FATHER AND SONS | AdventAI

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, June 24, 1880

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 56, No. 1

FATHER AND SONS.

“If you wish to train up your child in the way he should go, just skirmish ahead on that line yourself,” said wise Josh Billings, and if he was not addressing fathers or thinking of boys, he ought to have been. The writer was present once at a social religious meeting, when a very large man with a very large nose, and no doubt a very large heart, also, arose and used his space of time to tell what a good mother he had, and how her influence had guided him, and finished with an exhortation to all mothers to make good men of their boys.

The divines followed in a similar strain, and ended with the same exhortation, and all the brethren settled themselves more comfortably into their seats, and all the sisters bowed their heads with meek faces, as if sweetly taking up the heavy burden thus flatteringly laid upon their frail shoulders. No, not all; for one sat bolt upright, too indignant for speech, to see those great broad-shouldered men thus calmly shirking the greatest responsibility God ever called them to bear.

Because some mothers, blessed with mighty faith and powerful will, have borne their sons triumphantly over the quicksands of youthful temptations, and planted their feet firmly on the pleasant upland of righteous manhood, shall it be demanded of every frail woman to whom God has given a son, that she do the same? No; with equal justice it might be demanded of every woman that she write books like Mrs. Stowe, entrance large audiences like Miss Willard and Anna Dickinson, or be a brilliant newspaper correspondent like Mary Clemmer.

What weight has a mother's word when weighed against a father's example? The mother says, “My son, do not smoke; it is bad for your health, bad for the purse, bad for the morals, and the pleasure it affords is trifling compared to the evil it works.”

“What does mother know about smoking?” reasons the boy; “she never smokes; father smokes, and I am going to, too.”

“Don't spend your evenings about the bar-room and village store,” pleads the troubled mother; “the conversation there is not such as I wish you to listen to.”

“What does mother know about bar-room talk?” questions the boy; “she is at home rocking the baby, or darning stockings; father is there, and I'm going.”

One out-spoken, ten-year-old boy said, “I like my mother well enough; but I think father is a great deal smarter;” and he expressed the feeling of the average boy when he enters his teens. Now, which parent is likely to have most influence in forming the character of that son?

“I'll take what father takes,” said the boy at the hotel dinner-table; and boys are taking what their fathers take all the world over.

A father and son were clambering up the rough, steep sides of a mountain, when the father paused to decide which of many paths to take; the boy said, “Be sure to choose a good path, father, for I am coming right behind you.”

Fathers, upon the hillside of life, be sure you choose a “good path,” for your sons are just behind, and almost certain to follow in your footsteps. If the bewitching voice of pleasure entices you into by-paths of self-indulgence and sin, remember that where you trip he will stumble, and the same foul mire that soils your raiment, will engulf him. But if you choose to walk the pleasant highways of temperance, virtue, and Christian manliness, he will keep even step with you, and at last dwell in peace at your side.

“The just man walketh in his integrity; his children are blessed after him.”