“Paternal responsibility?” Yes, paternal—a correct term, I suppose, although to some expressing a novel idea. Change a single letter, and we are on a beaten track—familiar with the route. We can almost see the flowers that beautify that path, and so we are not weary with thinking of the steeps to be climbed in the journey; for appeals to mothers abound. Maternal associations are encouraged; mother’s magazines published; hymns for mothers scattered far and wide; and not one too many. The theme cannot be too carefully nor too prayerfully considered. And a fearful reckoning awaits those who carelessly or thoughtlessly assume a mother’s privileges. Thrice fearful their guilt who gladly relinquish to others the sacred charge assigned to them as mothers. But what of paternal responsibility? With few exceptions the Book of books furnishes the only specific admonitions to fathers as such. Are they then so strong that they will surely fulfill their high mission without these helps? Do their intuitions lead them to walk more carefully as parents than those endowed with maternal instinct? Or is their mission in the family so unimportant that they need no admonition? We think not. And upon this almost blank leaf in our religious literature we venture to inscribe one thought. It is this: In the paternal relation, the father, not less, if not more, than the mother, forms the model from which the little ones conceive of the character of their Heavenly Father. If this is true, let it be received as a motive, and what will be the influence on the character of the father! What purity will mark that life! what truth! What loving intercourse with the little flock, and yet what firmness and discipline! What sympathy with childhood’s trials, and yet what earnest lessons in enduring hardness! Where will be the winking at sin? where the indulgence in unmanly practices? where the inconsistencies, the self-indulgence, the petulance, the selfishness, which drive so many of our sons from home, and load so many of our mothers with untold burdens of care and grief? Where will be cast the false systems of family government—the codes so capricious that even the little ones mark inconsistencies revealed? “It is never a principle of the divine government to scare the sinful soul with eternal terrors.” So said, truly, a voice from one of our pulpits. Then why did that pastor-father select as an accustomed punishment for his timid little daughter, banishment to the lonely attic? And that other father, regulating his reproofs upon the scale of his ever-varying temper, instead of graduating them according to the offense—now giving a hasty blow, and an angry word, and to-morrow, perhaps, weakly yielding to the voice of entreaty when love required the firm hand of discipline—why will he continue to “chasten after his own pleasure,” and not model from Him who in all our chastenings seeks our profit? How many mothers have the difficult office of soothing a heart-broken child, and trying at the same time to secure its filial reverence for the father whose broken promise has caused a bitter disappointment! “What? Put myself to inconvenience to keep a promise to a child?” Yes; otherwise what attribute of your Heavenly Father do you reflect in your family? Surely not that which has all your life led you to sing: “How great is Thy faithfulness!” Then there is a throng of fathers entrapped by the “cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches”—no time to minister at the family altar, and too much engrossed to linger long in the family circle; no hour for unbending with the little ones—no frolic, no lesson, no pastime—nothing for them but money, and that which money can buy. Yet these fathers love their children. Their toil is for them. Why can they not see that to reflect the character of God into the family circle, the sympathy of God—the loving communion of God—the faithfulness of God—would be worth more in these homes than all the wealth of all the mines? Thus living, not to the child alone, but strange to say, to himself, also, will the father reveal the character of God in ever fresh and living light. In his own warm and loving heart, seeking first of all the real good of his child, how forcefully and touchingly will he see the reflection, though dim, of the wealth of his Father’s love to him! Thus living, too, even his failures in duty will but illuminate with brighter glory his Father’s faithfulness to him. Can it be that these tender lessons are for mothers only?—The Interior.