2 Kings 4:13 And he said to him, Say now to her, Behold, you have been careful for us with all this care; what is to be done for you?… We contend that there is not a man, who does not dwell among a host of persons who are under his influence, who listen to his voice, and echo his thoughts. None are so mean and powerless as not to shape and bend in some way the mind of an acquaintance. None stand perfectly alone. The distant planets which are jostled in their orbits by the power of another sphere, are but the type of the moral universe, in which one star not only differeth from another star in glory, but kindles a thousand sympathies, and lights a thousand reflective fires. I. IT IS THE EMINENT PREROGATIVE OF THE MOTHER TO BE THE EDUCATOR OF THE FAMILY; a truth which is alike in the expression "our mother tongue" and "our mother country." The arrangements of modern society and commerce separate the father from his family during a great part of the clay; he dwells among other people, and exercises over them another sort of influence. It is the mother who is the keeper at home, and with boundless, indefatigable tenderness moulds the first lispings, and extracts the first thoughts of her young children. They imitate her manners and pronunciation; and she is the interpreter of their self-invented or half-formed words with the world. II. IT MAY REMIND MOTHERS OF THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES TO STATE, that when a boy escapes from the nursery and enters upon his school career, he becomes in turn an educator, and dwells among his own people. Not to speak of that technical arrangement in some schools, which sets boys to teach boys, there is a constant play of mutual influence, wherever youths congregate. An eminent teacher, whose mantle seems to have fallen upon many of his successors, used to exclaim: — "If my sixth form desert me, all our success is at an end!" Boys at school are rarely unemphatic and harmless; they do then, as they will do hereafter, the work of God or of Satan. III. The Hebrew Rabbins used to maintain that they LEARNED MUCH AT SCHOOL, BUT MORE FROM THEIR CONTEMPORARIES IN ACTIVE LIFE. The most valuable part of our knowledge is self-acquired or obtained by the collision and play of our minds among those of our equals. Our educating power, then, expands with our years, and we teach more truly and successfully, if we are Christians indeed, the older we grow. (T. Jackson, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And he said unto him, Say now unto her, Behold, thou hast been careful for us with all this care; what is to be done for thee? wouldest thou be spoken for to the king, or to the captain of the host? And she answered, I dwell among mine own people. |
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