An ode such as this was not without effect upon the heart of England; nor is the humanity which it imbodies rare in our land. The spirit of trade among us is not wilfullycruel, but it is too devoted to gain—negligent of the claims of youth, when not unkind. Neglected ones in our own streets have too frequent cause to reproach us—neglected ones who are strangers to the blessings of our civilization, and who learn our laws first from their penalties, and become acquainted with the lessons of the prison, not of church or school. They, alas, who might be an honor to their sex, are made to recruit the ranks of shame, and what is the spirit of Herod compared with the world’s heart to fallen woman, alike in the wickedness that tempts and the scorn that awaits the fall.
And not solely among the neglected of the earth does the spirit of the world lie in wait for childhood and youth. We might speak of the indulgence that pampers and vainly ruins the soul—of the kindness that kills those whom it aims to bless—of the neglect of health, natural and spiritual laws, which luxury introduces into modes of home education—of the want of a firm discipline that is kindest when firmest—of a practical infidelity that robs childhood of its sacred birthright, by robbing it of trust in God and the eternal life. Herod rages truly in the passions and the policy of the world.
But not unchecked! Christianity with its great maternal heart is true to her watch, and calling helpers to her side. Let us acknowledge it. The great work of Christians now, is with the young. The work is two-fold, one of growth and of conquest, one that would rear up the offspring of faith within the divine kingdom, andone which would visit the neglected and reclaim them from the enemies’ power.
The work must begin, indeed, in the hearts of the mature, fostered there by communion with God and Christ, fostered by sacred thought and earnest resolution. Beginning there, it is to be carried out into the great spheres of life, in which childhood receives its direction. Vain for us to attempt to imbue the young mind with truths, which we receive only in name—vain the attempt to feed yearning souls with empty words, or breathe into them a higher life, with appeals so faithless and loveless as to bear falsity in their very tone, and fall dead upon the ear. As the bee watched by Solomon alighted upon the living rose, and shunned the pretended one, so childhood knows well the tone of sincerity, and craves reality for its mental food. Let it find the reality.
Let it find it in the home. Home, blessed word always, thrice blessed, this day, that speaks to us of Jesus, who has secured to the household so much of its purity and affection, and that brings to mind the loved ones beneath our own roofs, who have hardly slept the night from anxious waiting for the morning dawn. Home—what an engine of power, alike to harm and to bless! Let it be Christian in form and in spirit. There let God be acknowledged in praise and prayer. There let the eternal world be unveiled, and every blessing bring it near in gratitude, and every trial draw down its consolation. There let the young breathe in the spirit of the gospel. There let Mary keep her watch of love, and Herod waits in vain to destroy.
Let the world’s bad spirit be withstood, too, in the schools. The cry is now rising in every part of Christendom—from the backwoodsmen of the Rocky Mountains to the cities of the Old World, of late, stirred by a mighty want—Education, Universal Education! In no section, certainly, of our land, is this spirit comparatively more earnest than with us—for, beyond question, this State has been recently passing through an intellectual revival altogether unexampled in the annals of our Free Schools. Christians should rejoice in the movement, and should rescue popular education from the blighting touch of avarice and superstition. Let it go on in its work of growth and conquest—nurturing the children of the privileged, reclaiming the offspring of the neglected, carrying out a mode of education based upon the laws of God and the soul of man, mindful of every faculty, grace, affection, that God has hallowed and human wisdom unfolds. Let nothing that has been done lead us to be unmindful of what is to be done, alike in the extension and elevation of the schools. We wonder at the system of training pursued of old, which led youth to regard the school as a prison. Higher yet the idea must rise, as better views are entertained of the capacities of the child, and the intellectual helps and moral associations that bring them out. We need the idea of the Christ-child in the school. Let that haunt the minds of parents and teachers, and that sacred ideal of childhood will not be without loving disciples, whose voices shall make the songs of the schoolroom as sacred and acceptable as templechants or choral litanies. A better spirit, and one that demands the co-operation of all Christian people, has shown itself in our city of late, in the new efforts to seek out neglected children, and open to them the blessings of education, and industry and religion. The establishment of the Mission at the Five Points, of the Children’s Aid Society, of the Asylum for Friendless Boys, have made an era in the Christian annals of New-York, which all right-minded persons should bless, alike in their word and their work. Add to these efforts for the poor and neglected, the new institutions, such as the Free College and the Cooper Institute, which offer such unwonted privileges to worthy boys of the humblest means, and we have no reason to despair of the future of this great city, or to distrust the school as a noble ally of the church.
