Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/72

68 not kill the demoniac, they cast out the demon, not by letting in Beelzebub, the chief devil, but by the finger of God. They redress the child's folly and evil birth by their own wisdom and good breeding. Tho day drives out and off the night.

Sometimes you see that worthy parents have a weak and sickly child, feeble in body. No pains are too great for them to take in behalf of the faint and feeble one. What self-denial of the father; what sacrifice on the mother's part! The best of medical skill is procured; the tenderest watching is not spared. No outlay of monoy, time, or sacrifice, is thought too much to save the child's life; to insure a firm constitution and make that life a blessing. The able-bodied children can take care of themselves, but not the weak. So the affection of father and mother centres on this sickly child. By extraordinary attention the feeble becomes strong; the deformed is transformed, and the grown man, strong and active, blesses his mother for health not less than life. Did you ever see a robin attend to her immature and callow child which some heedless or wicked boy had stolen from the nest, wounded, and left on the ground, half living; left to perish? Patiently she brings food and water, gives it kind nursing. Tenderly she broods over it all night upon the ground, sheltering its tortured body from the cold air of night and morning's penetrating dew. She perils herself; never leaves it—not till Life is gone. That is nature; the strong protecting the feeble. Human nature may pause and consider the fowls of the air, whence the Greatest once drew His lessons. Human history, spite of all its tears and blood, is full of beauty and majestic worth. But it shows few things so fair as the mother watching thus over her sickly and deformed child, feeding them with her own life. What if she forewent her native instinct, and the mother said, "My boy is deformed, a cripple—let him die?" Where would be the more hideous deformity?

If his child be dull, slow-witted, what pains will a good father take to instruct him; still more if he is vicious, born with a low organization, with bad propensities—what admonitions will he administer; what teachers will he consult; what expedients will he try; what prayers