The Child at Home | Page 6

then, how great are your responsibilities as a child. You have thought, perhaps,
that you have no power over your parents, and that you are not accountable for the
sorrow which your conduct may cause them. Think you that God will hold this child
guiltless for all the sorrow he caused his father and his mother? And think you God will
hold any child guiltless, who shall, by his misconduct, make his parents unhappy? No.
You must answer to God for every thing you do, which gives your parents pain. And
there is no sin greater in the sight of God than that of an ungrateful child, I have shown
you, in the two illustrations which you have just read, how much the happiness of your
parents depends upon your conduct. Every day you are promoting their joy or their
sorrow. And every act of disobedience, or of ingratitude, however trifling it may appear
to you, is, in the eyes of your Maker, a sin which cannot pass unnoticed. Do you ask,
Why does God consider the ingratitude of children as a sin of peculiar aggravation? I
reply, Because you are under peculiar obligation to love and obey your parents. They
have loved you when you could not love them. They have taken care of you when you
could not reward them. They have passed sleepless nights in listening to your cries, and
weary days in watching over you, when you could neither express thanks nor feel grateful.
And after they have done all this, is it a small sin for you to disobey them and make them
unhappy?
And indeed you can do nothing to make yourself so unhappy as to indulge in
disobedience, and to cherish a spirit of ingratitude. You never see such a child happy.
Look at him at home, and, instead of being light-hearted and cheerful, he is sullen and
morose. He sits down by the fireside in a winter evening, but the evening fireside affords
no joy to him. He knows that his parents are grieved at his conduct. He loves nobody, and
feels that nobody loves him. There he sits silent and sad, making himself miserable by his
own misconduct. The disobedient boy or girl is always unhappy. You know how different
the dispositions of children are. Some are always pleasant and obliging, and you love
their company. They seem happy when they are with you, and they make you happy.
Now you will almost always find, that such children are obedient to their parents. They
are happy at home, as well as abroad. God has in almost every case connected enjoyment
with duty, and sorrow with sin. But in no case is this connection more intimate, than in
the duty which children owe their parents. And to every child who reads this book, I
would say, If you wish to be happy, you must be good. Do remember this. Let no

temptation induce you for a moment to disobey. The more ardently you love your parents,
the more ardently will they love you. But if you are ungrateful and disobedient, childhood
will pass away in sorrow; all the virtuous will dislike you, and you will have no friends
worth possessing. When you arrive at mature age, and enter upon the active duty of life,
you will have acquired those feelings which will deprive you of the affection of your
fellow beings, and you will probably go through the world unbeloved and unrespected.
Can you be willing so to live?
The following account, written by one who, many years after her mother's death, visited
her grave, forcibly describes the feelings which the remembrance of the most trifling act
of ingratitude will, under such circumstances, awaken.
"It was thirteen years since my mother's death, when, after a long absence from my native
village, I stood beside the sacred mound, beneath which I had seen her buried. Since that
mournful period, a great change had come over me. My childish years had passed away,
and with them my youthful character. The world was altered too; and as I stood at my
mother's grave, I could hardly realize, that I was the same thoughtless, happy creature,
whose cheeks she so often kissed in an excess of tenderness. But the varied events of
thirteen years had not effaced the remembrance of that mother's smile. It seemed as if I
had seen her but yesterday--as the blessed sound of her well- remembered voice was in
my ear. The gay dreams of my infancy and childhood were brought back so distinctly to
my mind, that, had it not been for one bitter recollection, the tears I shed would have been
gentle and refreshing. The circumstance may seem a trifling one, but the thought of it
now pains my heart, and