1. From children, obedience to their parents in all things is required, and therefore in many things contrary to their inclination and opinions. Childhood means dependence and ignorance. It is only under the shelter of parental oversight that the incipient faculties and plastic nature of the child can be formed to the strength of judgment and firmness of character which will enable him to meet the tasks and the perils of adult life. And for this discipline to be effective, the submission of the child must be absolute. Only when a parental command plainly contradicts the Law of God and violates the child's conscience, can any kind of disobedience be justified. In that case, obedience cannot be "well pleasing in the Lord." But even the worst of parents will rarely be found to have so little respect for the conscience of childhood as to enforce such an injunction. The requirement addressed to the child presumes that the parent exacts obedience. This is his inalienable prerogative. Instant, unmurmuring obedience should be made the habit of the child's life, and as a law of nature to it. To have this understood from the first is the simplest and easiest course. If the child be allowed, through passion or persistence, once successfully to rebel, a mischief is done not easily to be repaired. His own self mastery, and the sense of law and of duty which are to attend him through the whole of life, largely rest on this basis of ingrained obedience. For this purpose, children should be in their earliest years as much as possible under the direct influence of their parents' presence and authority. The parental office cannot be discharged by proxy. And there must be unity of parental administration, as well as harmony between precept and practice, if a true and reverent obedience is to be possible. In no State was the authority of the father (patria potestas) so strict and absolute as in ancient Rome. And there can be little doubt that this stern maintenance of family discipline largely helped to form the Roman character with its extraordinary vigour and tenacity, and to preserve that rigid, firmly knit order and devoted loyalty which were the secret of Rome's invincible strength.
2. On the other hand, the father must beware lest his authority should wear a needless aspect of severity. His righteous desire to "command his children and his household after him" (Genesis 18:19), and his anxious sense of responsibility, may occasion this, if not relieved by more genial influences. The innocent liveliness and the many unintended offences of childhood must not provoke him to ill temper. He must learn by patience and tenderness to win the child's affection and open-hearted trust, without impairing its submissive reverence. A mechanical, unsympathetic strictness, or an angry and unequal discipline, will fatally alienate the sensitive heart of the child, which in that case either sinks down into a dull, spiritless apathy, or prepares for a passionate revolt when the hour of its strength shall come. Too often those most anxious to commend religion to their children have made it odious by presenting it in forms unintelligible to the young mind, and associating it with tasks unsuited to its powers, and burdens that it found "grievous to be borne." As the child should find in the child Jesus its pattern and model (Luke 2:40-52), so the parent should seek to be to his children an image of "our Father in heaven."
III. MASTER AND SERVANT. (Verse 22—Colossians 4:1.) This third relationship is one which we may be sure will continue to exist, however varied the forms it may take, so long as the world stands. And what the apostle says here is of universal application, though slavery has happily given place to free service. Even when our lower classes shall have become so far raised in intelligence and independence that cooperation in industrial labour will become the rule instead of the exception, still there must be some to command, others to obey. Indeed, the more extended and complicated the operations of trade and manufacture become, the more thoroughly labour needs to be organized and authority graduated, and the more entirely success depends on management and discipline and on a right adjustment of the relations of master and servant.
1. From servants Christianity demands, what conscience demands, an honest obedience, that serves as well behind the master's back as to his face (verse 22). As a mere matter of commercial advantage, the uniform presence of this quality would be an incalculable economy and enrichment of the community. And religion secures this, directly and of necessity. The man who does his work in God's sight—"as ever in his great Taskmaster's eye"—and as for the judgment day, cannot scamp any part of it. He is serving, not a man like himself, but a heavenly Lord, whose searching eye is always upon him, who understands and can judge every man's work (verse 24; 1 Peter 1:17), and who has promised infinite rewards for faithfulness in the "few things" of our earthly probation (Matthew 25:21, Matthew 25:23). These convictions form the best guarantee, with the mass of men the only sufficient and effectual guarantee, for good work and thorough workmanship in every department of life.
"A servant with this clause,
Makes drudgery divine;
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws,
Makes that and the action fine."
(George Herbert.)
2. And the Christian master, whether at the head of a farm or a factory, of a commercial house or a private family, will remember that he has his duties along with his rights as a master. He is dealing with human beings, not with machines. The laws of political economy are not to be his only guide. "The nexus of cash payments" can never be the sole link that associates any two men together. Woe be to him if he says, with Cain, "Am I my brother's keeper?" (Genesis 4:9). "Just dealing and fairness" (Colossians 4:1) must rule in the relations of master and man, if they are to be on a moral and righteous footing. He will not take a hard advantage of his servant's necessity; or allow, if he can help it, his dealings with him to degenerate into a mere struggle between capital and labour for every inch of vantage. The cruel greed that grasps at immediate gain at whatever cost of toil and poverty to others, and that "grinds the faces of the poor" (Isaiah 3:15), may enrich the individual, but in the long run is fatal to the class or the trade which practises it. And the rich oppressor will have to appear at a tribunal where "there is no respect of persons" (verse 25). Political economy itself teaches that ill-paid labour is the most expensive and wasteful. The man who has want and fear gnawing at his heart cannot be a good workman, even if, in spite of extreme temptation, he be an honest one. Injustice and over reaching on the part of the rich and governing classes, political and social institutions that favour "the fat and the strong" at the expense of the weak and poor (Ezekiel 34:16-27), are sure of God's heavy judgment. They generate in the hatred excited in those subject to them an explosive force which, with a suitable train of circumstances, will burst forth, as in the French Revolution, in some volcanic upheaval that the strongest social fabric will be unable to resist. Christ's golden rule of equity (Luke 6:31) is the only safe, as it is the only righteous, basis for the dealings of man with man, of class with class, or of nation with nation in the world's great polity.
HOMILIES BY T. CROSKERY.