MEDITATION
'As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.'--A Proverb.
It was a truly delightful sight to see old Mr. Meditation and his only son, our little Think-well, out among the woods and hedgerows of a summer afternoon. Little Think-well was the son of his father's old age. That dry tree used to say to himself that if ever he was intrusted with a son of his own, he would make his son his most constant and his most confidential companion all his days.
And so he did. The eleventh of Deuteronomy had become a greater and greater text to that childless man as he passed the mid-time of his days. 'Therefore,' he used to say to himself, as he walked abroad alone, and as other men passed him with their children at their side--'Therefore ye shall teach them to your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down and when thou risest up.
And thou shalt write them upon the doorposts of thine house and upon thy gates.' And thus it was that, as the little lad grew up, there was no day of all the seven that he so much numbered and waited for as was that sacred day on which his father was free to take little Think-well by the hand and lead him out to talk to him.
'No,' said an Edinburgh boy to his mother the other day--'No, mother,' he said, 'I have no liking for these Sunday papers with their poor stories and their pictures. I am to read the Bible stories and the Bible biographies first.' He is not my boy. I
wish my boys were all like him. 'And Plutarch on week-days for such a boy,' I said to his mother. How to keep a decent shred of the old sanctification on the modern Sabbath-day is the anxious inquiry of many fathers and mothers among us. My friend with her manly-minded boy, and Mr. Meditation with little Think-well had no trouble in that matter.
'And once I said, As I remember, looking round upon those rocks And hills on which we all of us were born, That God who made the Great Book of the world Would bless such piety;--
Never did worthier lads break English bread:
The finest Sunday that the autumn saw, With all its mealy clusters of ripe nuts, Could never keep those boys away from church, Or tempt them to an hour of Sabbath breach, Leonard and James!'
Think-well and that mother's son.
Old Mr. Meditation, the father, was sprung of a poor but honest and industrious stock in the city. He had not had many talents or opportunities to begin with, but he had made the very best of the two he had. And then, when the two estates of Mr. Fritter-day and Mr. Let-good-slip were sequestered to the crown, the advisers of the crown handed over those two neglected estates to Mr. Meditation to improve them for the common good, and after him to his son, whose name we know. The steps of a good man are ordered of the Lord, and He delighteth in his way. I have been young and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.
Now, this Think-well old Mr. Meditation had by Mrs. Piety, and she was the daughter of the old Recorder. 'I am Thy servant,' said Mrs. Piety's son on occasion all his days--'I am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid.' And at that so dutiful acknowledgment of his a long procession of the servants of God pass up before our eyes with their sainted mothers leaning on the arms of their great sons. The Psalmist and his mother, the Baptist and his mother, our Lord and His mother, the author of the Fourth Gospel and his mother, Paul's son and successor in the gospel and his mother and grandmother, the author of The Confessions and his mother; and, in this noble connection, I always think of Halyburton and his good mother. And in this ennobling connection you will all think of your own mother also, and before we go any further you will all say, I also, O Lord, am Thy servant and the son of Thine handmaid.
'Fathers and mothers handle children differently,' says Jeremy Taylor. And then that princely teacher of the Church of Christ Catholic goes on to tell us how Mrs. Piety handled her little Think-well which she had borne to Mr. Meditation. After other things, she said this every night before she took sleep to her tired eyelids, this: 'Oh give me grace to bring him up. Oh may I
always instruct him with diligence and meekness; govern him with prudence and holiness; lead him in the paths of religion and justice; never provoking him to wrath, never indulging him in folly, and never conniving at an unworthy action. Oh sanctify him in his body, soul, and spirit. Let all his thoughts be pure and holy to the Searcher of hearts; let his words be true and prudent before men; and may he have the portion of the meek and the humble in the world to come, and all through Jesus Christ our Lord!' How could a son get past a father and a mother like that? Even if, for a season, he had got past them, he would be sure to come back.
Only, their young Think-well never did get past his father and his mother.
There was not so much word of heredity in his day; but without so much of the word young Think-well had the whole of the thing. And as time went on, and the child became more and more the father of the man, it was seen and spoken of by all the neighbours who knew the house, how that their only child had inherited all his father's head, and all his mother's heart, and then that he had reverted to his maternal grandfather in his so keen and quick sense of right and wrong. All which, under whatever name it was held, was a most excellent outfit for our young gentleman. His old father, good natural head and all, had next to no book-learning. He had only two or three books that he read a hundred times over till he had them by heart. And as he sighed over his unlettered lot he always consoled himself with a saying he had once got out of one of his old books. The saying of some great authority was to this effect, that 'an old and ****** woman, if she loves Jesus, may be greater than our great brother Bonaventure.' He did not know who Bonaventure was, but he always got a reproof again out of his name.