Deuteronomy 5:16 Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you; that your days may be prolonged… Those who consider the circumstances of the case, and the large share which symmetry always played in the mind of the Jews, will readily believe that on those two tables which lay enshrined in the Ark, the Ten Words were carved in their briefest form, each occupying a line, and that there were five on the first and five on the second table. It may be objected that then this Fifth Commandment, the law of reverence to parents, which is a duty to man, will stand with the first four commandments, which are duties to God. But it is the special dignity of this commandment that it is a direct part of our duty to God. Our parents are not merely our neighbours; they stand to us in a special and in a Divine relation. During our early years they stand to us in the place of God. "Honour thy father and thy mother." We are hidden to honour because love is instinctive and spontaneous. If honour towards our parents is love combined with reverence, the love must be honour touched with emotion. The word "honour includes love. There can be no true honour without love. Of course a reciprocal duty is implied. The obliteration of this instinct on either side is one of the worst signs, on the one hand, of savage dishumanisation, on the other of civilised degeneracy. Filial affection, however, though instinctive, may depend on education. The Jews, from whose wisdom we may learn so much, insisted upon it with intense earnestness. It lay at the basis of the first sweet patriarchal life. The modern canaille of the world care nothing for their parents, but only for themselves; but the deepest feelings of the best men have been always mingled with their love to their parents. The sacredness, or shipwreck, of this love has furnished to literature some of its most impassioned themes. Nor is it otherwise in history. Many of the most pathetic scenes in the records of human life turn on parental and filial love. Think of Aaron's stricken silence when his two eldest-born, Nadab and Abihu, died by the fire of God, and Aaron held his peace. Think of Jacob's wail over his lost Joseph. Think of the hero David's outburst of weeping over Absalom. Think of the noble Pericles placing the wreath on the brow of his dead boy, turning aside to hide the tears, the strong heart at last broken, which amid all the calamities of war and pestilence and the murmurs of the people had continued unsubdued. Think of Titus, so moved by the false accusation of intriguing against his father that he hurried back from Jerusalem with headlong speed and burst into Vespasian's presence with tears, Veni, pater; Veni, pater — I have come, my father; I have come." Think of our proud Norman King Henry I: "Before him passed the young and fair, In pleasure's reckless train; The seas dashed o'er his son's bright hair; He never smiled again." Or of Henry II, when among the signatures of his other rebellious children he saw the name of his youngest and best-loved John. Or the great Frederick Barbarossa crying out bitterly on his son's death, "I am not the first who have suffered from disobedient sons, and yet have wept over their graves." Think of the wretched Henry IV of Germany, treacherously arrested by his own son, falling on his knees before him with the cry, "Oh, do not sully thy honour and thy name; no law of God obliges a son to be the instrument of Divine vengeance against a father!" Again, how often has the thought of a mother been present even at the closing moments of life! When the young and gallant boy, Prince Conradin of Hohenstauffen, last of his race, was dragged to the scaffold at the age of sixteen, undaunted to the last he flung the gage of defiance among the multitude, but as he bowed his fair young face over the block he murmured, "Oh, my mother, how deep will be thy sorrow at the news of this day!" And when Sir John Moore lay dying on that disastrous field of Corunna, the name of his mother was the last upon his lips. The truest men have never blushed to give public proof of this filial devotion. No record of the late James Garfield, the murdered President of the United States, won him warmer sympathy than the manly kiss which he gave to his aged mother before the assembled multitudes on the day of his supremest elevation. I can but glance at a difficulty. "Are we to honour those who are dishonourable? Are we to reverence those to whom no reverence is due?" I answer that we must not be like those Jews whom Christ so bitterly rebuked because they tried to shift off one duty by another. Our parents have loved us, their children, in spite of all our intractableness, our waywardness, our indifference. Are the children to show no forbearance to the sins of their parents? Alas, for earth if unworthiness is to sever the bonds of love and of duty! The bonds of nature which unite us to every member of our families are indissoluble bonds. I knew a mother once whose boy was convicted of stealing at school. She lived in the outskirts of a little town, and so deeply did her boy's shame weigh on her spirits that for years afterwards it was only in the deep twilight that she would ever enter the streets of the town by which she lived. St. Paul calls this Fifth Commandment "the first commandment with promise," and at that promise I must now glance. But perhaps you will be troubled with a doubt whether this promise holds true. Good sons, alas! die, cut off in the flower of their youth, who dearly loved their parents and truly honoured them. Yes, but that death may be in God's sight the reward — longer days in the better land. Oh, is it not true that, as a rule, the promise literally holds good, both to nations and individuals? Individually, even the boy who loves and honours his parents will, as a rule, be more prosperous, be longer lived, be more happy, be more blessed, than the bad son. It is so in the nature of things. A distinguished officer in the army told me that, in the experience of a long life, he had found that, and exactly the same had been said to him by an old admiral, who said of all the midshipmen who had passed under his rule he had never known one fail to turn out well who wrote weekly his loving letter to his home. "Show me a boy who loves his mother," says a recent writer, "and I will show you one who will make a faithful friend, a noble lover, and a tender husband: show me a boy to whom home life has no attraction, because it is too slow, and I will show you, never to trust that man with anything which constitutes the happiness of others." But the main intention of the promise was not individual, it was national; and all history has contributed its national fulfilment. "The cornerstone of the national life," it has been said, "is the hearthstone." Why was one Spartan worth ten other Greeks upon a battlefield? It was because Spartan boys were trained in parental obedience. Nor was it otherwise with Rome in her noblest days. The irresistible grandeur which arrayed her warriors to conquer was founded on the paternal authority. Coriolanus spared Rome only at the tears of his mother, Volumnia; and when Virgil wrote the great epic of the Republic he could find no greater name for his hero than Pater — father, and Filius — faithful. When Greece produced perfumed dandies like Alcibiades, and when Rome produced a jewelled debauchee like Otho, God began to wipe out their glory as when one wipeth a dish and turneth it upside down. And when Napoleon, who knew something of the glory of nations, was asked what, was the chief want of the French nation, he replied in the one word, "Mothers." "Oh, thou who hast yet a mother," said Richter, "thank God for it." Do not burden long years by remorse for unthankfulness to parents, for though you may show tenderness to the living, it is too late for kindness to the dead. When King James IV, of Scotland, was a boy he stood against his father in arms. He made his manhood one long penance for that sin. In remembrance of it he wore under his robe an iron belt, and to that iron belt every year he added a new link an ounce in weight that the penance might be heavier every year. And we have all one father to whom we are unthankful and rebellious children; God's prodigals, to whom His only begotten Son on earth gave such loving obedience. God's prodigals are we all. By seeking the aid of His Holy Spirit to obey His commandments, we become more and more His true children, "accepted in the Beloved." (Dean Farrar.) Parallel Verses KJV: Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. |
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