The Christian church! Here the spirit of the guardian mother ought eminently to prevail. The church should be the mother of the young. Oh, how cold and dreary is the idea, deemed by many the essential of Protestant truth, the idea that the young, or at least, little children, can have no vital connection with the Church; but must wait for some preternatural visitation in maturer years to call them to the arms of the great spiritual mother, and make them feel themselves hers. How unsatisfactory the doctrine, that children are to grow up, as if outside of the church, with the prospect of one day being taken in. Be ours the cheering view, sanctioned, surely, by the analogies of revelation, the faith of centuries, and by the love of parents, that the child should be regarded as bybirth and baptism admitted into the Christian kingdom, and to be nurtured from the very first in the principles and affections congenial with the government of God. Let this idea be accepted, and power and blessing would come in its train. Higher consecration would crown the home, better wisdom would guide the strength of father, and holier love fill the soul of mother, from their communion with the kingdom that claims parent and child for its own. The Christ-child should be remembered in the Christian Church. When remembered truly, he will save childhood from Herod’s hands.
This season is a time of anticipation and hope. It needs no very vivid imagination to bring before us the myriads of homes over Christendom, that ring with young mirth, and look cheerfully upon the opening age. Yet the grave question cannot but press itself upon us, What is in store for the generation, that is soon to stand in our places, and bear the burdens of life in our stead? Interesting, engrossing indeed are the fields of science, art, enterprise, enjoyment, now dawning upon us and promising a bright meridian to the new generation. Yet fearfully many dark spots in the horizon rise in the distance, and portend ill to many whose experience of the world is yet to come. The great want is of an earnest purpose, looking to an eternal aim, and enforced by a true plan of social life. The young host is ready, but needs better guidance. Muratori, the Italian historian, tells us, that in the twelfth century, in the contagion of the crusades, children caught the spirit, and an army of 30,000 was gathered from village and city,and marshalled by a child, started for the Holy Land and the Tomb of Christ. They marched on till they came to Marseilles, and the great sea stopped their fond dream. They wandered about distracted, and thousands miserably perished. Perhaps too romantic story for sober truth! But what a parallel to it in our age! A mighty host of youths starts on its way to a land of imagined holiness and peace. Vague aspirations, selfish passions, spiritual yearnings for the good and true, move their hearts. A child will lead them; the child who is to be the strong man of the age, and who is not yet known. Sadly, sadly, will they be disappointed, unless the leader is himself divinely led, and the heart of the Christ-child lives in him, and thus in the hearts of this generation, the Messiah is born anew.
Every true purpose, all genuine faith speeds the day of his new coming, and hastens the downfall of Herod and his host.
Friends, Readers, let your hearts apply the lesson of this day, and let your hearts be cheered and solemnized by its associations. Think of your homes and the loved ones there. Think too of the loved ones departed, and deem them not lost, but gone before! Love your children, and love them the more by looking on them in the gospel light, by loving them as in God and Christ!
Think too of our own early days. How vividly they at times come back, so that we almost forget maturity and its cares, and are children once more. Let them come back now, and with them all their tender associations—withthem thoughts of early home; brothers, sisters, father, and more than all of her, who stood to us in Mary’s place, and blessed us with a Christian Mother’s love!
