Fatherhood

“ You become conscious of man as your creature brother because you are already conscious of God as your Creator Father. Fatherhood is the relationship out of which we reason ourselves into the recognition of brotherhood. And Fatherhood becomes, or may become, a universe reality to all moral creatures because the Father has himself bestowed personality upon all such beings and has encircuited them within the grasp of the universal personality circuit. ”

“ And this again, growing up into childhood, still later urges on youth to fatherhood. Yet the man was not always a father, for he advanced to youth through boyhood, and to boyhood through original infancy. ”

“ Fathers teach their children to take pride in themselves and their work, to assume responsibility for their lives and character, and to understand the rewards of sharing with others. Most important, fathers-whether biological, adoptive, or foster-offer the strong, steady current of love that sustains their sons and daughters through the good times and bad times that all of us face.
Our Nation is blessed that so many Americans cherish the role of fatherhood in our families, for fathers add a crucial stability and strength to our lives. ”

“ With us, fatherhood connotes a definite individual with all sorts of social, [Pg 233] economical, and political associations, but what does it mean to the savage? It may mean physical fatherhood and nothing more, and physical fatherhood may be a fact of the veriest insignificance. It may mean social fatherhood, where all men of a certain status are fathers to all children of the complementary status, and social fatherhood thus becomes much more than we can understand by the term father. ”

“ Raising a child is a sacred mission, and the man who welcomes this mission and embraces the obligations of fatherhood is someone who truly deserves our recognition and gratitude. On Father's Day, we honor all the men across our country who have affirmed the importance of parenthood by willingly assuming its important responsibilities. ”

“ We associate in this life with our natural fathers; we see them as they are. They teach, guide and direct us by virtue of their fatherhood and their advanced experience, which qualify them to teach us and direct our footsteps in the way we should walk. ”

“ As verily as God is our Father, so verily God is our Mother, and that shewed He in all, and especially in these sweet words where He saith: I it am [1] That is to say, I it am, the Might and the Goodness of the Fatherhood; I it am, the Wisdom of the Motherhood; I it am, the Light and the Grace that is all blessed Love: I it am, the Trinity, I it am, the Unity: I am the sovereign Goodness of all manner of things. I am that maketh thee to love: I am that maketh thee to long: I it am, the endless fulfilling of all true desires. ”

“ Fathers owe their brains as well as their hands to their families. Competent and efficient fatherhood does not come by accident. We are learning that children cannot be understood merely by loving them, that two things must be held in balance: the scientific and the sympathetic study of childhood. Is there any good reason why, while264 so readily granting that mothers should belong to mothers' clubs, study child psychology, the hygiene of infancy, domestic science, and eugenics, we should assume that fathers may safely dispense with all such knowledge? ”

“ I suppose because I have known the growth of his character so intimately. I called to mind a letter he had written me of what we had expected of our fathers. The ideal father, the profoundly wise, provident, divinely tender and benign, he is indeed the God of the human heart. How solemn this moment of being called to prepare the way, to make way for another generation! What fulfilment does it claim in the character of a man, that he should be worthy to be a father! — what purity of motive, what dignity, what knowledge! ”

“ Is not the possession of one thing better than the expectation of two? (11) Thou art my son as well as thy father's; and I am present, while he is absent. I conclude, therefore, that you ought by no means to forsake me though to redeem your father." The son very properly answered, "Although I am thy son yet he is my father. He is abroad and surrounded by the merciless; but thou art at home, protected and cherished by loving friends. ”

“ I pray thee, my dear child, to be a father to thy people. Be the children's father and the widow's friend. Comfort the poor, protect and shelter the weak, and, with all thy might, right that which is wrong. ”

“ Happy these children, who in its fullest sense could understand the word "father!" to whom, from the dawn of their little lives, their father was what all fathers should be—the truest representative here on earth of that Father in heaven, who is at once justice, wisdom, and perfect love. ”

“ God send him that life which stands in need:
There be many fathers that children have,
And yet not make the worst of them a slave,
Might not you of yourself be well ashamed.
Which would have your son thither constrained?
FATHER. I would not have thee driven to that succour,
Yet for because the scriptures declare,
That he should not eat, which will not labour,
Some work to do it must be thy care.
SON. Father, it is but a folly with you to strive,
But yet notwithstanding I hope to thrive.
FATHER. That this thine intent may take good success,
I pray God heartily of his goodness. ”

“ The father toils from year to year to secure it a fair patrimony, a finished education, and an honorable position in life. How unremittingly these parents watch over the sick-bed of their children and of each other; and oh, what burning tears gush forth as the utterance of their agonizing hearts, when death threatens to blight a single bud, or lay his cold hand upon a single member! ”

“ Therefore I say to son or daughter who has no pleasure in the name Father, 'You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life. Every time a man might have been to you a refuge from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, that was a time when a father might have been a father indeed. Happy you are yet, if you have found man or woman such a refuge ”

“ When the child hears them he thinks of some one like his own father, but immensely bigger and more powerful; and as the child is taught that all the necessaries and comforts of life he enjoys, at the expense of his parents' labor and loving care, are really gifts from the Father behind the scenes, it is no wonder that this mysterious being becomes the object of gratitude and affection. ”

“ In our every-day thinking we take it for granted. The child, we maintain, inherits its father's bad temper just as it inherits its mother's good looks. We consider twice before we adopt the foundling, which may be of dull or vicious parentage. We shake our heads over the wayward son, remembering that his father "sowed his wild oats," and we observe "like father like son," or "blood will tell." We expect to find talent in the children of the gifted, thrift or dwarfed intellect or high purpose, according as these qualities are "bred in the bone." ”

