Parental Government by J. Sisley

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 22, 1875

Parental Government.

By J. Sisley

[BRO. SMITH: The following thoughts on Parental Government are, I think, worthy a place in the REVIEW. J. SISLEY.]

Of one thing you may be sure; you cannot save your children, but you may destroy them. You cannot make them Christians, but you can throw insuperable obstacles in the way of their becoming such.

Would you then have your child a Christian you must be one, and live one. It will not be enough to talk, and profess, and seem to be a Christian; you must be a Christian. You must think, and feel, and love, and live, a Christian. Children will be what you are, not what you seem. They will feel, if they cannot discern, your real character. They will do as you in heart do, not as you say, and pray, and preach. If you are worldly, covetous, money-making, money-hoarding, penurious, inactive, then by irresistible instinct they will be molded by your character. It will be daguerreotyped by invisible, secret processes upon their hearts.

Your will, your heart, will impress themselves upon theirs. If you would guide them to Heaven, and meet them there, you must not only point, but lead, the way, and make your family a little Heaven below, of which Christian love is the center and the circumference. Tupper well says:—

“Alas! for a thousand fathers, whose indulgent sloth Hath emptied the vial of confusion o’er a thousand homes; Alas! for the palaces and hovels that might have been nurseries for Heaven, But which worldliness has blighted into schools of hell. A kindness most unkind, that hath always spared the rod; A weak and numbing indecision in the mind that should be master; A foolish love, pregnant of hate, that never frowned on sin; A moral cowardice of heart, that never dares command. The house where the master ruleth is strong in united subjection, And the only command with promise, being honored, is a blessing to that house; But if he yieldeth up the reins, it is weak in discordant anarchy, And the bonds of love and union melt away as ropes of sand.”

“I have a vivid recollection,” says the Rev. Richard Knill, “of the effect of maternal influence. My honored mother was a religious woman, and she watched over and instructed me, as pious mothers are accustomed to do. Alas! I often forgot her admonitions; but in my thoughtless days I never lost the impressions which her holy example had made on my mind. After spending a large portion of my life in foreign lands, I returned again to visit my native village.”

“Both my parents died while I was in Russia, and their house is now occupied by my brother.

“The furniture remains just the same as when I was a boy; and at night I was accommodated with the same bed in which I had often slept before; but my busy thoughts would not let me sleep. I was thinking how God had led me through the journey of life. At last the light of the morning darted through the little window, and then my eye caught a sight of the spot where my sainted mother, forty years before, took me by the hand and said, ‘Come, my dear, kneel down with me, and I will go to prayer.’

“This completely overcame me. I seemed to hear the very tones of her voice; I recollected some of her expressions; and I burst into tears, and arose from my bed and fell upon my knees just on the spot where my mother kneeled, and thanked God that I once had a praying mother. And oh! if all parents could feel what I felt then, I am sure they would pray with their children as well as pray for them.”