But can the association rest there? No! Upward to Him, so holy in childhood, so glorious in maturity—to Him, Friend and Saviour, Messiah, from whom our best blessings flow, let our gratitude rise, and to God, through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin Mother, no Ora pro Nobis for the beatified Madonna. Simple faith is better than romantic tradition. To us heaven is fairer for possessing that Mother and that Child.
Christmas Day.
NEW THINGS.
Measured by any human standard, how daring was the vision of the Christian seer! From Patmos, his watchtower of rock in the Ægean Sea, midway between the hemispheres of ancient civilization, he surveyed the ruling powers of the world, declared their doom, and the rise of a new kingdom, even the City of God. The predominant forces of the existing age took visible shape before his inspired imagination. Jewish bigotry, Pagan idolatry, Roman despotism, led on by the master spirit of evil, stood before him, as so many fearful monsters. Equally vivid were the forms of divine agency by which they were to be subdued. From Him who sat upon the throne revealed in heaven, came the decree, “Behold, I make all things new.” Our pen need not lose its cheerfulness in writing of this opening year, with such imagery in view.
How much of that vision has been proved true? Enough surely to save it from the charge of presumption, enough to ascribe its daring rather to a devotion mindful of divine guidance than to a wilfulness impatient of delay. The former things have passed away. The old temple is remembered only for the sake of its spiritual archetype. The despot’s purple has faded before the bloodstainedrobes of the martyrs. The idols to which men bowed on both the Ægean shores, the European and the Asiatic, have fallen. Even the crescent, that has for a time displaced the cross, and which now in the city of Constantinople gleams from the dome of St. Sophia, forms no exception to the statement, for it marks no idolatrous shrine, but like the orb which it represents is but a partial reflection of the great source of light, before which it must one day grow pale.
Gradually, but none the less mightily, the new power went on its way, and ere long from beyond the Mediterranean on the Carthaginian shore, there came a great response to the exile of the Ægean. When Augustine wrote his “City of God,” the philosopher of history confirmed the vision of the seer, as he celebrated the triumphs of that word which planted the cross above the throne of the Cæsars. Tempting indeed is the historical survey this presented, but we must not yield to the enticement. We must quit this grand prospect of the nations, and speak of the Gospel, as sent chief of all for the renewal of the soul and the redemption of the home. World-regenerating power as it is, its first prerogative is its life-renewing office.
This principle we are prepared to lay down at the outset, that in the order of Providence Jesus Christ is the spiritual head of the human race, and that men and nations find redemption and true life from God through Him. What was said of old, needs to be said now “Behold I make all things new”—now in the ears alike of those whohave never heard Christian truth, and of those who have lulled themselves to slumber beneath its familiar sound. Nay, the most sincere Christians need constant renewing in the light of first principles and by the spirit of true life. Their piety is apt to harden into formalism—their charity to narrow into some kind of clanship—their industry to sink into a low worldly prudence apart from all divine aims.
It is not easy for any of us to begin the New-Year without a pleasant sense of freshness or renovation, as if some former burdens had passed away and many things had become new. This is well, and needs only to be made better. As we renew our friendships, we should not fail to renew our relation with the Great Friend, and invoke his blessing upon the opening months.
We need first of all to review our principles. These we regard as constituting the essentials of our faith. However right they may have been, we are very apt to lose sight of them, or gradually, perhaps almost unconsciously, allow others to creep into their place. The word of Christ to us now is as of old, “Believe.” What do we believe? What to us is the greatest reality? Many things are true—what to us is the truth? Many words are important—what to us istheword? Answer not in the language of decent custom or technical phrase, but from the heart. We have all said at some time more or less definitely, “We believe in God, the Creator of the world, in Jesus Christ his Son and express image, in the Holy Spirit, the witnesswithin the soul.” When we believe thus truly, then we have the true principles of living. We own the Divine government, acknowledge its representative, honor its form of life. But our belief becomes an empty word, unless with enlarged knowledge and experience, it is constantly renewed; and as we pass into new fields of thought, action, observation, we subdue this added territory to the rightful sovereignty, and interpret all things in the light of Divine truth. Have we done this—are we doing it? Or have we left our faith behind us, and in our world of business or pleasure, do we find ourselves either utterly without God, or with Him only in the most vague and distant idea? True faith is not overcome by the world, but overcomes the world.
