Fisherman & farmer. [volume] (Edenton, N.C.) 1887-19??, 1890-03-28
REV. DR.. TALMAGE.
JHE BROOKLYN DIVINE'S SUN
DAY SERMON
Subject: parents Treatment of Chill
dren"

All parents "dub LDolT CDll0Fen 10 turn
out well. However poorly father and mother
NAV have done themselves theY want their
SONS and daughters to do splendidly. Up TO
forty years OF Hge parents may have am-
billions for themselves, after that their chief
ambitions are for their children. Some of
the old time names indicate this. The name
Of Abner indicates his fathers lamp" The
aame Abigail means her fathers JOY"
And what parental delight was Solomon to
David. and Samuel to Hannah, and Joseph
TO Jacob. The best earthly staff that father
has TO lean on Is good son and the strongest
arm mother has to help her down the steep
Of years is that of grateful child.
But 1t Is not Il rare thing to find people uH-
flial, and often the parents are themselves
10 blame. Aged persons sometimes become
4uerulOus and snappy and the children have
their hands full with the old folks. There
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
ais 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
impatient at the sound from the nursery and
shouts with an expenditure of voice that
keeps uDn coughing nICeen minutes al GER
ward: Boys. stop that racket as though
any boy that ever amounted to anything in
the world did not begin life by making
racket
Indeed, there are children who owe moth
ing to their parents, for those parents nave
been prOtiigates. My lamented FRIEND good
Christian Henry Wilson, Vice-Presidemt of
the United States, in early life changed his
name. Henry Wilson was not his original
aame. He dropped his fathers name be-
cause that father was drunkard and dis
grace and the son did not feel called upon to
carry such carcass all his life. While children
must always be dutiful, Isympathize with all
young people who have disagreeable or I'M
prncipled 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-
nent 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 cannot improve or depreciate the
responsibility of those given names. But
1t IS your last name, your family name, that
Is at your mercy. All who bear that name
are bound, before God and man, not to dam
age its happy significance. HOu 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 out the idea of my text, | re-
mark that q reckless or disSipated son makes
a heavy-hearted parent because it hurts the
family pride. You have no right, my young
friend, by a bad life to blot the cid family
Bible containing the story of the marriages
and births and deaths of the years gone by
DIT 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
IT ibertinism or cruelty or meanness, just
because one man or woman bearing that
name cursed it forever by miSCreancy.
Look out how you stab the family name! 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 and she came to young woman
hood, and she saw some ole with whom she
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 takO
the family name you now wear, and she has
done her part to make it an honorable name.
How heavy trouble you put upon her when,
by mlSdeedS, you wrench that name from its
high significance! To haul it down from
your mothers forehead and trample it in the
dust would be criminal.
Your fathers name may not be q distin-
gushed name but 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 Hschylus,
father of monks, or HerOdOtus, the father Of
history OF Thomas Aquinas, the father of
moral philosophy. or Abraham, the
father Of the faithful, but your father
has a name i'll a small circle as precious to
him as theirs in a larger circle. Look out
how YOU taTnish itn'
Perhaps it is good thing that cruel treat
ment 10y child abbreviates parents life;
for what is there desirable in fathers lite
or a mothers life if its peace is gone? DO
YOU not think death is something Deneflcent
if it stops the mothers heart from achIng
and her eyes from weeping, and says: "4ou
need not bear the excruclat1on any longer.
Go and sleep [ will put the defense OF
marble slab between you and that boys out
RACES. Go now where the wicked cease
from troubling and the weary are at rest
At the departure of such mothers let the mu-
sic be an anthem instead of a dirge. While
You and I hear no sound yet there are at
this moment tens of thousands of parental
hearts breaking. All care was taken with
the bows schooling, all good counsels given,
and the equipment TOT sooeI anu ear hesT
aud useful life was provided; but it has all
gone and the foolish son has become the
heaviness of his mother.
Much of the poignancy Of the parental
grief arises from the ingratitude of such
behavior. What an undertaking it is to
conduct family through the ailments and
exposures of early life! Talk about the skill
demanded of sea captain commanding
ship across the oceani That requires less
skill than to navigate young soul in safety
across the infantile and boyhood years,
The sicknesses that assault, the temptations