Moral Pieces, in Prose and Verse/Filial Duty
ESSAYS.
FILIAL DUTY.
AS a child, your first duty is obedience to your parents; an obedience comprehending love, submission, and reverence. To this simple point are all your duties now confined; but as you advance in life they will become more difficult and varied. Beware therefore of considering it of small importance how you conduct yourselves towards these parents. You are like a traveller entering upon an unexplored country, and these are your guides. As your judgment is not matured they must also be your counsellors. You are subject to afflictions and they will always be your comforters. Do not imagine that you are capable of directing yourselves, but laying aside all feelings of obstinacy and self conceit, submit yourselves to their instructions, admonitions, and restraints. Be not however satisfied with submission only, for gratitude has more extensive, claims. Reflect upon the nature of your obligations to those who have borne cheerfully with all the cares, anxieties, and labours, arising from your state of infancy and youth. They have protected you when helpless, instructed you when ignorant, loved you amidst all your errors, and will continue to love you even to the close of their existence. Favours like these you have never received from any other created being, therefore next to your father in heaven, you are bound to love and reverence your parents. Be dutiful and affectionate, studying their wishes in all you do. A different course of conduct will afflict those to whom you are bound by every tie of nature and gratitude, and lower you in your own opinion. You would not surely wound those whose kindness to you has been such as you at present cannot realize, or in future ever repay; or fail in the first duty of your life, forcing hope to sigh at the promise of your future years.
Those who have been eminent for piety and true wisdom, have invariably performed the requisitions of this most interesting connection. If you are anxious for their fame, be careful not to neglect this part of their example. Our holy Saviour, when he reasoned with the Jewish doctors, and astonished them by his wisdom, obeyed the commands of his mother and was subject to his parents. It seems almost unnecessary to make use of arguments to enforce a duty which the light of nature teaches, and which even among savage nations is often scrupulously performed. And yet experience is daily proving, that it is not enough to know the path we are to tread, we need constantly to be reminded that we are in danger of deviating from it. Let us listen to the voice of Him who cannot err, proclaiming to us who are children, "Honour thy father and mother." Yet because the human heart is hard, and the ear dull, unless softened and roused by some sentiment of self interest, the same voice adds, with unspeakable condescension, "that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Let this encouragement, held out to us by infinite goodness, stimulate the exertions of those who have begun well, and reform the practice of those still in error. Whenever we are disposed to stifle the warning voice of duty, or turn a deaf ear to that of Him who speaketh from above, let it be remembered that at a future day, this folly will be found to "bite as the serpent, and sting as the adder."