In your hearts are the birds and the sunshine,
In your thoughts the brooklets flow,
But in mine is the wind of autumn
And the first fall of the snow.
* * * * *
Come to me, O ye children,
And whisper in my ear
What the birds and the winds are singing
In your sunny atmostphere.
Many sermons are preached and books written on the responsibility of parents for their children – for their education and training, for their mental, moral, spiritual, and material outfitting for life. Parents are exhorted to live for their children. They are reminded that they may hurt their children’s lives and mar their future, and by their unfaithfulness foredoom them to failure.
No doubt this phase of responsibility is very important. There is a lame man going about the streets these days, walking on crutches – an old man now, who has always walked on crutches, and whose life has been one of pitiful suffering, and burdensomeness both to himself and others, because more than sixty years ago a mother stumbled with her baby in her arms. There are people, many of them, going through life maimed or hurt in some way, in body, mind, or spirit, through the stumbling or fault of their parents. Society is bearing the burdens continually of the wrong doings, the crimes, the unfaithfulness, the neglect, the false teaching, of past generations. We have a share in making the success of the lives of those who will come after us. We may be the cause of the failure of our children. We may rob them of the goodly inheritance which we ought to transmit to them. We may blot their fair names by acts of shame which we commit, and foredoom them to reproach. We may give them a heritage of dishonour instead of a heritage of honour. Much may be said of the responsibility of parents for the success and the blessing of their children.
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