Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/91

 instrumentalities for preparing the receptacles of life. Still, to them, as such instrumentalities, we owe our natural existence, and therefore to them, next to the Lord, is our greatest debt of gratitude due.

What words, then, are strong enough to express the wickedness of the monster whose hand can deprive a parent of life? The crime of parricide has ever been looked upon in all nations as the most infamous of crimes. Under the Jewish law, even to strike a parent was a crime punishable with death: as we read in Exodus, "He that smiteth his father or his mother, shall surely be put to death;" and truly, there is something abhorrent to the mind, in the idea of a child's raising his hand against the parent that gave him being.

But, in the next place, let children consider the anxious and tender care which their parents have taken of them from their birth. What pain and suffering to the maternal parent was caused by that birth itself! and afterwards during the helpless period of infancy, what days and nights have there been of watching, of nursing, of tending in sickness! Shall the child not consider and be mindful of this, and seek to show his gratitude in every way in his power? and the best way to evince that gratitude is by ready and cheerful obedience to his parents' commands, and compliance with their wishes.

Then, too, during the years of growing up, consider how many hours of anxious thought have your parents spent on your account, in planning to provide for your