| Home Making |
Chapter 4 |
Page 4 |
In the prophet’s parable he said to the king, “As thy servant was busy here and there he was gone.” May not this be the only plea that some fathers will have to offer when they stand before God without their children; “As I was busy here and there they were gone”? Men are busy in their worldly affairs, busy pressing their plans and ambitions to fulfillment, busy gathering money to lay up a fortune, busy chasing the world’s honors and building up a name, busy in the quest for knowledge; and while they are busy their children grow up, and when they turn to see if they are getting on well they are gone. Then they try most earnestly to get them back again, but their intensest efforts avail not. It is too late then to do that blessed work for them and upon their lives which could so easily have been done in their tender years. Dr. Geikie’s book, entitled Life, opens with these words: “Some things God gives often: some he gives only once. The seasons return again and again, and the flowers change with the months, but youth comes twice to none.” Childhood comes but once with its opportunities. Whatever is done to stamp it with beauty must be done quickly.
Then it matters not how capable, how wise, how devoted the mother may be; the fact that she does her part well does not free the father in any degree from his share of the responsibility. Duties cannot be transferred. No other one’s faithfulness can excuse or atone for my unfaithfulness. Besides, it is a wrong and unmanly thing for a strong, capable man, who claims to be the stronger vessel, to seek to put off on a woman, whom he calls the weaker vessel, duties and responsibilities which clearly belong to him. There is a certain sense in which the mother is the real homemaker. It is in her hands that the tender life is laid for its first impressions. In all its education and culture she come the close to it. Her spirit makes the home atmosphere. Yet from end to end of the Scriptures the law of God makes the father the head of the household, and devolves upon him as such the responsibility for the up building of his house, the training of his children, the care of all the sacred interests of his family.
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