In Thee Both the Fatherless and the Motherless Findeth Mercy

HOSEA’S house was, out of all sight, the unhappiest house in the whole of un¬ happy Israel. The unhappiness of Hosea’s house was of such an awful kind that it cannot be openly and unreservedly told. So much so that not a few of the best commentators on Hosea hold that the prophet’s unhappiness at home was too terrible to be literally true. When Hosea says that in God the fatherless findeth mercy he does not mean that he is literally and actually dead himself; or that Gomer, the mother of his children, is literally and actually dead. No. Gomer was not actually dead, unless it was in trespasses and sins. Nor was Hosea himself actually dead unless it was that he was twice dead in his household life of ship¬ wreck and heartbreak past all parallel and past all belief. The mothers of Italy were wont to overawe their disobedient children by pointing out the author of The Inferno as he passed along their streets in his exile. ‘ Look at that awful man,’ they would say to their children. ‘That awful man by his disobedience has made his bed in hell and he is only allowed up for a short walk in our town this morning.’ And the mothers in Israel would say much the same thing to their children as Hosea staggered past their doors on his way to his pulpit on a Sabbath morning. No; there can be no doubt of it. Our text to-night was often Hosea’s text in his so remorseful but so believing preaching, and it was his unceasing plea in his intercessory prayers as he bore up before God his own fatherless and motherless children. It was with poor little ill-fated Jezreel and it was with poor little ill-fated Lo-Ammi and Lo-Ruhamah in his mind continually that Hosea prophesied concerning them and thro-ugh them concerning the whole house of Israel, and said: ‘ Take away all our iniquity, and receive both us and our children graciously, for in Thee the father¬ less findeth mercy.’ At the same time, even when Hosea was in his uttermost misery he commanded himself and restrained himself and only said that his three children were fatherless. Amid all his unspeakable misery Hosea was too much of a Hebrew gentleman to breathe a single syllable to the blame of any one but himself. By the time of the text at any rate he did not even suggest in the remotest way that his wife was not the most perfect wife and mother in all Israel. Or that her three children were not the most parent-honouring children in all the land. By this time Hosea’s heart was too much broken about himself to blame anybody but himself. To himself Hosea was the worst father in all the house of Israel. But, all the more, because of that this was his one prayer day and night before God: ‘ In Thee my fatherless children findeth mercy.’

Now you will all understand and accept that Hosea’s book was not written either to expose Gomer or to advertise to all time what a bad father Hosea felt himself to be. Our Heavenly Father has had all this written in order that we who possess this terrible book may all examine ourselves in the light of it: both fathers and mothers and children, lest we come into the same condemnation and reap the same wages out of our own household neglects and transgressions as Hosea and Gomer reaped out of theirs.

Now with Hosea’s autobiographic book open before us, and Brea’s, and with the book of the family life of our own day also open before us — what is the reason? what are some of the reasons? why so many of our children are fatherless and motherless like the children of Hosea and Gomer and Fraser of Brea? Well, for one thing, this and the like of this will sometimes be seen to happen. In His sovereignty and in His deep providence with a certain man Almighty God will sometimes send to that man a child to bring up who very soon quite outgrows both his father’s scope and his father’s power. You will sometimes see a son who is no¬ thing short of an intellectual and a spiritual genius born into the house of the most unintellectual, the most unspiritual, and the most commonplace of men. Into the house of a man, say, with nothing but hard prejudices for principles, and with nothing but the most dried-up and hide-bound superstitions, instead of a planted and a growing life of personal and family religion. Now in a case like that, unless the most extraordinary grace is given to both that father and that son there will be plenty of occasion in that house for a family tragedy scarcely second to the tragedy of Hosea’s house in Israel.

Then again, short of such an extreme case as that, changed times and seasons will sometimes come to both the intellectual and the religious life of a certain household. New truths will be discovered in some of the spheres of human life, and new doctrines will begin to be taught to the sons of that household who are at school and college. New attitudes of mind will be taken up and new modes of thought will command the minds of all our reading and thinking men. And the sons of that house who are living and working among all these new conditions will sometimes demand, and will sometimes ultimately assert, a freedom of mind, and even an absolute independence of action, that will look like the most ungrateful revolt against all the oldest doctrines and all the best beliefs of their heart-broken fathers. It is not one father in a hundred who will humble himself to become frankly hospitable to all his son’s new teachers and new books. And out of that hopeless incompatibility of mind and heart and character there is produced many a fatherless son; many an intellectual, and spiritual, and family orphan.

Then, again, there are some husbands and fathers among us who have such a bad conscience concerning their whole family life that they go about guilty and gloomy and joyless at home till all that gradually creates a very bad atmosphere for all concerned. They began with such splendid intentions. They well remember how they said that if God would come to them and would give them that sweet saint of His to be their wife, and would entrust them with dear little children, then there would not be a wife in broad Scotland so honoured and so loved to the end, nor children so watched over and so well brought up in their schools, in their companions, in their books, in their sports, and in their Sabbaths especially, around their father’s chair. But that sweet dream was dreamed out long long ago. It was a very sweet and it was a very noble dream as long as it lasted, but it did not last very long. ‘Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle, and behold, a man was brought unto me, and it was said to me. Keep this man. And if by any means he is missing, then shall thy life be for his life. And as thy servant was busy here and there, the man was gone.’

