Exodus 20:12 Honor your father and your mother: that your days may be long on the land which the LORD your God gives you. The great Dr. Johnson was a very learned man; he wrote a "dictionary." I know what I am going to say is true. He lived in Uttoxeter. His father was a bookseller, not in a very grand way, because he used to sell his books in the market-place. One day he asked his son Samuel (for that was the Christian name of Dr. Johnson) to come down and help him in the sale of his books in the market-place. Little Samuel was rather a sort of a dandy, a conceited fellow; and he thought it beneath his dignity to sell books in the market-place. "He demean himself to stand in the market.place to sell books, indeed, for his father! He was too great a gentleman for that!" Fifty years passed away, and Dr. Johnson had become now an old man. It haunted him; he could not forget, though more than fifty years had passed, — what he had done to his father, in refusing to sell books in the market-place. He was very sad and unhappy about it. So, one day, the doctor took off his hat, and went and stood in the same market-place, on the very spot where he said he would not stand to sell books for his father. And all the boys laughed at him; but there he stood with his bald head, not feeling the rain, or caring for the boys' laughter, that he might do a sort of act of penance, to ease his conscience! He did not "honour his father" when a boy, and he remembered it fifty years after, and it was a pain to him. A statue to Dr. Johnson now stands on the spot, and this noble act of his is depicted upon it. (J. Vaughan.) Parallel Verses KJV: Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. |
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