Conclusion.
Let all who have been fed from these fragments of instruction be satisfied, and, thanking God, acknowledge Christ for their true king.
First Sunday after the Epiphany.
St. Luke ii. 51. “His mother kept all these sayings in her heart.”
Introduction.
In God’s Word we find rules of life for all conditions of men, for all stages of life, for all positions in society. The Gospel for this day gives instruction to several grades of men.
1. Parents are taught:—
α. To train their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. To bring them at an early age to the house of God, to teach them to love its courts, to take pleasure in its services, and to delight in the instructions given there.
β. To seek their children when they wander from the paths of righteousness, to seek them sorrowing, and to find no rest till they see them restored.
2. Children are taught—
α. To follow God rather than man; to obey Him in preference to their earthly parents, remembering that “He who loveth father or mother more than Me, is not worthy of Me.”
β. But in every thing else, except where the will