That is to say, true Sabbath-keeping especially, and true family worship were gone. There are few heads of houses in Scotland, I suppose, who did not, at one time, intend well toward those two so sweet and so blessed Scottish ordinances. But I have my fears about those ordinances in many of our families at the present day. I have my not groundless fears that there are but few families among us where those family blessings are observed as it was at one time sworn and fully intended that they would be observed. And then, when they go, so much else goes with them. How much the Day alone will declare. But not to go so far away as that Day, you will sometimes overhear husbands and fathers and masters confessing and consulting in a guilty whisper about those two golden ordinances, and how they were observed in their old father’s happy house when they were young. And that, not scandalous truants and transgressors. But you will find some of the best and most successful of men in the most remorseful temper about those very same things. Thomas Halyburton of St. Andrews, that great spiritual genius, blamed himself bitterly on his deathbed, not because he had wholly neglected family worship, but because he had not always acted wisely in it. ‘ I was too long for my family,’ he laments. ‘ I was too wearisome to them in that exercise,’ he said when he looked back on his family worship in the light of his last days on earth. And James Guthrie, of Stirling, came to see that he had quite spoiled his family altar for his family by his bad habit of always offering up his own broken heart upon it. And Thomas Shepard’s was a strange and an unusual remorse. But as he looked back and thought of his children it was no less a real remorse that he had been far too spiritual in his family prayers with so many new beginners kneeling all around him. While Thomas Boston was far too sensitive to his immediate surroundings, and he too much showed that. Now, we may recover many things by the special grace of God to us, and by our own repentance and reformation. But if we once lose hold of a sanctified Sabbath, in the matter of our companions, and our conversation, and our books, and if we once lose hold of, or in any way spoil our family worship, I much question if we will ever recover these priceless blessings again.

I happened the other day to overhear three fathers conversing together in low tones about the conversion of their children. One of the three took the old-fashioned evangelical view according to which he had been early converted himself. The second was more inclined to take the more modern and easy-going view and to express that view in more modern language. While the third, from a bad conscience, was mostly silent. Now what is your view and what is your practice in this matter of the conversion of your children? Are you quite content about your children? On what are you resting with such an easy mind as you think about their future and yours? Fathers and mothers, to be plain and apostolic with you, are your children in Christ? Ay or no? You know surely what that means? Now, if they are not clearly in Christ, why are they not? It cannot be that He is unable to undertake for you and for them. It cannot be that He is unwilling toward your children any more than He is unwilling toward your more happy neighbours next door. You should look to it before it is too late. Your children will soon be away for ever from your influence. You may already have postponed that supreme matter far too long. Have you pressed Him to do it for you and for your child? Or, when asking Him you may not have taken His view of the matter, but some other view, and more popular, of the present day. Or perhaps you did not show earnestness enough about it. Or perhaps your life at home and before your child did not commend an evangelical conversion to him. Perhaps your walk and conversation quite frustrated your prayers both with God and with your child. It is quite possible that it may be too late by this time, unless by a special stretch of God’s saving grace. You should see to it. And you should see to it at once. It is too terrible to think that you should ever live to say over your child that it had been better both for you and for him that he had never been born. But you remember and you must not forget Who said that terrible sentence first. Yes, you should see Him about this great matter, and at once. Perhaps the old-fashioned evangelical view is the only view that He will have at your hands. Consult Him about it, and that at once. Give Him no rest about it, as He says Himself. And take no rest yourself, as your own conscience says, till it is settled. Seek conversion first — it is His advice — for your children, and He has bound Himself to see to it that all else is added to that. You have His own word for that.

Now if there had been time I would have liked to remind you what poor little Timothy’s mother and grandmother did in apostolic times when they found out that their little manchild was absolutely fatherless in the matter of Holy Scripture and of family worship. But all godly grandmothers will have that family history by heart. And how Susannah Wesley did when she was left alone with her large family. How she took Jacky alone with her to her room on Monday night, and Charley on Tuesday night, and so on. I had the mother of Jonathan Edwards’ children also in my mind, and the mother of Thomas Boston’s children — but there is not time. Also, I would have liked to have pled with all young fathers and young mothers to begin early in

the matter of a sanctified Sabbath and a family

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altar and never to give in or give over. Dr. Moody Stuart once said to me that if he had ever had any true success in his ministry it was with young communicants and with young fathers when they came to see him about their first baptism. I wonder how those cases of his have turned out But I will take time to say this. A paradox is not a proper word for the pulpit; but there is a divine paradox in this matter that must be stated here. And it is this: the better a husband and the better a father that any man is the more blame he takes to himself if anything goes wrong in the family. Hosea said that he was to blame for all that had gone wrong in his family but nobody believed that but himself. And, then, both in beginning family life, and in carrying it on, and in winding it up — who is sufficient for all these things? No man is. No mortal man is. But God is. Almighty God is. And in God both the fathers and the mothers of the fatherless, and all the fatherless themselves, in God, all three, if they seek it in time, will always find mercy. Who is a God like unto Thee? Who is a God like unto Thee? Let us sing to His praise Hosea’s family worship psalm as we have it in our thirtieth paraphrase.