young
married man with whom the aged one lives
stands it because he has been used to it all
his life, but the young wife, coming in from
another household, can hardly endure it and
sometimes almost cries her eyes out.
And when little children gather in the
house they are afraid Of the venerable patri-
arch, who has forgotten that he ever was a
child himself, and cannot understand why
children should ever want to play hide and
seek or roll hoop or fly kite, and he becomes
inpatient at the sound from the nursery and
shouts with an expenditure of voice that
keeps him coughing for fifteen minutes after
ward: 'tBoysi stop that racketp as though
any boy that ever amounted to anything in
the world did not begin life by making q
racket
Indeed, there are children who owe moth
ing to their parents, for those parents have
been profigates. My lamented friend, good
Christian Henry Wilson, Vice-President of
the United States, in early life changed his
name. Henry Wilson was not his original
name. He dropped his fathers name be-
cause that father was a drunkard and a dis
grace and the son did NOT feel called upon to
carry sucha carcass all his life. While children
must always be dutiful, Isympathize with all
young people who nave disagreeable or I'm
principled old folks around the house. Some
Of us, drawing out of our memories, know
that it is possible after sixty or seventy or
eighty or ninety. years OF age for the old to
be kind and genial, and the grandest adorn-
ment Of a home is an aged father and an
aged mother, If the process of years has mel
lowed them.
You cannot hurt your name Of John or
George or Henry or Mary or Frances or
Rachel, because there have been thousands
OF people, good and bad, having those names,
and you eannot improve or depreciate the
respectabili+y of those given names. But
II Is your last name, your family nanae, that
is at your mercy. All who bear that name
are bound, before God and man, not to dam
age its happy significance. You are charged,
by all the generations of the past and all the
generations to come, to do your share for the
protection and the honor and the integrity OF
that NAME.
Carrying ont the idea of my text, ] re-
mark that a reckless or dissipated SON makes
q hea~vy-hearted parent because 1t hurts the
family pride. You have no right, my young
friend, by bad life to blot the old family
Bible containing the story Of the marriages
and births and deaths OF the years gone by
or to cast a blot upon the family Bibles
whose records are yet to be opened. There
are IN our American city directories names
that always suggest commercial dishonesty
or libertinism or cruelty OF m~eanness, just
because one man or woman bearing That
q cursed it forever by miscreancy.
Lookout how you stab the family namel 1t
is especially dear to your mother. She was
not born under that name. She was born
under another name, but the years
passed on n she came to young woman
At00Us HItU GH0 DdW jill OkO VI WhOl4o AAO
could trust her happiness, her life and her
immortal destiny, and she took his name,
took it while the orange blossoms were fill
ing the air with fragments, took it with
Joined hands, tookit while the heavens wit
messed. She chose it out of all the family
names since the world stood, chose it for
better or worse, through sickness and
through health, by cradles and by graves.
Yea, she put off her old family name to take
the family name you now wear, and she has
done her part to make it an honorable name.
How heavy a trouble you put upon her when,
by nisdeeds, you wrench that name from its
high signifcancel To maui it down from
your mothers forehead and trample it in the
dust would be criminal.
tsYom fathers name may not be a distin-
guished name, but 1 hope it stands for some
thing good. 1t may not be famous, like that
Of Homer, the father Of epic poetry, or Isaak
Walton, the father of angling, or Aschyluss
the father of tragedy, or Ethelwold, the
father OF monks, or Herodotus, the father of
history, or Thomas Aquinas, the father OF
moral philosophy, or Abraham, me
father of the faithful, but your father
has o name in a small circle as precious to
him as theirs in a larger circle. Look out
how you tarnish itp'
Perhaps it is a good thing that cruel treat
meat by q child abbreviates a parents life:
for what is there desirable in a fathers life
or . mothers life If its peace is gone? Do
You not think death is something beneficent
il IL stops the mothers heart from aching
and her eyes from weeping, and says: You
need not bear the excruciation any longer.
90 and sleep. | will put the defense of O
marble slab between you and that boys out
RACES. Go now where the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest. y
AT the departure of such mothers 1et the mu.
sic b6an anthem instead Of q dirge. While
you and ] hear no. sound; yet there are al
this moment tens of thousands of parental
hearts breaking. All care was taken with
the boys schooling, all good counsels given,
md the equipment for a sober and earnest
md useful life was provided; but it has al
gone. and the foolish SON has become TIN
heaviness Of his mother.
Much OF the poignancy OF she PARENTS
grief arises from the Ingratitude OF sucE
behavior. WHAT an undertaking iG is u
conduct q family through the ailments ans
exposures of early lifei Talk about the ski
demanded of d sea captain commanding .
ship across the oceani That requires les
akali than to navigate q young soul IN saIesy
Eeross the infantile and. boyhood years
The sieknesses that assault, the temptations
that entrap, the anxieties that are excited
Young man, Won viii never know what YOU
mother has suffered for you. You will nevel
know how your father has toiled fog You
Won have been in all their thoughts, IN al
their plans, IN all their prayers, from TN
time your first breath was drawn to THU
moments respiration.
But says some young man, my 1nothel
- gone; my behavior will not trouble hel
any more Then perhaps you have her piet
Sure. Hang it up in your 0 In the placs
lwaafe yoaa oftenestlook Go and study her
features, d while you are looking the past
awsll come back, and ron may hear her voice,
which il now % still, speak again, saying;
From my heavenly home, my deal
boy ! solicit your reformation and saliva,
ton Go to the Christ who pardoned me
aud He viii pardon you. My heaven viii
mot h nnnnnlafa Eli L haar of wnnr changing