In this light, then, we can understand, brethren, the place of the Christian family, as always the first of social institutions. Such is the view I wish to urge, because I believe that, far more than we suppose, this law of the family enters into the most real questions of our time as to popular education or social reform. We live in a day of theories; and in such a day we are most apt to forget the simple truths, which, in Coleridge’s words, “are so true, that they lie bed-ridden by the side of the most exploded errors.” I speak no mere sentiment; I address myself to the plain sense and Christian experience of all. It is the problem that presses on us to-day more than ever, when we look at the mingled good and evil of our modern world; when we enter one of our great cities, where wealth glitters as if there were no suffering, yet a step apart there lurks a world of beggary and crime, which our Christianity has hardly pierced, although it has sent a Livingston into the heart of Africa;—what is the hope of Christian more than pagan progress, of a Paris or New York more than a Rome? I give the answer, which I think all history as well as the Gospel gives. The purity of the household is the salt of our civilization. I know no other answer. Need I then, state the ground on which such a truth rests? The only lasting influence which can preserve or heal the social body is one that works from the root. We can not, with dreamers like Rousseau, believe the savage better than the civilized state. Art and science bring manifold vices with the good, yet we can never grapple with the sins of our day by vague railing against luxury. In the decaying age of the Roman world a Jerome retired into his cave at Bethlehem; but his idle despair did not cure the evil. We often indulge the same false humor. We speak of a London or a New York as the swollen ulcer of society, but we forget that we may as well talk of a body without its brain; that it is in mutual circulation, the country feeding the city with fresh blood, the city pouring it back enriched in its double circuit, the life is maintained; and thus while we see the vices, we should see also the enlarged activities, the myriad callings for the poor, the treasures of art and culture for all, the uncounted charities walking in every haunt of sorrow or sin. But this growth of civilization has in it no self-preserving might. A refined culture is no safeguard against our moral diseases. We repeat often that this American people is abler to keep its freedom and virtue, because of the education of all: yet it is one of those surface truths that may cover a fallacy. I believe heartily in popular education. But there is a more knowing vice as well as virtue. The mob of Paris is more intelligent than the country boor; but it is a witty and polished animal. Such training, without a deeper root, only quickens the weeds in the rank field of our time, and chokes the public conscience.
Whatever, then, the form of our civilization, it must depend on the tone of our household life for its healthy growth, because this precedes all else in its shaping power. All the germs of personal character, truth, purity, honesty, reverence of law, must be implanted in this soil. The state rests on it. The church rests on it, and its teaching is barren, unless it begin with home nurture. We may make what laws we will for the suppression of vice, what plans we will of education, what better methods of industry; but what are they without the education of the character? What is our most perfect theory of government, unless there be a self-governed people? What are commercial rules, if there be no conscience of integrity and honor? Study this truth in its widest bearings. Our time is marked by its noble efforts for reform. We hail each healthy improvement in the condition of the poor, the opening of new channels of labor, the breaking down of false monopolies.
It is thus, my friends, we are to learn the bearing of such a truth on our own land and time. We can not study the growth of society, especially in our great cities, without observing that there are many influences, such as I have already described in the old Pagan civilization, which tend to impair the purity of home. The family habits decay in the larger world of sensual splendor. It is becoming a hard thing for our young men of fashion to afford the luxury ofmarriage; and our young women learn that the aim of life is a rich husband, who can supply the gold for the wardrobe and the glitter of an establishment. We have imported from abroad within these few years many of the loose ideas of modern Epicurism. But there are, besides, influences peculiar to our American society, which are developing a type of precocious youth not pleasant to look upon. I know not whether it be the abuse of our free institutions, that begets our style of manners: but we are too fast losing the habits of home authority and filial reverence. It has been truly said of us, that we have as much family government as ever, but the young govern the parents. We have no children now-a-days. Our infants leap from the nursery into the drawing-room; and while abroad a son or a daughter has hardly left the retreat of home, here they are already veterans in the ways of fashion, and society is quite surrendered to them. Many of our foreign visitors have repeated the remark of De Tocqueville, that an American girl has more of self-poised ease, but is wanting in the fresh charm seen so often in the young maidens of England or France. I doubt not there is a better side to this. I would not keep them, as is too often done abroad, shut in nursery or convent without the education of the character. I love the intelligence, the generous freedom of youth, but I wish we might not lose with these the modest heart, the simple tastes of past years. It maybe the passing excess of our national childhood, but it is not to be flattered as it is too often. I know that I am very old-fashioned in my ideas, yet it may be well if we soberly reflect on these things. We may grow in wealth and all the arts of social culture, but let these fast habits of the time, this whirl of our modern life eat into the heart of our home piety, and the whole body must die of its own gangrenes.
In that conviction I urge on you, my friends, your personal obligation. Who of us can enough appreciate its meaning? Who of us, if he could keep afresh the feeling of awe and tenderness with which he looked on the face of his first-born infant, and felt what an undiscovered world was opened to him, who would ever need to learn his duty? What a work it is, how ceaseless, how growing at each step, how delicate in all its adaptations, how asking all our love, our thoughtfulness, our patience! I offer you no system of education. I repeat only the principle, which I thank God is the root of all wholesome teaching, that a Christian godliness is the growth of the whole character; and therefore it begins with the recognition of the child as a new-born member of the family of Christ; and plants its simplest truths in the moral affections, and blends them with the real duties of life. This is sound sense and piety. This, in Wordsworth’s happy line, is
Pure religion breathing household laws.
Give your offspring this training of the character; teach them to be frank and open-hearted, to hate a lie or a mean action, to be kind to the poor, to protect the weaker, to respect gray hairs, to reverence your authority from love not fear, to cherish the natural pleasures and employments of home, a book or a ramble more than the finery of modish children young or old; above all to be always constant in their Christian habits, with no affectations of a premature piety, with a child’s faults, but a child’s sweet faith; give them, I say, this training, if you will have them men and women indeed.