The Birmingham age-herald., 1902-12-07
DIR. TALMAGE'S SERMON.
nY rHE REv. FRANk oE w1TT rALMAoE, D. Q


 as the love my father felt for me on the day that was born" May God never allow you. O father and mother, to in- still such distorted Idea of parental af- lection into any ehild's mind and heart on account of favoritism for some of your children at the expense of the oth- CTS. May God inspire every one of you to teach your boys and girls that each one of them has a full measure of your lovei May God inspire all parents to treat all their children alike, with the exception that they should be a little gentler and more thoughtful of the child who is sick, or is crippled. like Mephi- bosheth, who was lame in both his feetl
 Trusting to Servants.
 Allowing the servant girl to take the place of maternal and parental compan- ionship can truly be classed among par ental sins. I would not for an instant either say or write one word which would wound the feelings of thousands and tens of thousands of young women who have consecrated their lives to the noble calling of nurse-girls work Some of the mightiest men of the ages have testified that they would never have been what they were but for the self-sacrific- ing love of their nurses. who not only rocked them to sleep when they were tired, but also started their little feet in the paths of rectftude and piety. The Earl of Shaftesbury declared that the greatest inspiration for true religious life was instil1ed into him by the faith fulness of his Christian nurse. The mighty potentate. the late Alexander III. the czar of all the Russias, hon. ored the faithfulness and the devoted love of his nurse Surrounded by the grand dukes of Russia for three long miles he followed afoot the hearse which carried the mortal remains of that dear friend through binding snow-storm out to the royal mausoleum of St. Peters, burg. And as the dying French soldier, writhing under the surgeons knife cried out, Doctor, cut httle deeper, and you will see pictured upon my heart the face of the mighty emperor" so, many of us if we cut down into the hearts of the faithful servants who have watched over us in our childhood, could there find our own faces. because the hearts of these faithful serdtors beat with love for us.
 But though many of our household ser wants may be to us and to our children as the Earl of Shaftesbury's Christian nurse was to him. yet no true father or mother can afford to delegate the physi- cal, moral and religious training of their children to servants, no matter how faithful and true those servants may be. No woman can take the place of true mother by the side of the crib. No man can do for the boys what consecrated father Is able to do when he is faithful to the trust which God has given to him.
 Oh, man, studying the debit and credit sides of your ledgers, counting up your hundreds of thousands of dollars and carefully watching the manifold details of vast mercantile enterprise, which p6 Qf to the utmost. you may think you have no time to examine into the details of how your i3-year-old son spends his weekly allowance. But you ought to take that time. On account of that parental neglect you may live to regret the day that you were born and also the day that your son was born. Oh, woman, you may think this is the age for the emancipa- ton of your sisters. In pride you may listen to weekday lectures on woman5 rights and Shakespeare and sculpture and art, You may consider 1t great so- cial opportunity to be able to join card party one aftern1bon and go to tea the next afternoon and be equal and the as- aociate of the social queens of our most prominent cities. But no social nor worldly honor ought to be great enough or important enough to entice you away form your nursery, so that you must del- egate the care of your children to hired servant. Parental neglect is not in God 8 sight simple misdemeanor, 1t Is a sin a burning sin-which may not only de- stroy the spiritual life of the child, but impair also the eternal happiness of the father and mother. It is a sharp two edged sword which, with one stroke down and another stroke up, can destroy not only the rose, but the bush which gave 1t birth.
 Lack of Discipline.
 Lack of nursery discipline can some times be ciassed among parental sins, or rather, mistakes We would not like to call the actions of too indulgent par ent by such harsh word as sin. Yet Solomon. who wrote the words of my text, gave the parental mistakes of over indulgence even a harder definition than that of sin. He said, "He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that lov- eth him chasteneth him betimes." In other words we have a right to make by this quotation the simple deduction that If father will not make a child learn to obey him, then he is very apt to let a child learn to despise him.
 I used to be very harsh in my condem- nation of parents who were .over-indui- gent and would not compel obedience upon the part of their children. But the older I grew the more lenient became in my criticism of this evil. I have found out that the invariable reason why most parents are over lenient with their children is because they have a family plot in which tney have buried some of their little ones. It Is on account of the little. pale faces of the dead that they shrink from causing tears to flow over the rosy checks of the living. 'It is all well enough for you, MT. Talmage, to say that ought to be stricter with my ! children" once said a member of my church, but have already buried two of my babies, and I am living in constant fear that I may have to bury the other two. They are all that I have left"
 But, fathers and mothers, though you may have buried two of your children, remember that you are not just to the living unless you teach them the laws of filial obedience. A disobedient son inva- l riably means willful, wayward, selfish, petulant, unbalanced and God-defying man An undutiful daughter generally means a quicl-tempered, sinful. ungov- ernable woman, who will ultimately de- spise and trample upon all pure love. It was because Queen Asrippina laughed at her little, willfu boy. Nero, who doubled up his tiny fists and struck at her, that royal hirlings who came to do the bid | when the queen mother would have to bare her flesh for the fatal stroke of the 1 royal hireiings who came to do the bid | ding of a murderous son. Sometimes the | unkindest act that a parent can do to a child is to give to the boy or girl sugar l plum when that child ought to have, &C., | cording to the Solomonic advice, a good I sound thrashing.
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