Southern Christian Advocate

PARENTS

SOLEMN FACTS FOR IMPENITENT PARENTS,

There are no arguments so impressive and irresistible
as well attested facts. And we know
no arguments that would be likely to arrest the
attention and awaken all the anxieties of an impenitent
parent, if he can contemplate the following
facts without emotion.

While recently conversing with a mother in
Israel, on the subject of parental influence, as affecting
the character and salvation of children,
we were led to look into the history of several
families around us, to see if facts would sustain
the sentiments we had expressed. So astonishingly
affecting were the results, that we continued
our investigations, till we had passed over from
one-half to two-thirds of the geographical extent
of the town. We embraced in the survey, all
the families, so far as we could ascertain, who
have resided in that section of the town, within
the past thirty years. The number of families,
in which there are children over ten years of age,
included in our investigation, is ninety-eight.

In twenty-seven of these families both of the
parents are professedly pious. Of their one hundred
and twenty-five children, who are over ten
years of age, eighty-four, about two-thirds, are
hopefully pious; four are in the ministry, five are
deaconds, and one is intemperate; but his father,
though a professor of religion, has always used
strong drink very freely, and his Christian character,
to say the least, is doubtful.

In nineteen of these families, only one of the
parents in each family is pious; and that parent,
with a single exception, is the mother. Of the
ninety-five children in these families, thirty-one,
about one-third, are hopefully pious, four are ministers,
and seven are dissipated, five of whom
are only following the example of their dissipated
fathers!

In the remaining sixty-two families, neither of
the parents are pious, and of their one hundred
and thirty-nine children, only thirteen, not one-
tenth, have given any evidence of piety, and not
one of these became pious while living at home;
most of them had been absent from their parents
several years! Twenty-five of these children, or
more than one-fifth, are dissipated, and all their
fathers indulge in the free use of intoxicating
drinks and the fathers of thirteen of them are decided
intemperate!!

So no remarks need be added to these solemn
facts, to awaken the deepest solicitude in the
bosom of every impenitent parent, and to lead
every pious parent to repose the most entire confidence
in the promise and covenant of God.—
Sabbath School Visitor.