Chapter XVI: The Careless Mother

Isa. xxxii. 9–13.

Motherless children are often uncared for. No one ‘_naturally_ cares for their state.’ No child with a mother _ought_ to be so. But too often mothers are careless about—

I. Their _minds_.

No schooling—no teaching—no training—no Sunday School. Cares not
whether in time, or too late—regular or truant, &c., &c.

II. Their _respectability_, and _associates_.

Will take in bad lodgers, hire bad characters to help at the wash-tub
because they can be had cheaper than the respectable, forgetting that
‘a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches.’ Prov. xxii. 1.
Eccles. vii. 1.

What guilty carelessness!

III. Their _happiness_.

What misery here awaits a neglected child!

What woe hereafter!

IV. Their _souls_.

To a parent guilty of this carelessness, it is said, ‘His blood will I
require at thine hand.’ Ezek. iii. 18, 19; xxxiii. 6.

Have you ever lost a child, for whose soul you never cared? Pray Ps.
li. 14.

_This_ arises from want of real religion.

You do not know the immense value of a soul.

Would you be thus careless of an earthly treasure? Would you not watch
it—lock it up—guard it with a jealous eye? Your child’s soul a
treasure passing all price. Yet you allow Satan to steal it—bad
companions to corrupt it—ruin it yourself by neglect. A thing
neglected is ruined.

Keep in view the judgment day.

Will your child then say, ‘No man cared for my soul’—‘even my _mother_
cared not that I perished!’