affection, respect, and reverence. They are to remember and regard their parents as standing in the most venerable, and the most endearing of all earthly relations to them; as those to whom, under God, they owe every thing they are, and every thing they hope to be. They are to regard them as the persons to whose kindness, care, and government, they have been committed by God himself. They are to consider them as the most affectionate, the most faithful, the most confidential, the most persevering, the most watchful, and the most disinterested of friends.* Again, children, during their early years, are to render their parents a prompt and cheerful obedience; and, when they come to years of discretion, and indeed, at every period of life, to manifest a marked respect for their persons, regard for their advice, and deference to their wishes. Disobedience to parents is ranked by St. Paul with envy, malignity, deceit, and even with murder and destitution of natural affection. It is in the order of nature for parents to command, and for children to obey. No conduct, perhaps, is more severely denounced in Scripture, than disobedience and disrespect to parents. ‡ Moreover, children are to give their parents the solace and comfort of their conversation and company, when, in the order of nature, they are visited with the decay and manifold infirmities. of declining years. Parents have watched over the helplessness, and borne with the infirmities of their children, when in their infancy; and it is but the reciprocal duty of their children, to watch over the decline, and sustain the sinking spirits of their parents, when, as the wisest of men says, "the evil days come, and the years draw nigh in which they can have no pleasure in them."§ Furthermore, children are sacredly bound in conscience to meet, as far as possible, the expectations formed of them by their parents, in after life; by which alone they can make a full return for the care, the expense, and the anxieties which their nurture has cost their parents. Writers of all ages, and of all countries, have taught us, with a united voice, that, in the eye of all man * Dwight's Theology, Vol. IV. p. 87. ↑ Romans i. 29-31. § Ecclesiastes xii. 1. kind, no objects can be more amiable or more delightful than dutiful and virtuous children, who, in after life, fulfil the promise of their early years. This, and this alone, is honoring their parents in the full meaning of that term, and this alone is rendering to parents the true "pretia nascendi" of the classical writers. "He who," says Dr. Brown, "in the fulfilment of every filial duty, has obeyed as a son should obey, and loved as a son should love, may not, indeed, with all his obedience and affection, have been able to return an amount of benefit equal to that which he has received; but, in being thus virtuous, he has at least made the return that is most grateful to a virtuous parent's heart. He has not been unsuccessful in that contest of mutual love, in which, as Seneca truly says, "it is happy to conquer, and happy to be overcome."* SECTION III. OF BROTHERS, SISTERS, AND MORE REMOTE RELATIONS. The more remote domestic relations, whether of consanguinity, (blood,) or affinity, (marriage,) are also worthy of being respected and carefully cherished. In regard to the brothers and sisters of the same household especially, two particulars ought to attract and receive notice and illustration. 1. This relation furnishes the natural occasions of permanent friendships and intimacies, which, in after life, soften the cares, relieve the anxieties, enlarge the sphere of enjoyment, and often contribute to the success and usefulness of life itself. The recollections of the brothers and sisters of the same family, if the circumstances of their birth and nurture have been but ordinarily favorable, must be a bond, in all after life, of the strongest mutual sympathy, interest, and attachment. Their remembrances of one another go back even to the caresses and endearments of the nursery, in which their infant pains, vexations, and peevishness were soothed by the same gentle voice of maternal tenderness and love, in which they were taught to lisp their earliest * Philosophy of the Human Mind, Vol. III. pp. 372, 373. prayers, in which their first discontents and murmurings were hushed, and in which their childish pastimes were, in common, shared and enjoyed. Again, the rude sports, frolics, and adventures of the neighbouring school, in which they have mingled with the keenest zest, with its early trials, competitions, mortifications, and successes, must ever be subjects of the most vivid mutual reminiscences and sympathies. They have had, too, a common interest in every event which has befallen them, and in every person who has excited either their regard or aversion; they have honored with a common honor those to whom, by the commandment, filial honor was due; and, perhaps, have mourned with a common grief over the remains of one or both of those, whose death has been to them the most poignant and lasting of all their sorrows. When one member of the common household has suffered, all the other members have suffered with him. Their paths, moreover, however different in after life, were once the same. Each can witness to what each learned from a father's anxious counsels, and each can respond to the other's remembrance of the ever-varying, never-ceasing expressions of maternal kindness. Each can speak of the other's early associates; each can recall to the memory of the others, whatever, in the fresh spring season of life, made the parental home joyous or sorrowful; the farewell and the return; the plans for the departing, and the intelligence from the distant; the success and congratulation, the disappointment and sympathy; the honored. guest, and the habitual inmate; the health and the sickness; the bereavement and the blessing; the festive entertainment, and the funeral mourning. These common pains, joys, sorrows, endearments, and sympathies of the early years of children of the same family, are, I may well repeat, the natural occasions of intimate and permanent friendships in all after life.