We learn a great many things as our years pass, and there is a knowledge—do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the knowledge that shuts out the light of God; and leads man away from a filial faith in the Eternal Parent and the heavenly home. Such stores indeed increase our nominal domain, but only as he would enlarge his estate who were to conquer Sahara and pitch his tent among desert sands where no living water is.
Faith—the faith that God is Father of men—that he is in Christ, and through Him will visit us in the soul and the life, makes all things new—constantly leads us into new experience of Divine truth, and makes old things appear in a new light. This is no narrow creed for the recluse or the mystic. It is for men of all tempers and conditions. Nay, they need it most, whose pursuits are mostlikely to chain them down to the earth. For them indeed occasional leisure and recreation has no small solace. But, the best solace for world-weariness is the rest of the soul in God; the mind’s trust in the greatest of realities, the Being of beings. All pleasure that deadens this trust but adds to the weariness which it would charm away and is the serpent’s whisper, that promises the peace which comes only from the heavenly dove. Above all our prudence, all our labors and expedients, we are compelled to look for the true light. Revive, increase our faith, and straightway all things are new. God reveals new features of his Providence, and things familiar have a new expression, and speak no longer only of the earth.
Who can recur thus to first principles and find from them better light and peace, without carrying the renewing influence into the sphere of the affections? Here the Divine Word has a voice for us—a voice too much neglected because identified either with a perplexing theological system or a shallow sentimentalism. God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God. This truth came from Him who made the soul, and knows well its wants. Bring it near to us and feel its renovating power. There seems always indeed to be a peculiar peril in moralizing upon the affections, and they are very apt to be chilled by the precepts that most insist upon their vitality and warmth. But the Christian Gospel is little disposed to waive its imperious claims from fear of the metaphysician or the sentimentalist. It says Love God and the brethren,and bids us make this truth practical. As the years pass, instead of having less affection, we ought to have more. A true life always has more, as it enlarges its experience and its faculty—not indeed more of that superficial sensibility which is the burden of so many moon-struck rhymesters and the great staple of the common romancers, but more of that divine charity, that vital good-will, which holds filial communion with the Father, and, striving to be perfect even as he is perfect, carries the light and warmth of its presence into every sphere of life. In fact, the highest human wisdom is affectionate as it is mature. The novice in thought may be sharp and crabbed, but the sage is tolerant and kind. He who sees the truth in its reality, sees that it is the form which contains and expresses goodness. If there be a kind of intellectual power that is bitter and malicious, it is sure to be only some shape of low cunning or some perversion of the better reason—some perversion that shows Lucifer’s fall, if it shine with something of his light. The Master and they who learned of him were full of love as of wisdom. Such is the plan of God’s moral government based upon the nature of his own being.
The Father calls us to be followers of him as dear children, and in the sober thought of mature years to cherish more than the impulsive affection of childhood. He demands that our whole life-plan should be guided, nay, pervaded with good-will. If there be less sensitiveness upon the surface of the character, there should be a deeper sentiment within. He is ready to help us win thegrace, which he commends. Through devout thought, whether of meditation or prayer—through every act which brings us near to himself, whether of self-denying humanity or of common neighborly kindness, he is ready to impart to the soul something of the fulness of his Spirit, and renew our being in its central spring.
