PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.

—Matt. 10:21

4168 Runaway Children

The number of children running away from home doubled in 1971–76 to an estimated 2 million. Social workers in some areas point out that incest and other forms of child abuse are cited by 40–60% of teenagers as main reasons for running away. Sixty percent of runaways are females.

4169 Reasons For Prisoners

Six hundred teenagers we found in New England’s prisons gave these startling facts as to why they were there:

Six out of ten had fathers who drank to excess.

Many had mothers in the same condition.

Three out of four were permitted by parents to come and go as they pleased. No parental oversight.

Seven out of ten had homes where no group or family activities were enjoyed.

And for all of them, no family altar, no Sunday School attendance.

—The Sawdust Trail

4170 Nineveh’s Parents Held Responsible

When the archaeologists were digging in the ruins of Nineveh they came upon a library of plaques containing the laws of the realm. One of the laws read in effect that anyone guilty of neglect would be held responsible for the result of his neglect. … If you fail to teach your child to obey, if you fail to teach him to respect the property rights of others, you and not he are responsible for the result of your neglect.

—William Tait

4171 He Killed Pres. McKinley

A young lad walked up to his father many years ago, and said with deep earnestness: “Dad, if you don’t do something to help me, I am going to commit suicide tonight!” The father who had been busy making money, was astonished and stunned to know that anything was wrong with his son.

The boy went on to relate his ventures into sin and the contracting of a social disease. The father immediately sent the boy to an institution for treatment. In a year he came home and was believed to be cured.

This young man married a beautiful girl who soon gave birth to a son. When the baby was born, the mother paid with her life. The young father, already overwhelmed with grief, had to bear the added tragic news that the baby was deficient physically and mentally. In desperation, he picked up a revolver, went outside and took his own life. The story did not end there.

The baby lived. He stood one day in a long line of people in Buffalo, New York, waiting to shake the hand of the President of the United States, William McKinley. As he grasped the hand of the President, he drew a gun and took the president’s life. Not long afterwards, he was brought to justice and was executed.

4172 How Will You Be Remembered

I vividly recall attending a Rotary meeting in Illinois a few years ago with my friend Gypsy Smith. I was sitting next to him at the speaker’s table when suddenly just before he arose to speak, he asked me to mark carefully his closing words. When the moment arrived he lifted high his well-worn Bible. “How many of you men can recall a saintly mother and a godly father who loved this Book, read it, lived it, and seeped it into you?”

Practically the entire group, with moist eyes, raised their hands. Then, quietly Gypsy swung home deftly this shaft, “With all your influence today, how many of you are so living that your children will remember you for your faithfulness to this same Book?” It was a tense moment. I felt the impact more than Gypsy did, for I knew a few there whose children are today’s problem. No hand was raised.

—The Gideon

4173 Age 37 Not 73

The old carts clattered over Paris streets bringing victims of the Reign of Terror by the droves to the crowded dungeons.

One night in July, 1794, an old man roved about the dark prison among his prisoner comrades. He came upon a sleeping figure and there he looked searchingly. Could it be? Yes, it was—his own son! Unknown to the father, the son had been seized and brought to this despicable place.

Overcome, the father sank down beside him, his father-heart mourning over the vile fate that had befallen his son. “What can I do to save him?” he thought.

“We bear the same name,” he mused. “Tomorrow I can answer for him and go to the guillotine in his place.” Praying his son would not awaken, the father watched over him through the night. In the early hours of the morning, three soldiers stamped into the dungeon. The father answered the son’s name and was sacrificed.

—A Tale of Two Cities

4174 Princeton Parents’ Imprints

When Woodrow Wilson was president of Princeton University, he spoke these words to a parents’ group:

“I get many letters from you parents about your children. You want to know why we people up here in Princeton can’t make more out of them and do more for them. Let me tell you the reason we can’t. It may shock you just a little, but I am not trying to be rude. The reason is that they are your sons, reared in your homes, blood of your blood, bone of your bone. They have absorbed the ideals of your homes. You have formed and fashioned them. They are your sons. In those malleable, moldable years of their lives you have forever left your imprint upon them.”

