Parental Restraint by Presbyterian

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 16, 1857

Parental Restraint.

By Presbyterian

It is necessary to insist upon the generally acknowledged fact that restraint is indispensable for youth, and that the right tone of their manhood depends on the promptness and judiciousness of its administration. While this is admitted, there is everywhere observable a sad failure on the part of parents in opportunely checking and withholding their children from evil. Even in professedly Christian households, we are often pained to see the neglect of this duty. The child gets ahead of the parent by successful acts of rebellion, and having enjoyed freedom from the rein so long, it spurns any future control. Some parents, from mistaken motives, withhold all restraint, or impose the gentlest; others, regardless of anything like systematic training, are only excited to assert their authority when there has been some flagrant defiance of it, and then do it under an exasperation of feeling or impulse of passion which defeats their object; and still others administer their reproofs as if afraid, and more in the form of coaxing flatteries.

The memorable example of Eli should be a warning. He was God's high priest, and, as we have reason to believe, a good man. His two sons, who were in the priest's office, committed the most flagrant and odious crimes, taking advantage of their priestly position for this purpose, and bringing thereby public discredit on the service of religion. How did the father act in such an emergency? He reproved them, certainly, and in terms sufficiently significant, but evidently not with that firm determination which would show that he was in earnest. He had very probably treated them with undue indulgence in their younger years, and now in their manhood discovered that they were unwilling to submit to admonition. What could the aged father do to repair the sad effect of his former indiscreet leniency? He should have remembered, at least, his public and responsible station as the official representative of the religion of the nation; he should have considered his accountability to God, against whom the gross offense was committed in the person of his sons; and however, in a domestic point of view, it would have been heart-rending to him, he should have divested these sons of Belial of their priestly robes, and positively interdicted them from ministering at the altar. This would have been some atonement to the offended feelings of the nation; this would have been a high testimony to the purity of religion; and while it would have been exonerating himself from all participation in the crimes committed, it would have arrested the fearful judgments which befell his house, "because his sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not."

He contented himself, however, with saying, "Nay, my sons; for it is no good report that I hear; you make the Lord's people to transgress." The next we hear is the report of the violent death of these sons in one day, and the capture of the Lord's ark which had been entrusted to their polluted hands; and then the aged father, overwhelmed by these fearful calamities, falling from his seat and dying on the spot! Terrible results these of parental unfaithfulness; and yet we see parallels around us. We see whole households desolated by the vices of children; fortunes squandered, parental hearts broken, and miseries entailed without number, and all traceable to this, that the first errors of the children were not restrained with a firm and determined will on the part of those entrusted with their training.—Presbyterian.