The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our CitiesOsgood, Samuel
Religion
The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities
Osgood, Samuel
Christian life; Conduct of life
We have a foundation then to build upon, and filial respect rests upon the
Word of God, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace
of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. If
worthy it will appear first of all as a feeling of affectionate reverence.
It will not be worship as with the Chinese absolutist, nor mere
friendship, as in the code of many a radical. The parent is of the same
nature with the child, and is not to be adored; he is superior in age,
experience and authority, and should have more than the friendly courtesy
of an equal. Superior in degree, though not in kind, he is to be regarded
with affectionate respect and deference. Any subjection more or less than
this comes of wrong, and leads to wrong. To exact utter servitude is
tyranny--to lower reasonable authority into flattery, entreaty, or
apology, is an imbecile indulgence which a child should be as unwilling to
ask as a parent to give.
If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the
quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say
that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we
are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put
down by analysis and experience, than the sentimentalist's notion, that
the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under
reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most
of the spontaneous play of genius--those which rejoice in poetry, music,
and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the
nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every
true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear,
that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left
to itself. No--our principles have vast power over our feelings, and they
who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a
divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and
their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of
the very trellis which overlooks it.
* * * * *
The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will
show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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