Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-03-22
DR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
THE BROOKLYN DIVINE SPEAKS
OF ssTHE FOOLISH SON."
TEXT: "a foolish son is the heaviness Of
b;e ,,aafhr y--prnvarhz "

TEXT: "a foolish son is the hedviness OF
his mother. Proverbs K, /.
All parents want their children to turn
out well. However poorly father and mother
may have done themselves, they want their
sons and daughters to do splendidly. Up to
forty years OF age 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
name Abigail means 'her fathers joy"
And what a parental delight was Solomon to
David, and Samuel to Hannah, and Joseph
to jacob The best earthly staff that a father
has 10 lean on is a good son and the strongest
arm a mother has TO help her down the steep
of years is that of grateful child.
But it is not rare thing to find people ua-
filial, and often the parents are themselves
TO blame. Aged persons sometimes become
querulous 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
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
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 him coughing for fifteen minutes after
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 have
been proAgates. 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 dis
grace and the son did not feel called upon to
carry such a carcass all hislife While children
must always be dutiful, Isympathize with all
young people who have disagreeahle or un-
prircipled old folks around the house. Some
of us, drawing out of our memories, know
that it is possible after sixty or seventy or
eighty OF 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 cannot improve or depreciate the
respectability of those given names. Bnt
it is your last name your family name tfat
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 out the idea of my text, l re-
mark that reckless OF dissipated son makes
hon -l,oat tad tha
family pride You have no right, my young
friend, by a 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 libertinisn 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 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 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, took it 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 of 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 trouble you put upon her when,
by misleeds, you wrench that name from its
high signifcancel To haul it down from
your mothers forehead and trample it i'll the
dust would be criminal.
''Your fathers name may not be a dstin-
guished 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 Eschylus,
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, the
father of the faithful, but your father
has name in small circle as precious to
him as theirs in q larger circle. Look out
how you tarnish it ~
Perhaps it is a good thing that cruel treat
ment by child abbreyiates parents life;
for what is there desirable in a fathers life
or a mothers life il its peace is gone? Do
you not think death Is something benehcent
il it stops the mothers heart from aching
and her eyes from weeping, and says: You
need not bear the excruciation any longer.
Go and sleep. | will put the defense of a
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 | hear no sound, yet there are at
this momert tens of thousands of parental
hearts breaking All care was taken with
the boys schooling, all good counsels given,
and the equipment for sober and earnest
and useful life was provided; but it has all
gore, and the foolish son has become the
heayiness 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 q sea captain commanding n
ship across the oceani That requires less
skill than TO navigate a young soul in safety
across the infantile and boyhood years
The sicknesSes that assault the temptations
that entrap, the anxieties that are excited J
Young man, YOU will never know what your
mother has suffered for you. You will never
know how your father has toiled for you
You have been in all their thoughts, i'll all
their plans, IN all their prayers, from, the
time your first breath was drawn to. this
moments respiration.
but" says some young man, my mother
is gone; my behavior will not trouble her
any more" Then perhaps you have her pict-
ure. Hang it up in your room in the place
where you oftenest look. Go and study her
features, and while you IRE looking the past
will come back, and you may hear her voice,
which is now so still, speak again, saying
''From my heavenly home, my dear
boy, l solicit your reformation and saliva
ton. Go to the Christ who pardoned me-
and He will pardon you. My heaven will
not be complete till hear of your changing
But will hear of it right away, for there is
ioy up here when one sinner repenteth.
Swifter than telegraphic wire ever car
ried congratulations to wedding or a coro-
nation would fly heavenward the news of
your deliverance; and whether the one most
interested in your salvation were Oh river
bank, or in the temple, or on the battle
| ments, or in the great tower, the message
would be Instantly received, and before this
service is closed angel would cry to angel:
Have you heard the news? Out yonder is
mother who has just heard of her way ward
boys redemption. Another prodigal has got
home. The dead isialive again and the lost
is found" ~ =
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