THE SON FRETTING AGAINST THE RESTRAINTS OF HIS HOME. "Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?"-GEN. iii. 1. HE son of Adam, which was the son of God, is the climax, in St Luke's Gospel, of the human genealogy of Jesus. Adam was in right of creation-a right as yet clear and unforfeited-a son of God. And this son, like other sons, had a home; a home in the blessed Paradise, watered by its four streams, and enlightened by a supernatural Presence. And that home, like other homes, had its restraints as well as its blessings. There stood just one tree in the very midst of the garden, concerning which it was said to him, Thou shalt not eat of it. In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. And the text tells how there arose we know not whether late or early, for the flight of years is unmarked in the paradisiacal blessedness—a fretting of this son against the restraints, against this one restraint, of his home; how the fallen spirit used this as the engine of his first assault upon man's innocence, making him ponder the fact and question the reasonableness of this single prohibition by which the Almighty Father asserted His sovereignty over the child whom He had formed and the earth which He had created. Thus the third chapter of the Bible furnishes the appropriate text for our present meditation, of which the thesis is The son fretting against the Restraints of his Home. His Home. The word Home is full of restful thoughts and tender associations. The family, of which home is the centre, is God's primary and original ordinance. There was a family before there was a state: there was a family before there was a Church. Out of family life grew naturally all other modes of being-social, civil, political, ecclesiastical. For long ages the family was the If Church; and the birthright of the firstborn included the priesthood and the intercession. the stream of civilization should ever flow back upon itself-if factitious inequalities should be levelled, political institutions overthrown, the Church itself (so far as it rests upon outward supports) demolished and done away-there would still be the source and spring of all, so long as there is the Home: there might man still love, and there might the universal Father still be worshipped. Even as it is, while the complications of society continue as we have them, the deepest of all truths, the most real of all facts, the most stable and solid of all relations, is that of the family, that of the home. It begins earlier, it strikes deeper, it penetrates more thoroughly the whole fabric of the being, than any other influence or any other reality. If a home is corrupt, woe to the life! If a father's character, if a mother's example, cannot be depended upon, where is the new cruse, where is the healing salt, which shall give back its sparkling vitality to that spring of the waters? Even without this worst supposition, who has not noticed the injurious effect upon a young life, upon the character of a man throughout life, to have had, from circumstances, no home-to have been de prived, by death, or by a separation like death, of the enjoyment, of the use, of the possession, of a home? Children, young men, grown men, value your homes! Give God daily thanks for them. Little do you know-for these are blessings seldom appreciated till they are withdrawn-all that is contained for you-all of safety, all of happiness, all of blessing within the four walls of your home. But now this Home, of which such glorious things are spoken, and of which we have not told one thousandth part of its mercies-this home is a society, this home is a polity, is a little state, is a little Church. Then, like other societies, it must have its rules; like other polities, it must have its laws. And rules are restraints. They are, so far as they go, limitations upon the self-will. They are conditions upon which alone the benefits of the community can be enjoyed. Where is the home which has no laws? which imposes no restrictions upon its members-whether natural members, the children-or acquired and temporary, like its hired servants? That home cannot be safe; that home cannot be happy. : There must be restraints upon the free will of each, if there is to be any security, or if there is to be any comfort, for the body, which is the whole. In these days it is the fashion to relax rules. Homes try to dispense with restraints. Each child, from the first beginning of speech, is to express his own opinion each child, from the first power of motion, is to do his own will. Entreaty replaces command, and persuasion supersedes authority. Does happiness result from this sort of freedom? If there was once too much of distance between the parents and the children, may there not easily be too little? Is it to be desired that the father and his son should (as it is sometimes avowed, sometimes even boasted) live together like brothers? This is an inversion of God's order; and God's order can never be changed without mischief and without suffering. In place of authority, plainly asserted and gravely maintained, there will always grow up something else; something more unequal, more uncertain, more trying and irritating therefore to all; hasty snatchings of the reins from time to time, as temper, or caprice, or experience of inconvenience, may dictate: and thus the self Q |