4175 Strange Viewpoints Of Parents

Some parents are funny. They refuse to give a child the keys to the car because they feel he is not mature enough to make the proper decisions imperative to safe driving. Yet, they refuse to direct the religious life of the child because they say he should arrive at his own conclusions.

—F. D. Elliott

4176 Neglecting Our Treasures

There is a very old and very impressive story of a youth greatly beloved who died. In the next life he besought the gods to let him return to this world for just one day, a day that was one of the least notable, one of the most ordinary days of his past life. The gods granted his request; and he appeared again, just as he had been at the age of fifteen, in his old home.

As he entered the living room his mother passed him, engaged upon some household task. Then he stepped out into the yard; and his father, busy with some work and carrying tools in his hand, gave him an indifferent glance and passed on. Then the youth awoke to the fact that we are all dead, that we are only really alive when we are conscious of the treasure we have in our friends and loved ones. A piercing parable to truth!

—C. E. Macartney

4177 Ingersoll’s Life: Chapter One

At Dresden, N. Y., in 1833, there was born into a clergyman’s home a remarkably precocious child. There were two such boys in that home, greatly attached to each other. The mother was kind and indulgent; the father, dictatorial and unsympathetic. He was fully engaged with his ecclesiastical responsibilities and seemed to have neglected his own children. The result was that as they neared manhood they left home. The mother grieved greatly. Search was made, but in vain, till a farmer found a large pile of leaves raked up in his woodland, and in that pile of leaves he found the two youths.

They had hidden there, determined to remain until they starved to death. When the farmer invited them to his home to get something to eat, they would not go until assured that he was not a preacher. This is chapter one of the history of the illustrious sceptics, Robert G. and Ebon C. Ingersoll. The nation has seldom had a more fascinating speaker, nor one with more destructive beliefs, than Robert G. Ingersoll. Two very capable lives were ruined by austerity and neglect.

—C. H. Buchanan

4178 His Entire Family In Prison

An old man died in the Massachusetts State Prison. He was 76 years old, and had spent the last 8 years of his life in a gloomy cell. His wife had also been a prisoner there for years, and so had his daughter, and seven sons.

4179 The Jukes Family

There has been careful search into the history of one criminal family known as the Jukes, and it is conspicuous as a long record of pauperism and profligacy, imbecility and insanity, prostitution and drunkenness.

A total of 1,200 descendants have been traced of this prolific family tree. Some 400 of these were physically self-wrecked, 310 professional paupers, 130 convicted criminals, 60 habitual thieves and pick-pockets, and 7 murderers; while out of the whole 1,200 only 20 ever learned a trade, and of these half of them owed it to prison discipline

—A. T. Pierson

4180 First Influences To Missionaries

Parents are cited as the foremost influence by 158 doctors in their becoming missionaries. “Missionary speaker” ranked second and “personal contact with medical missionaries” third. “God’s call to help others” and “books on missions” tied for fourth place. “Pastor” was sixth and “college teacher” seventh.

—Medicine and Mission

4181 Andrew Murray’s Home

In the family of Andrew Murray, of South Africa, eleven children grew to adult life. Five of the sons became ministers and four of the daughters ministers’ wives. The next generation had a still more striking record in that ten grandsons became ministers and thirteen became missionaries. The secret of this unusual contribution to the Christian ministry was the Christian home.

—John R. Mott

4182 Descendants Of Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was the son of a godly home. His father was a preacher and before him his mother’s father. Trace the history of the offspring of this godly man.

More than 400 of them have been traced, and they include 14 college presidents, and 100 professors, 100 of them have been ministers of the Gospel, missionaries, and theological teachers. More than 100 of them were lawyers and judges. Out of the whole number 60 have been doctors, and as many more, authors of high rank, or editors of journals.

