The wife will seek the salvation of her
husband; the mother will labor with unwearied diligence for the redemption
of her child.
Thus when home-sympathy is purified and developed by Christian faith and
love, it opens up the most elevated of all home-feeling and solicitude, and
becomes the most effectual safeguard against impending ruin. No family can
be true to its privileges and mission without it. It allures to the cross,
leads all the members in the path of the sympathizing one, and prompts them
to say, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after
thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will
lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest
I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more
also, if aught but death part thee and me."
What would the Christian home be, therefore, without such sympathy?
Powerless, amoral desolation! We read in God's Word, of men losing natural
affection, and of mothers forgetting their sucking children. But these were
worse than brutes. What shall we then say of Christian parents being devoid
of spiritual sympathy,--shedding no tear of anguish over their moral ruin,
nor showing the least concern about their salvation? Such parents do not
rejoice even over the return of their children to God. They are a disgrace
to the Christian name, and bring infamy upon the Christian home.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159