daughter. A few lines from a distant child received after weeks and months of silence, are hailed by father and mother with tearful joy, as if they were a heavenly message. Shall children begrudge their parents a few hours of loving converse in return for a life-time of devotion, a few flowers of tenderness for the garden of Eden which their love planted for them?

How is filial love rewarded? To this question the experience of mankind returns answer: "Honor thy father and mother that a blessing may come upon thee, for the blessing of the parents establisheth the houses of children." Though we may not be able fully to explain it, it is yet a fact as well ascertained as any fact in the life of nature or of man that a curse consumes the houses of those who dishonor, while a blessing establishes the houses of those who honor, their parents. Outraged filial piety is turned into a spirit of vengeance. It takes up its abode in the children of those that dishonor their parents. In the fullness of time their offspring will commend to their lips the ingredients of their own poisoned chalice. Popular imagination and the fancy of poets have often seized upon this theme, and in impressive tales brought its solemn lessons into clear view. You are familiar with the German story of a married couple that ill-treated and almost starved the old and decrepit father of the husband. He was not allowed to sit at the family table, but was confined to his corner behind the stove, where he was given the scanty remnants of the meal in a wooden bowl. One day the parents observed their little son, their only child, working away on a block of wood. "Dear son," they asked, "what are you making?" "I am trying to make," the boy replied, "a wooden bowl from which you shall eat behind my stove, when you will be old." At these words their conscience awoke, and smote with might upon the chords of their cruel hearts, their cheeks blanched, and their eyes filled with tears of repentance. From that time they

ness.

treated their poor father with more consideration and kindAn English poet has enshrined the following awful tale in beautiful verse. The scene is a miserable cottage on the shore of the North Sea. The time is a bleak December night. The wind is howling, the rain is falling in torrents. Within the hut are two men, father and son. The latter of gigantic stature, with brutal features and blood-shot eyes, is fiercely cursing his equally repellantlooking sire. "Out with thee, useless carrion! Must I ever go on filling thy ravenous throat with the fruits of my labor, while thy wretched old hands can do nothing save carrying the food to thy mouth? Out with thee, toothless, drivelling drone! Thy ancient rotten bones shall no longer encumber this house of mine!" So saying he begins to drag his father out by the legs. He drags him from the first room to the second, from the second to the hall, from the hall to the threshold. The father says not a word. But when the son is about to pull him across the threshold into the open air, the father cries: "My son, hold on! So far but not further did I fifty years ago drag my father on a night like this." These awful words strike upon the ears of the son like trumpet sounds of the day of Judgment. He takes up his father, and carries him back into the room, and places him in the chair. All through the long winter night they sit speechless in the darkness. The morning gray shows to the son his father stiff and cold in death. Another writer describes the following harrowing scene. A daughter was quarreling with her mother, speaking daggers to her. The mother bore everything meekly. Suddenly as the daughter was giving expression to certain abusive words, the mother uttered a piercing shriek, threw herself upon the ground, and tore at her gray hair. "Woe is me," she cried, "these are the very words, which forty years ago I addressed to my own poor mother!" Retribution walks with halting and slow steps behind him who despises his father and dishonors his mother, but at last she overtakes

him, and fills him brimful of misery. His own misdeeds and cruel words incarnate themselves in his children, and turn upon him with demon-fury to plague him, and poison his every joy and hope. The peace of his household is destroyed. Black ingratitude gnaws at his vitals. If he is rich, his children wait with ill-concealed impatience for his death, in order to possess themselves of his wealth. If he is poor, he is allowed to pine away in his old age. Forsaken by his own children, he lingers through his last illness attended only by merciful strangers. His expiring breath becomes a curse to his children and their descendants after them. After a few generations the family sinks to the level of criminals and paupers.

But the blessing of the parents establishes the house of the children. There is a vitalizing and upbuilding power in filial piety. Those families in which filial love and reverence are strong and active forces, are seen to be endowed with wonderful life-powers, intellectual and moral. By a divine law indwelling human society, they rise from station to station till they come to occupy the high places of the earth. Know you families, once poor, without learning and social standing, that have within your life-time exalted and distinguished themselves, so as to be an object of admiration and emulation to many? Inquire into the hidden causes of their marvelous growth in moral energy, in culture, wealth, and influence! You will find that parents and children are bound together in such families by the strongest and holiest ties of love and reverence. You will observe their grown-up sons and daughters hanging upon the lips of father and mother, listening to their words of advice as if they were a message of heaven. You will see there both the older and the younger children clinging with tenderest affection to their parents. In such houses you will mark in the behavior of the children toward their father and mother a refinement of manner, a sweetness of temper, a joyous spirit of obedience, that make you feel as

if you were in a breathing paradise and heard humanity's springs of life flowing with melodious murmur. Happy the house in which aged parents dwell secure and happy under the shelter of their children's provident love and care! Thrice happy the house in which dying parents bless their sons and daughters, saying, "May your children be like you, may they be as faithful, as kind, as true to you as you have been to us!" Such houses will endure forever, their foundation is firm, and will never be removed. Filial piety is the fountain of life. It may not always prolong the days of an individual, who may be cut off by blindly-seizing, blindly-destroying disease. But it is sure to give long life to a people, in whose midst it is found. Filial piety gave to faint Israel power to endure in the ages of darkness and persecution. It imparted abundant strength to the feeble remnants of Jacob wandering as fugitives over the face of the earth. Youthful nations shall faint and be weary, and young warrior-races shall utterly fail. But the children of Israel that love and honor father and mother both in deed and word, shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint.

THE DUTY OF THE PULPIT.

WHAT

HAT is the duty of the pulpit? In what does the peculiar office of the preacher consist? He is a teacher, no doubt. But what shall he teach? What kind of knowledge is it his ministry to impart to the people? Our answer is: The office of the preacher has grown out of the office of the ancient prophets of Israel; or rather, it is the very same, only modified in many external and internal respects, in order to meet the altered conditions and requirements of the times. The preachers are to be the

successors of the Israelitish prophets.

Of course, all preachers are not true disciples of the prophets. There are unworthy men who usurp and degrade the high calling of a religious and moral teacher. They regard their calling as a business like any other business. They are ministers for revenue only. The larger their income, the more contented they are with their work and their congregation. They are anxious, above all things, to please the people, on whom they depend for a living. They are most eager to be popular with the rich and influential members of their congregation. The first question with them always is, What do my people like best to hear? How shall I satisfy their taste? I must attract and entertain them. I must make them admire me as an orator! They shall flock to hear me with the eager curiosity which makes them wish to see a famous actor or opera singer. The saddest feature of all is, that such contemptible and vain hirelings are the favorite preachers of large numbers of American Jews. They are in our time and generation what the false prophets were in the days of old.

Like the corruptors of the people in those far-off ages, they speak smooth things, such as their bread-givers like to