Like Father, Like Family

Tv yTANY a sermon has been preached to mothers; many a tract and treatise written on the mother’s influence. But how often are sermons preached to fathers’? Is there any power for good or evil greater than the influence of him who leads the family, who propagates his own character in the persons and the souls of his children, who lives his own life over again in the lives of those whom he has begotten 1

lAhe father, like family. Set this down as a philosophical principle. Occasional exceptions do not undermine the rule: it is an organic one. The father impresses himself upon his children just as undesignedly, but just as surely, as I impress my shadow on the ground when I walk into the sunshine. The father cannot help it, if he would. The father leads, by God’s decree. He makes the home-law; fixes the precedents; creates the home-atmosphere; and the “odor of the house” clings to the garments of the children if they go around the globe. “His father was a Papist,” or “his father was a Protestant,” is the sufficient reason that determines most men’s religious opinions. “He is a chip of the old block,” said some one when he heard the younger Pitt’s first speech. “Nay,” replied Burke, “he is the old block himself”

In nothing is this so true as in moral resemblances. A father’s devoted godliness is often reproduced in his children. But still oftener are his errors and his vices. He commonly sets the habits of the household. Whatever “fires the father kindles, the children gather the wood.” If the father rises late on the Sabbath morning, the boys come down late and ill-humored to the table. If he goes on a Sunday excursion, they must carry the lunch and the fishing-tackle, and share in the guilty sports. If he wishes to read a Sunday paper, then George or Tom must go out to buy it.

In looking over my congregation, I find that, while several pious fathers have unconverted children, there are but few prayerless fathers who have converted sons. The pull of the father downward is too strong for the upward pull of the Sabbath school and the pulpit. If the father talks money constantly, he usually rears a family for Mammon. If he talks pictures and books at his table, he is likely to awaken a thirst for literature or art. If he talks horses and games and prize-fights, he brings up a family of jockeys and sportsmen. If he makes his own fireside attractive in the evening, he will probably succeed in anchoring his children at home. But if he hears the clock strike eleven in the theatre or the club-house, he need not be surprised if his boys hear it strike twelve in the gambling-house or the drinking-saloon. If he leads in irreligion, what but the grace of God can’ keep his imitative household from following him to perdition 1 The history of such a family is commonly written in that sadly frequent description given in the Old Testament: “He walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him.”

I find two very different types of paternal religion. Both are nominally Christian. The one parent prays at his family altar for the conversion of his children. He then labors to fulfil his own prayers. He makes religion prominent in his family: it is as pervasive as the atmosphere. The books that are brought home, the papers selected, the amusements chosen, the society that is sought, the aims in life that are set before those children, all bear in one direction, and that the right one. God is not invoked by that father to convert his offspring to godliness, while he is doing his utmost to pervert them to worldliness, or self-seeking, or frivolity, no more than he would ask God to restore his sick child while he was giving the poor boy huge doses of opium or strychnine.

Yet there is a class of professing Christians who do this very thing. They pray for a child’s conversion, and yet on the very evenings when prayer-meetings are being held they take that son or daughter to the opera or the fashionable rout.. They pray that their households may live for God, and then set them an example of most intense money clutching and mammon-worship. A man sits down with a solemn face to the communion-table, and -then comes home to gossip, to crack jokes, to talk politics, to entertain Sunday visitors at a sumptuous feast, to do any thing and every thing which tends to dissipate the impressions of God’s worship and the sacramental service. Such fathers never follow up a pungent sermon, never watch for opportunities to lead their children Christward, never co-operate with God’s Spirit for the conversion of an impenitent son or daughter. What must an ingenuous child think of such a father’s prayers 1

I entreat parents most solemnly not to stand in the way of their children’s salvation. If you do not help the good work, pray do not hinder it. The selfish or inconsistent life of some fathers is enough to neutralize all the teachings and appeals of both pulpit and Sabbath school. To Paul’s question, “How knowest thou, O wife 1 if thou mayst save thy husband 1 “we would add the startling query,” How knowest thou, O father! but thou mayst destroy thy own children r’

How many a devoted praying wife is struggling to lead her children heavenward, and finds her every effort nullified by the open irreligion of an ungodly father! She toils on alone, prays on alone, works alone, and weeps alone over their perils and the fatal example at their own fireside. God pity and support her! She is striving to bear her children on her own shoulders; but to-day her sad failure is written in the homely adage. Like father, like family.