To set a man at variance against his Father.
The year separation.
I. That union of families in religion is desirable. Because all its members have the same interests at stake; they are all under substantially the same obligations; it promotes the happiness of a family, gives consolation in times of affliction, promotes the eternal welfare of all.
II. That religion does, in fact, make a separation in families, It divides families at the Communion table; in respect of their prospects of future glory, and at the judgment-bar with unerring accuracy. Lessons: Pray more for impenitent children, &c.; contemplate the possibility of a family being united in heaven. (Dr. A. Barites.)
Those who are most near, are most easily divided. (Bengel.)
Children and parents
There is a climax of three degrees. Brother shall be against brother, parent against child, child against parents-each worse than the preceding. The history of the Church has many illustrations of this. Such were the histories of Perpetua and Felicitas, in the persecution of Severus, where the children refused to listen to parents’ entreaties to give up Christ, and died in their steadfastness; and such was the dreadful speech recorded of Philip II. of Spain, who thought that he was showing zeal for God by declaring of the Protestants, “If it were my own son, I would bring the faggot.” (W. Benham.)
Domestic variance occasioned by religion
Too often is this prediction fulfilled in the case of converts (especially those from Judaism) even at the present day-the most devoted son or daughter has too often to feel that their adopting Christianity has severed them from beloved parents. The Rev. Moses Margdionth, in a narrative drawn up in the year 1842, illustrates this by his own experience. Mr. Margdionth had been led, by a remarkable chain of circumstances, to embrace Christianity. He was a native of Poland, but did not receive baptism until his arrival in London, having left his country for the purpose of study, and more especially of acquiring religious knowledge. He felt it his duty as soon as possible to acquaint his parents with his change of faith, and his father at first wrote him an affectionate answer, entreating him to come home and recant his apostacy, but finding that nothing would induce him to renounce Christianity and return to his house, ceased to answer his letters, and for a long time seemed to ignore his existence. Still, however, Margdionth persevered in writing, and at length, to use his own words-“I received a most severe letter from my father, telling me that if I did not return immediately to his house, I should never be permitted to call myself his son: that he should hate me with perfect hatred, and that he should prohibit my writing to him any more. My dear mother wrote again with affectionate sadness, telling me that she had not ceased to weep for me, and had even injured her eyes with weeping.” It is consolatory to find that Mr. Margdionth, who spared no effort or exertion to win hack the heart of his father, was rewarded at length by a complete reconciliation, though we have no ground to believe that his parents ever embraced Christianity. Yet sadder tales meet us in the annals of missions among the heathen. Harriet Winslow, the devoted American missionary in Ceylon, mentions the very sad case of a youth named Tupyen, who had become interested in Christianity by reading part of a Tamil Bible, lent him by another young man. He begged permission to attend the mission school at Tillipally, but when it came to his father’s knowledge that he had there avowed himself a Christian, the poor fellow was, when he next returned home, shut up, and otherwise most severely treated. Once he made his escape to Tillipally, and there told the missionary, Mr. Peel, what had befallen him. He took a Testament, and pointing to this very passage (Matthew 10:31-39), said, with tears-“That very good.” But again falling into the hands of his father, Tupyen was beaten, tabooed, threatened, insulted in every possible way, so that at length, alas, he signed a recantation of Christianity.
Social obstacles to religion
I. The reasons why men labour to prevent their fellows from rising to a vital Christian experience.
1. We are to remember that social life is not merely the accidental juxtaposition of man with man; it organizes itself. Men stand related to each other in such a way that if one goes out of the circle, it is like the going of one out from a quartette of singers.
2. It is frequently the case that the escape of one from a circle towards a true and high religious life, is hindered on account of the social ambitions which prevail. Circles defend themselves against men going to desert for religion.
3. Another reason why persons endeavour to prevent the escape of men to a higher religious plane, is the judgment and rebuke which is always reflected, by such a course, upon their own career.
II. What the motives are by which this social hindrance works.
1. There is the battle of fear into which men go.
2. Next is the battle of interest. Men try to dissuade their fellow-men from true religion on account of the effects which it will have upon their interests in life.
3. Then there are persons who are peculiarly sensitive to praise. They cannot bear the shady side of men’s opinions. A circle, by a judicious silence, can make a man feel as though the fogs of Newfoundland were on him.
4. Then there is the battle of dissuasion.
III. The modes of resistance that one may lawfully set up against these things.
1. It should be made clear that you are in earnest and sincere.
2. That that which is upon you is not a mere whim.
3. Remember that you need and shall have the help of God. (H. W. Beecher.)
The soul’s longing for God not hindered by social obstacles
As birds, when their time of emigration comes, and they feel the impulse to fly to the summer-land, and will not be stopped, either by the snap of the fowler’s gun or by the sweep of the hawk, or by any solicitation, but rise, and fly through night and through day, to find that summer-land: so souls feel the fascinating call of God, and, rising, soar-and must, because the Holy Ghost is upon them. (H. W. Beecher.)
Society troubled by men leafing it for a better life
The smallest wheel in my watch, emigrating, would leave all the rest of the wheels, big and little, in a very sorry plight. Although it may be very small, and stand on its own rights as a wheel, yet, after all, it has been cogged, and notched, and adjusted, so that the whole structure depends on that. You might as well smash the watch as to take that out. Frequently it is the case that the members of a circle are so affiliated, so exactly fitted to each other, that if you take one out, all the rest are dissevered. And it is not surprising, it does not imply any great degree of depravity, to say that where a number of men are living an ordinary, an average, social life, and one of them is inspired with a higher, a holier religious purpose, and desires and means to go up on a level that none of them have been standing on, his emigration upward wrenches them all. And it is not strange that they try to stop it. (H. W. Beecher.)
Unrest a vital process
The unrest of a Christless soul, a Christless nation, a Christless world, is really the beginning of a vital process, which in its first stages is always a travail. The Lord is not afraid of the storm of strife and frenzy which He stirs in the world. We think that these are death pains; He knows that they are birth pains, through which the glorious golden future is being born. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
A boy’s foes at school
When a boy first comes from home, full of the natural desire of doing his duty, of improving himself, of getting on well, he is presently beset by the ridicule of all the worthless and foolish boys around him, who want to sink him to their own level. How completely true it is that his foes are they of his own household-that is, they who are most immediately about him, those of his own age, and his own place in the school. They become his idol; before their most foolish, most low, and most wicked voices he gives up his affections, his understanding, and his conscience; from this mass of ignorance, and falsehood, and selfishness, he looks for the guide of his opinions and his conduct. (T. Arnold, D. D.)