Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/93

 selves may do much to secure these due returns of gratitude and attention from their children, by their manner of instructing and bringing them up. If a parent allows his children, in their youth, to treat him with disrespect, and his commands with disobedience, how can he expect them to feel, in their manhood, that regard which he never took pains to inculcate upon and require of them, when they were young? He need not expect such feelings to grow up in his children's minds spontaneously: man's selfish and depraved hereditary nature disposes him to regard none but himself,—not even his parents; and if he is not taught the duty of paying them such regard, it is probable that he will never show it or feel it, and that, in after-life, he will consider the duty of serving and supporting his parents as a burthen. A spoiled child will prove an ungrateful child. But let children be taught, throughout their growing up, to respect their father and mother, to regard their wishes, to obey their commands, to pay them due attention on all occasions,—and let those things be required of them, as filial duties based on Divine Commandments—and then, in their latter years, will parents reap the reward of their careful instructions and just requirements, by finding their children treating them with continued respect, paying them due attention, and showing all their life long that filial regard, which they had been taught to exercise and to feel in the days of their childhood.

Having thus considered the literal sense of this