In fact, almost every conspicuous American industry has had as its pro moters one or more of the offspring of the Edward’s stock since the remote ancestor was married in the closing half of the seventeenth century.

4183 A Pastor’s Four Daughters

More than two generations back there lived in London a Wesleyan minister, Rev. George B. Macdonald, and his wife. Not being modern, they welcomed to this world six children. Four of the five daughters lived in such a way as to leave well-remembered names.

Alice Macdonald stood one evening beside Rudyard Lake and there pledged her love and life to Lockwood Kipling, a youth headed for India. When a son was born, the parents thought back to the night and scene of their engagement, and they named him, Rudyard Kipling.

Georgianna Macdonald married an artist who later won fame for his skill, Sir Edward Burne-Jones.

Agnes Macdonald likewise married a youthful painter. His name was Edward Poynter, in due time president of the Royal Academy.

Louisa Macdonald turned from the circle of artists and writers around her to marry a quiet Christian engineer. His name was Baldwin, and their son, Stanley Baldwin, has not only been premier of Great Britain, but has for many years been a lay preacher of the Methodist Church.

Thank God for the abiding influences of a really Christian home!

—Moody Monthly

4184 The Scudder Family

So far as we know, the Scudder family made a missionary record not made by any other family in history. Read this brief statement: “John Scudder and his wife were missionaries to Ceylon and India. Of their ten children who grew to adult life, one died while preparing for the Christian ministry, and nine became foreign missionaries, five being medical missionaries. In 1919, the year marking the centennial of Scudder influence in India, three great-grandchildren sailed for that land. Thirty-one descendants have worked in India, while seven others are missionaries elsewhere.”

—Wesleyan Methodist

4185 To Be Born To Large Families

It is good to remember that Washington was one of ten children, John Wesley of twenty-one children, Shakespeare one of eight, Sir Walter Scott one of eleven, Benjamin Franklin was the tenth, Lyman Beecher, father of Harriet Beecher-Stowe, was one of thirteen and the most puny baby of them all, Tennyson was one of twelve, and Catherine of Siena one of twenty-two.

—Benjamin P. Browne

4186 Father On His Knees

Doctor Charles Parkhurst, distinguished preacher and reformer of New York, in an address in which he dealt with his early religious life related how he had often heard his father pray in the church, at the family altar, and at the family table. But it was only when he heard him praying aloud on his knees in the barn that he knew the reality of prayer and the deep reality of the religious life.

—C. E. Macartney

4187 Dying Father’s Daily Letter

A boy living in New Jersey waits expectantly every year for the mailman to deliver a special letter to him on his birthday. When his father was dying of a terminal disease, he knew the youngster would not have the benefit of his personal guidance and help as he grew into manhood. So he wrote him a letter for each year, and left instructions for them to be sent so that they would arrive annually on the proper date. A final envelope containing words of fatherly direction and advice will also be given to the son on his wedding day.

4188 Pasteur’s Search For Son

Louis Pasteur’s work on viruses in human beings was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War which began in 1870. His only son was in the army. Earlier he had suffered the personal tragedy of losing three daughters to sicknesses. But now his son was gone to the front and weeks had passed without news. Pasteur left his laboratory and set out to find him

The war for France was a total disaster. As Pasteur made his way north he found the roads full of the defeated soldiers and stragglers; “the retreat from Moscow could not have been worse,” he said. When he finally located his son’s unit, he became even more disheartened and desperate; an officer told him that of the original twelve hundred men of the battalion fewer than three hundred had survived.

Louis Untermeyer in Makers of the Modern World told of the next move by the shattered father in search of his son. “Pasteur went on through a nightmare of winding roads choked with dead horses and men suffering from freezing cold and gangrenous wounds. Finally, Pasteur recognized a gaunt soldier, weak with hunger, wrapped to his eyes in a greatcoat, and father and son, too moved for words, embraced in silence.”

See also: Family ; Father ; Juvenile Delinquency ; Mother ; Youth.