But how many parents have since trodden in Eli's footsteps! Through an utterly false idea in reference to the entire basis and character of parental relationship, they have allowed their children, from infancy to boyhood, and from boyhood to manhood, in the unrestrained indulgence of the will. Not having faith to take divine ground, they have failed in moral power to take even the human ground of making their children respect and obey them, and the issue has presented to view the most fearful picture of lawless extravagance and wild confusion. The highest object for the servant of God to set before him in the management of his house is the testimony therein afforded to the honor of Him to whose house he himself belongs. This is really the proper ground of action. I must not seek to have my children in order because it would be an annoyance and inconvenience to _me_ to have them otherwise, but because the honor of God is concerned in the godly order of the households of all those who form constituent parts of His house.
Here, however, it may be objected that up to this point we have been breathing only the atmosphere of Old-Testament scripture, and that the principles and proofs have been only thence deduced; now, on the contrary, God's principle of action is grace according to election, and this leads to the calling out of a man, irrespective of all domestic ties and relationships, so that you may find a godly, devoted, heavenly-minded saint at the head of a most ungodly, irregular, worldly family. I maintain, in opposition to this, that the principles of God's moral government are eternal, and therefore, whether developed in one age or another, they must be the same. He cannot at one time teach that a man and his house are one, and commend him for ruling it properly, and at another time teach that they are not one, but permit him to rule his house as he pleases. This is impossible. God's approval or disapproval of things flows out of what He is in Himself; and in this matter in particular, inasmuch as God rules His own house according to what He is Himself, He commands His servants to rule their houses upon the same principle. Has the dispensation of grace, or of Christianity, come in to upset this lovely moral order? God forbid! Nay, it has rather, if possible, added new traits of beauty thereto. Was the house of a Jew looked at as part of himself, and shall the house of a Christian be different? Truly not. It would be a sad abuse, and an anomalous application of that heavenly word, "grace," to apply it to the misrule and demoralization that prevail in the houses of numberless Christians of the present day. Is it grace to allow the will to ride rampant? Is it grace to have all the passions, tempers, whims, and appetites of a corrupt nature indulged? Alas! call it not grace, lest our souls should lose the real meaning of the word, and begin to imagine it to be what we have called it. Call it by its proper names--a monstrous abuse--a denial of God, not only as the Ruler of His own house, but as the moral Administrator of the universe--a flagrant contradiction of all the precepts of inspiration on this deeply important subject.