Let this be an
incentive to parental integrity. The day is rapidly approaching when you
must give an account of your stewardship. Oh, what, if in that day you
behold your children "fit for the eternal burning," and remember that that
fitness is but the impress of a parent's hand!
Though it is painful to lose a child here; bitter tears are shed; pungent
agonies are felt; there are heart-burnings kindled over the grave of buried
love. But oh, how much more agonizing it is to bend over the dying bed of
an impenitent, ruined child! And especially if, in that terrible moment, he
turns his eyes, wild with despair and ominous of curses, upon the parents,
and ascribes his ruin to their neglect! Let me ask you, would not this part
of that sad drama add to your cup of bitterness, give a fearful emphasis to
all your sighs, and burnings to your flooding tears? God would also speak
to you, and say as he did to Cain, "the voice of thy" children's "blood
crieth unto me!" "And now thou art cursed from the earth which hath opened
her mouth to receive thy" children's "blood from thy hand."
But the scene would not close at the death-bed of your child; the second
act would open at the bar of God. The maledictions of that ruined one would
there be poured out with increased fury upon you. Parents of my home on
earth! I am lost--lost forever! Soon I shall go where "the worm dieth not,
and the fire is not quenched.
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