* 2. The relation of brothers and sisters of the same family, furnishes much more than the natural occasions, it furnishes the natural foundation, of permanent intimacies and friendships. They sustain a common relation to common parents, to whom each renders one of the most acceptable of all services, by ex * See Dr. Palfrey's Sermons, p. 327. tending his affection to those with whom he is united by the ties of so intimate a relationship. In reviewing the circumstances. which tend to strengthen this tie, Cicero adverts even to the common sepulchre, that is at last to enclose the bodies of the members of the same family.* It is a touching reflection, that the bonds of affection and concord among members of the same family, should derive strength from the common receptacle which is destined at last to contain their mortal remains. It is an affecting image and symbol, by which domestic unanimity and harmony are powerfully taught. Every dissension of man with man excites in us a feeling of painful incongruity. But we feel that there is a peculiar incongruity in the discord of those whose interests are indissolubly the same, whom one roof has protected during life, and whose dust is at length to be mingled in a common tomb.t The duties of brotherhood and sisterhood, then, are the duties of a cordial intimacy and friendship, rendered more sacred by their common relationship to the parents from whom they have sprung, and to whom they owe common duties, as they have been the objects of common hopes, cares, labors, and anxieties. A brother has large resources in a brother's attachment; a sister in a sister's. The mutual relation they bear, and the fact, that, the prosperity of the household being a common cause, the honor or shame, the success or failure, of any member of it concerns the rest, authorize each to interest himself with the other by advice and remonstrance, or for him by interference with yet other persons. Moreover, each knows the other's character and history, his advantages and encouragements, deficiences and dangers. A brother, therefore, can enter fully into a brother's feelings, a sister into a sister's; and thus their mutual kindness may usually be better directed, more seasonable, and in various ways more acceptable, and their sympathy, advice, or aid more profitable, than that of other friends. - A difference, in certain respects, has been remarked between the affection of a brother and sister for one another, and that which subsists between a brother for a brother, and a sister for a * De Officiis, Lib. I. c. 17. + Brown's Philosophy, Vol. III. pp. 374, 375. sister. In truth "the relation of brother and sister to one another, is one of the most beautiful which Providence has instituted; forbidding, from the different pursuits of the two sexes, any thing of that rivalry and interference, which is so often the bane of friendship among other equals, and without the possibility of the sentiment being tainted with any alloy of passion; finding scope for that peculiar tenderness, strength, and trustingness of attachment, which belong to the relation of delicacy, dependence, and retirement on the one part, to energy, self-reliance, and enterprise on the other. Nothing is more delightful than to witness this relation sustained, as God, when he arranged it, designed that it should be. A mutual confidence and esteem, and sense of privilege in each other's regard, evinced and renewed in every daily communication; the sister watching the brother's growing virtues and consequence with a modest pride, while she checks his adventurousness with her well-timed scruples, and finds for him a way to look more cheerfully on his defects,the brother, looking on the sister's graces with a fondness that would be like a parent's, only that it is gayer, more confident, and more given to expression, and studying with ambitious assiduity to requite the gentle guidance to which his impetuous spirit delights to yield itself; the one zealous and constant in all acceptable kindnesses, in her secluded sphere, which God has given her an intuitive sagacity to invent; the other delighting to communicate all means of improvement, which his different opportunities of education have prepared him to offer; the one gratefully conscious of a protection as watchful as it will be prompt and firm; the other of an interested love, which, whether in silence or in words, can speak his praises the most movingly, where he may most desire to have them spoken. Is any thing in the relations appointed by Him, who for wise and kind ends hath set the solitary in families,' more delightful to witness, than such a brotherly and sisterly devotion? If there be, it is what remains to be added to the picture. It is seen, when they who are thus united make the younger members of their band a common care, and turn back to offer the gentle and encouraging hand of a love more discreet than that of mere equals, and more familiar than the parental, to lead their childish, |