Hear the instruction of thy father.
The family
The first and great commandment is the fear of God, and the second, which is next to it and like to it, is obedience to parents. Wherever the root is planted this is the first fruit which it bears. God honours His own ordinance, the family. He gives parents rank next after Himself. Filial love stands near, and leans on godliness. God is the author of the family constitution. Its laws are the marriage of one man with one woman, the support of children by parents, and the support of decayed parents by the children grown. The polygamy of Eastern peoples has made the richest portions of the earth like a howling wilderness. In the constitution of nature there is a self-acting apparatus for punishing the transgression of the family laws. The Divine institute is hedged all round. The prickles tear the flesh of those who are so foolish as to kick against them. In practice, and for safety, it is well to keep families together as long as it is possible. To violate the providential laws is both a crime and a blunder. Love to parents ranks next under reverence to God. When France threw off the first commandment the second went after it. (William Arnot, D.D.)
Forsake not the law of thy mother.
For mother’s sake
What a mysterious thing--what a mysterious, magical, Divine thing is a mother’s love! How it nestles about the heart, and goes with the man, and speaks to him pure words, and is like a guardian angel! This young man (of whom he was then preaching) could never take any money that came to him from his mother and spend that upon a Sunday excursion or a treat to a theatre. It was a sacred thing with him; it had the impression and the inscription of his mother’s image, and his mother’s purity, and his mother’s piety, and his mother’s love. It was a sacred thing to him, and these things that he felt to be questionable, or felt to be sinful, were always to be provided for by other resources and by money that came to him from other hands. Oh! there is the poetry of the heart, the poetry of our home and domestic affections, the poetry of the religion of the heart and the altar, about that little incident, and it strikes me as being perfectly beautiful. (Thomas Binney.)
A mother’s influence
The late Dr. Harvey Goodwin, Bishop of Carlisle, gave the following account of his mother: “I am one of those who lost their mother at a very early age. I was very little over six years old when my dear mother was suddenly taken from me. I mention my age that I may put before you the effect which my mother’s teaching had upon me, and the tender age at which it ceased, and I think we may draw from it some useful lessons. Now, then, when I look back to the teaching of my mother, what do I think of it? I say deliberately, and without any amount of exaggeration, that though I have since that time been at school, been under tutors, been at college, and had all the experience of life, I do not believe that all the lessons that I have received since that time put together amount in value and in importance to the lessons which I learned from my mother before I was seven years old. I will tell you one of the first lessons she taught me. She taught me always to speak the truth; and the lesson she gave me concerning truth has never been lost upon me. She always brought me up in the feeling that what was to be spoken was to be the whole truth and nothing but the truth; that there was to be no evasion, that everything was to be stated simply and honestly, exactly as it occurred; and I will tell you how she enforced that lesson--she always spoke truth to me. I never caught her in any kind of deceit; I always knew that what she said to me she meant. I was always sure that if she told me she was going to do a thing she would do it, and no amount of coaxing or persuasion would lead her to change her mind. Absolute truth, absolute in the smallest matters, that was her practice, and that was the lesson that she impressed upon me.”