We need this influence in our near affinities and remoter relations. The ice gathers about us, and should be melted away. The most intimate ties become dull and indifferent through custom, and the nearest friends, because of their nearness, lose interest as if estranged. In the same Divine fountain we refresh every home feeling and social sympathy. Realizing anew our relation to God, we are ready to see more of his goodness in all things around, and regard every aspect of humanity, as a call upon us to appreciate his love for us by our own for his creatures. The point of view is at once changed, and we look upon our fellow-beings no longer in the spirit of harsh critics, exacting all things and owing nothing, but as ourselves dependants upon Divine favor, and owing mercy even as we have received. Every human tie is in peril, when this sentiment is forgotten. When its force is felt, every sphere of life has a blessing. Home wears a new smile, and its mutual deference repeats the great law of Heaven. Strifes among kindred and acquaintances cease. The sternest censor of the follies and vices of mankind mingles mercy with his judgment, and considers with thoughtful compassion the infirmities at which the cynic scoffs. Because he opens his heart, he does not shut his eyes, but with judgmentkeen, yet tender and forbearing, in a spirit wise and benign, nay, Christlike, he looks upon the strange drama of human life, and whilst he cannot wholly solve its problem, sees enough of God in the universe and among men to submit the ultimate solution to the Divine Power, and finds a very sure way of helping on the Divine plans by a life of justice, energy and good-will. Who of us does not need more of this spirit, more sense of God’s love to us, as the great source of kind affection to one another?
For want of it, and of the filial faith in which it has its root, we wither up, and our best strength is lost. Nay, our very work languishes—our labor, whatever it may be, loses its zest. There is no man of generous mind, who has not at some time accepted his life-work in a spirit truly religious, feeling that its burdens are to be borne in a Christian temper, and its duties done with reference to exalted aims. But how often the better purpose languishes, and we pursue our toil away from the fountains of true life, separating the spheres which God has joined together, robbing our daily life of the freshness and power, which our youthful zeal possessed without care, and which need only to be truly cared for to be preserved, nay, to grow in vigor. It is not always so with us, but too often; and there are none who do not need renovation in respect to their life-plan and work. Some things we should do, that we have not done—some things, that we have done, should have been left undone. There is much efficacy in a sober and honest review of our personal career, of what we haveachieved, suffered, gained, lost, and of what has been our use alike of our successes and disappointments. God has given to us something of his own power of judgment, and we are the better either by the rebuke or the encouragement of the “Ill-done” or the “Well-done,” pronounced by ourselves upon ourselves. More power still comes from bringing all the higher resources of our being upon our labor, refusing to become the serfs of a slavish routine of task-work, and keeping our hours and weeks fresh alike by the faculties that we exert, and the aims to which we look. Happy, indeed, the man, whatever be the sphere of his action, whose being is renewed rather than exhausted by his toil. Only a filial faith and love can insure this blessing. A cheerful temper is much, but not all; and no merely animal spirits can suffice to renovate the mind under so many vicissitudes and disappointments as most lives present. A man’sspiritis the chief fact in determining hisspirits, and the spirit can be kept fresh and strong only by communion with the God who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by God in kindness, and as to be done faithfully and cheerfully, filially, keep and enlarge their power. Whatever their sphere, they wait upon the Lord, and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength—they shall mount up with wings as eagles—they shall run and not be weary—they shall walk and not faint.
Thus following the leadings of Divine Providence, we find the true fountain of life. All things are ever new, and in our faint human experience we are able to knowsomething of the bliss of that Infinite and Omniscient, to whom all things are known—to whom there is no past or future, yet whose is the fulness of an ever-renewing life, the great I Am, from everlasting to everlasting. Existence becomes more serene, yet more earnest; less impassioned, not less affectionate; less impulsive, but far more interesting. There are two kinds of renewal, distant as are earth and heaven. The one comes from the novelty of a constant variety, the other from the freshness of an ever truer life. Just across the sea the exile of Patmos could have found an excellent example to place in contrast with the spirit of renewal which he urged. The Athenian—and he is in this respect more favored with followers than in his Attic refinement—spent his time in seeking for some new thing. Common life was stupid, its business was contemptible and fit only for slaves. Different the spirit, as the lot of this novelty hunter from that of the Christian with his ever renewed mind. The one finds what is new by skimming over surfaces, the other by drawing from inexhaustible depths. The one scatters his forces as he seeks to refresh them, the other concentrates his powers in the very process of renovation. The one yields to a passion for mental dissipation that burns and wastes like a fever, the other follows a law of life, whose pulses beat in ever serener health—nay, beat in ever-renewing vigor, and sound no funeral marches to the grave. In short, the one indulges in a mental distraction that has in itself the principle of exhaustion; the other is nurtured by the Divine aliment which gives a life that is eternal.
