[418 words]
Ours, it is to be feared, is an irreverent age and land. The number of those who neither fear God nor regard man, is greatly multiplied. The whole providentially arranged system of things is reversed; and if there is any one motto which might be inscribed on the surface of society as it now is, or as modern innovators and radicals would have it, it would be this—“The elder shall serve the younger.” Youth no longer hangs upon the counsels of age or experience, or design to ask of the former times; but the less one knows of the past, the surer and wiser guide for the future is he esteemed by many.
An ancient Apostle predicted that in the last days children would be disobedient to the
counsel and dictation of their parents. And has not that season arrived when there is a widespread unwillingness on the part of the son to observe the mandates of the father, or the daughter to be swayed by the gentle instruction and mild reproof of the interested mother? Truly, we are called on to deplore the evil which has and must follow the reckless regard which is evinced by the young to the right and safe path pointed out by the aged or those of riper years. Says a worthy eminent preacher, A.P. Peabody, in his Thanksgiving Sermons, “It seems to me that even within my remembrance there has been in this respect a very great change for the worse. The commandment used to be taught, ‘Honor thy father and mother,’ and ‘Children, obey your parents in the Lord.’ But now, from what I witness frequently of the mutual relation of children and parents, I should almost imagine that it had been written. ‘Honor thy son and thy daughter,’ and ‘Parents, obey your children.’”
If, in these days of irreverence, there is any thing that is treated with universal reverence, it is the wayward impulses and whims of children. And often have I seen parents of large and well informed minds, instead of moulding their children’s characters, submitting themselves to be moulded by them, brow—beaten out of sound opinions, driven from respectable and worthy habits, and drawn where neither good sense nor conscience would go with them. It is children thus trained, or rather thus untrained, who, when they grow up, push their elders aside. It is such that despise laws and speak evil of dignities. Therefore let it be enforced by all—“Children, obey your parents.”
Millennial Harbinger
February 1842