+II. Filial Duty.+ "Hear, ye children." 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." 3. _From the self-denial which, as parents, they have exercised._ All that a good mother and father have done and suffered in order to advance the welfare of their children, their toil and forbearing love, constitutes a powerful claim to their children's grateful, reverential, attention and love. Solomon here gives an example of the honour in which every child should hold godly parents.
+Good Doctrine.+ Verse 2. 1. _Because without it there can be no good character._ There can be no right feelings towards God unless there has been right teaching about Him. True views of God can only come from true doctrine concerning Him. Without a right view of God there is no motive power to form character. A man must know God as He is before he can begin to follow Him. There must be a true mirror to give a correct reflection. 2. _Because if there is not the beginning of a good character, there will be an increasingly bad one._ When men have no right doctrine concerning God, in other words, when they do not know Him as He is, they invariably make a God after their own conceptions. They bring God down to their level. "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself" (Psa. l. 21), has been the fatal mistake of men in all ages. If a man falls overboard from the deck of a vessel, he will not remain long at the level of his first fall. If he is not rescued he will sink to such a depth as will be out of all comparison with it. He will go lower and lower till his body finds the bottom of the ocean. Man's first fall from obedience to disobedience was a great fall, but he has not been content with this moral distance between himself and his Maker, he has tried to drag God down with him and thus has brutalised and demonised the divine that was still within him. In more than a material sense he has "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like unto corruptible man" (Rom. i. 23). This changing of the truth of God into a lie will always take place where there is an absence of the right conceptions of God, and the result must always be the moral deterioration which Paul gives as the result in Rom. i. 26-32. There is as much relation between "good" or "right" doctrine and good and holy character as there is between good bread and pure water and a healthy body. Good bread will make good muscles and sinew, bad bread will not nourish the human frame. Pure water is indispensable to health, stagnant water will breed a hundred diseases. And mistaken views about God must be fruitful of soul disease. Results prove this to be the case. National and individual history prove the truth of it. "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matt. vii. 20). As we can foretell what the quality of the harvest will be from the seed sown, so can we tell what has been the character of the seed from that which it brings forth.