your children to obey the command and ‘search the Scriptures.’ And not merely did you teach us to read the Bible and explain to us its meaning, but your lives in general as seen by us and your conduct towards us in particular have given object lessons enabling us to understand more deeply and appreciate more fully than many can the meaning of not a few texts of Scripture.
“The fatherhood of God has to us a meaning that it cannot have to many. We remember how as faithful parents you have chastened us for our profit, and also how, like the father of the prodigal, you have watched for the evidence of repentance, and at once given us the kindly word and the assurance of forgiveness. Our relation to you enables us to find a peculiar preciousness in what the Word of God says about the Great Father, ‘of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.’
“We remember with delight the gatherings early on winter evenings to listen to Bible stories from dear mother, till the good father came home from outside work, like David, ‘to bless his house.’ The happy home in which we all lived together and the happy home where we still delight to meet are beautiful types of the Father’s house in which we all hope to dwell. The large-hearted love with which you have always welcomed the steadily increasing number of your children to a New England place of rest, gives us beautiful reminders that the Father’s house has ‘many mansions,’ and that ‘yet there is room’ for us all where some of us have already entered.
“And when sorrow has come, how unspeakably precious has been your sympathy, which has taught us what is meant by the words, ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him,’ and, ‘As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.’
“We thank God that our parents have imitated the Psalmist in his resolve, ‘I will walk within my house with a perfect heart.’ We rejoice that our father has been like