Didactic fiction; Family life -- Fiction; Marriage -- Fiction
A sensible daughter, who loves her parents, will hardly forget to
whom she is indebted for all the superior advantages she enjoys. She
will also readily perceive that the experience which her parents
have acquired, and their natural strength of mind, give them a real
and great superiority over her, and make their judgment, in all
matters of life, far more to be depended upon than hers could
possibly be. It may be that her mother has never learned to play
upon the piano, has never been to a dancing-school, has never had
any thing beyond the merest rudiments of an education; but she has
good sense, prudence, industry, economy; understands and practises
all the virtues of domestic life; has a clear, discriminating
judgment; has been her husband's faithful friend and adviser for
some twenty or thirty years; and has safely guarded and guided her
children up to mature years. These evidences of a mother's title to
her respect and fullest confidence cannot long be absent from a
daughter's mind, and will prevent her acting in direct opposition to
her judgment.
Thoughtless indeed must be that child who can permit an emotion of
disrespect toward her parents to dwell in her bosom for more than a
single moment!
Respect and love toward parents are absolutely necessary to the
proper formation of the character upon that true basis which will
bring into just order and subordination all the powers of the mind.
Without this order and subordination there can be no true happiness.
A child loves and respects his parents, because from them he derived
his being, and from them receives every blessing and comfort. To
them, and to them alone, does his mind turn as the authors of all
the good gifts he possessed. As a mere child, it is right for him
thus to regard his parents as the authors of his being and the
originators of all his blessings. But as reason gains strength, and
he sees more deeply into the nature and causes of things, which only
takes place as the child approaches the years of maturity, it is
then seen that the parents were only the agents through which life,
and all the blessings accompanying it, came from God, the great
Father of all. If the parents have been loved with a truly filial
love, then the mind has been suitably opened and prepared for love
toward God, and an obedience to his divine laws, without which there
can be no true happiness. When this new and higher truth takes
possession of the child's mind, it in no way diminishes his respect
for his earthly parents, but increases it. He no longer obeys them
because they command obedience, but he regards the truth of their
precepts, and in that truth hears the voice of God speaking to him.
More than ever is he now careful to listen to their wise counsels,
because he perceives in them the authority of reason, which is the
authority of God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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