God's Law of Help in the Family

Once upon a time two Apostles — Peter and John — went up to the temple at the hour of prayer, and seeing a lame beggar at the “Beautiful Gate” they healed him on the spot. The poor cripple gets a happy restoration; the two Apostles get the ears of the people; and the people, in turn, get the Gospel message which Christ’s ambassadors proclaim to them. Peter helps the lame beggar; the restored beggar helps Peter in his Gospel work; both help the assembled multitudes. This illustrates God’s appointed law of mutual helpfulness.

One of the designs of our Creator in “setting the solitary in families” is that this law of mutual help might be put into practice. “None of us liveth to himself” might 42 be written on the lintel of every household. At the very outset of our existence, in earliest infancy parental love becomes a real though imperfect miniature of the Divine Providence. The sweet, sacred name ‘’mother” means life, food, medicine, protection and about all things else to the dependent child. In good, patient mother’s arms the little mendicant finds its “Gate Beautiful.” There is its garner of food, there its soft couch of repose, there its store of cordials for hours of pain, there its playground of infant glee, there its harbor of refuge and stronghold of safety. God typifies his own tenderness when he says, “as one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.”

Does the receiver of all these parental bounties yield nothing in return? Getting so much, does the little cherub (for the most homely child is a cherub to the mother’s eye) give nothing in return? Tell me, ye who have held a budding immortality next to your throbbing bosom, has that little nursling nursed no deep and holy 43 thoughts, no sweet ecstasies, and no unutterable emotions in your own heart? Thou lonely and meek-eyed mother, when through the long weary hours of absence from him who was at his daily toil, or out upon the rocking deep, you grew sad and timid and lonesome, tell me, if you can, what a wealth of companionship you found in two little bright eyes and the music of a merry tongue. How brave you grew when you remembered that you were the guardian angel of that God-given treasure! When you began to teach the earliest lessons to your darling, did you not find that your child was educating you as rapidly as you were educating it? Have you learned no lesson of patience as you bent over the crib where pain was moaning at the midnight hour? Have you been taught no self-control when you saw passionate temper rising in that young breast, and no lesson of unselfish love when you were ready to sacrifice time and ease and rest and strength for that darling’s welfare? Ah, there are some mothers who read these lines 44 that have learned what God could nowhere else have taught you, when you swallowed down your tears over that little coffin and hung (as in a strange dream) over that deep, deep grave that seemed to reach down into eternity.

Thank God for children, living or dead, here or in Heaven! A childless home is like a leafless, blossomless tree; the summer winds make scant music through the boughs, and the summer sun ripens no fruit on the branches. A cradle is often a ‘’Gate Beautiful” in life where the soul receives some of the most precious gifts of healing; a gate through which the heart often finds its way up to the throne of God and out into the mysteries of the eternal world. Most profitable instructors may our children be to us in many ways. Believe it, O parents, that when God sets a child in the midst of us he puts a looking-glass there to see ourselves in. Our faults or our vices are often made to glare back terribly from the countenance and the conduct of those who sin our sins over again. Sharp schooling that, 45 where the parent becomes the pupil! On the other hand, when I have seen a truly Christian pair looking with grateful joy on the child of their love as he came home with his prize from school, or as he stood up before the church to confess Jesus Christ in the fresh beauty of a youthful self-consecration, then I saw the mirror of childhood giving back the beautiful reflection of parental piety and grace. The early death of children has often been turned to a glorious gain by the conversion of their parents; no trial is so often made a sanctified trial as that. The hand of a departed darling has led father or mother, or both of them, Christward.

It is not only in the relation of parentage and childhood, but also in every other relation, that the family is a school of mutual help. Each member depends on ever- other. To-day the robust father holds the “wee laddie” on his knee, or leads him up the stairway of that schoolroom in which he is to be taught his alphabet. There is a to-morrow coming by and by when the lisper 46 of the A, B. C will be the master of a home of his cwn, with an infimi, gray-haired parent dozing away his sunset years in an armchair. AMiat a constant benediction is a sunny- faced grandmother in many a house! Her chair is the next most sacred thing to the family altar. God intends that parents and their offsprings shall never issue a “declaration of independence.’’ Each is to help the other when and where help is most needed; and every word and deed of unselfish love comes back in fifty-fold blessings on its author.

A brave girl of my acquaintance is toiling hard not only for self-support but to educate a little brother; and I know a noble eldest son who is carrying all his little orphan brothers and sisters on his sturdy back. The sick members of the household have their useful ministries also. In many a home there is a room whose silent influence is felt all over the dwelling. The other members of the family come in there to inquire after the sick sufferer, to bring fresh flowers or choice fruit, to read aloud to her, 47 or to watch with her through the lonesome night. That room is the ‘’Gate Beautiful” of the house; from it steals forth an influence that makes every one gentler and tenderer and more unselfish.

The home is God’s primal training-school. He puts there feeble babes, and sweet invalid daughters, and crippled boys, and infirm grandparents, for this purpose, among others, that the strong may bear the burdens of the weak, and in bearing them may grow stronger themselves in Bible graces. Invalids and children have their uses to help the well-grown and the vigorous as well as to be helped by them. In every Christian family the scene at the Beautiful Gate of Jerusalem’s temple is repeated over and over again when the wise and the strong take the weaker by the hand and say, ‘’Rise up; I will help you walk.” Underneath the foundations of the commonwealth is the family, and the oldest of all Churches is the ‘’Church of the house.” Of that Church the parent is the pastor.