“ It is only the child who has remained at home who is obedient to the father’s commands—it is only he who can really be called a son at all. He alone knows the blessings of sonship. He alone knows the father’s affection and love. ”

“ To give our views of God in one word, we believe in his Parental character. We ascribe to him, not only the name, but the dispositions and principles of a father. We believe that he has a father's concern for his creatures, a father's desire for their improvement, a father's equity in proportioning his commands to their powers, a father's joy in their progress, a father's readiness to receive the penitent, and a father's justice for the incorrigible. ”

“ Now, if there are any fathers among you, fathers whose happiness it is to stroll on Sundays holding their child's tiny hand in their robust hand, let each one of those fathers imagine that this child is his own. ”

“ It is what I have not yet made any experiment of or thought of, and should be very glad if you would dispense with my undertaking it, and let me enjoy the happiness of loving and being beloved with all the disinterestedness I proposed to myself. But the demand of a father is a command upon every child who, like me, thinks it his duty to obey him in everything. ”

“ And the hopeless part of my predicament is that now I’m the father of a child in turn—although somehow I can’t feel like a father!—and if I don’t play out my hand, the day’s coming when my child is going to turn around and execrate me as cordially as I feel like execrating my own folks to-night! ”

“ I have no parents to love me, as other children have!" Thick tears coursed their rapid way over the rosy cheeks of the deserted foundling.
"Be still, and do not weep, my poor child! [151] You have a Father above,—one who is a Father to us all,—who loves you, and will take care of you." ”

“ If, therefore, you give way to this melancholy, how will you be able to perform your duty towards me, in cheerfully obeying my commands, and endeavouring, by your lively prattle and innocent gaiety of heart, to be my companion and delight? Nor will you be fit to converse with your brother, whom (as you lost your good papa when you were too young to know that loss) I have endeavoured to educate in such a manner, that I hope he will be a father to you, if you deserve his love and protection. ”

“ Believe me, my dear son, you too have a Father,—a good and powerful Father. He dwells above us, in the depths of the blue heavens, but he is also everywhere upon the face of the earth. He sees you always, and always takes care of you. ”

“ In the reverential awe shown to one's father there is nothing greater than making him the correlate of Heaven. [13] There is in all of their institutions a recognition of the paternal model; it is constantly recited, in their religious worship, in their state ceremonies, in their education, and in their literature. ”

“ But come, setting this duello of wit aside, I have overheard your confession and your casting about for a father, and in troth, in mere charity, came in to relieve you. In the scroll of beasts, horses and asses, that have fed upon this common of yours, you named one Pendant: faith, wench, let him be the father. He is a very handsome gentleman, I can tell you, in my lord's favour. I'll be both secret and your friend to my lord. Let it be him; he shall either reward thee bountifully, or marry thee. ”

“ When you, too, are a father, and you hear your children’s little voices, you will say to yourself, ‘That has all come from me.’ You will feel that those little ones are akin to every drop in your veins, that they are the very flower of your life (and what else are they?) ”

“ Was not that Father kind? Could any father be as good to his children as God was to those He put on the earth to live together? Should not those children love Him and try to live as He wished them to live? ”

“ The father, as he broods moodily over enterprises blighted, and a spirit confined for immediate bread to some narrow scene of action unworthy of its energies—one casual glance alights upon the fair brow of his child, the bitter present gives way to the glorious future, and all his own griefs are repaid by the prospective happiness of his offspring. ”

“ The entire endeavor to replace the real father by a more distinguished one is merely the expression of the child’s longing for the vanished happy time, when his father still appeared to be the strongest and greatest man, and the mother seemed the dearest and most beautiful woman. ”

“ Parents have claims upon their children. 1. From the simple fact of the relationship. A good father claims the obedience of his son because he is that child’s ordained guide and ruler. He is to his son God’s viceregent so long as his commands are in accordance with God’s law. 2. From their larger experience. They have trodden the path which the youth has yet to traverse, they have climbed the hill which rises yet before him, they have tested the worth of the things which will allure him. Their superior knowledge entitles them to say, “Hear the instruction of a father.” ”

“ Oh, thou I have adored since God gave me to feel the beauty and strength of man in my childhood, if I have ever looked on man but thee with love or wavering, rebuke me now for the offence I am to do, if such it be, in choosing another father for thy boy! ”

“ In my experience the father is usually the decisive and dangerous object of the child's phantasy, and if ever it happens to be the mother, I have been able to discover behind her a grandfather to whom she belonged in her heart. ”

“ And when his father’s messengers meet him, and face him about, and take him off his darling pursuits, and sweep his big ships into the fire, and crush his full-grown cars, then the grown man will complain and murmur, and wonder as the little man does now. The Father wants the future, the Child the present, all through life, till death makes the child a man. ”

“ He had never known what an earthly father was, but in the new, great land to which they were going he should soon know—he should find that for every little child in all God’s world some heart beats with the joy of a father’s love, some bosom swells with the wealth of a mother’s devotion. ”

“ It is to communicate one’s own nature, to give life to kindred beings; and the highest function of a father is to educate the mind of the child, and to impart to it what is noblest and happiest in his own mind. ”

“ It may be—and happy the house in which it is so—that the father's at least equal intellect, and older experience, may remain to the end of his life a law to his children, not of force, but of perfect guidance, with perfect love. ”