Are not our own experience and observation full of illustrations of the truth that has been presented. Are not history and biography constant witnesses of the ever-renovating power of a genuine faith, and love, and work, and also of the fate of worldly passion to exhaust its own springs of enjoyment. How signal an illustration we may take from the destiny of two men of the last century, who, more than any others, moved France and England—the nations to which they spoke. Mirabeau, a man of robust frame and singular native eloquence, was cut down in the very meridian of his day by a disease which was an expressive close and consequence of the fitful fever of his life of passion. His last words, in their gorgeous rhetoric, showed with what opiates he had drugged his soul: “Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, and thus let me sink into the eternal sleep.” Within that very month, a far different death-scene was presented across the British Channel. An old man of nearly four-score years and ten, rests peacefully upon his bed, surrounded by a company of friends, who feel quite as much joy as grief, as they look upon his face and hear his words. Although of frame naturally delicate, and of gifts by no means brilliant, he has moved the hearts of myriads by his appeals, and won a name better than that of founders of empires. The very week previous he had continued his round of labors, and his strength was not abated as he pleaded his Master’s cause. He sank to his rest in God with the words of the anthem,
“I’ll praise my Maker with my breath,”
on his lips, and the strain which was broken by the touch of death seemed to his companions to be finished by a voice from the spiritual world, saying:
“Praise shall employ my nobler powers;My days of praise shall ne’er be past,While life, and thought, and being last,Or immortality endures.”
Mirabeau and Wesley! Thus different are the ends of wilful passion and unswerving fidelity. All lives, according as they are true or false, renew this contrast.
“Behold, I create all things new,” saith the Lord. For good or for ill, this decree must be applied to us. In some way we are all changing as the years pass. Our lives are wasting away, unless they are renovated by a truer spirit, and thus winning ever more than they lose. What do we most need that time may be ever newer and happier, and the hours move on neither with lagging weariness nor drunken haste, but in the Divine order marked out for them by their Lord?
Are there not some things to be put off, as well as some things to be put on? Answer honestly as we look the New Year in the face—answer as to a messenger from God. What weight are we carrying, that we need to lay aside? What evil habit is fixing itself upon us, shutting out the light of God, chilling the better affections, deadening the nobler powers, and threatening, perhaps, beneath its insidious smile to take from existence moreof its beauty and joy and strength? Let each consider well his own besetting sin, and put it off. With the falling burden, scales fall from his eyes—he sees God anew. For him the former things have passed away—all things are become new. What makes our being fresher and happier than the conviction that the coming years are better than the past!
Off with the old burdens, and put on the new armor. There is something for each of us to do—something for each one of us specific and peculiar as our own individuality—something for all of us as universal as our common humanity. The specific thing and the universal good pursue as if for life itself. God bless us in the striving, and crown us in the work. Each year in its sober experience give us new hopes for ourselves and the future of our race.
New Year.
SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS.
Our thoughts turn now more particularly to the circle of home relations, and we propose to give some plain views of them with an especial eye to the temptations of city life. The duty of parents is the topic first in order.
Few if any words are given in the Scriptures to persuading parents to love their children, or to wish to provide for them. The affection is taken for granted, and they who have it not are set aside by themselves as monsters. If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.
It is not upon the parental sentiment itself, but upon its due direction, that Christianity rests its emphasis; as well it may, for what sentiment has gone more astray from the true mark, and in mistaken kindness hurt those whom it would most bless. “What man,” asks our Saviour, “would give his son a stone instead of bread, or a serpent instead of a fish?” Not one, if he really knew it or saw it. Yet what is more frequent than such wrong indirectly done?
Take the first and most obvious form of parentalsolicitude, the form literally connected with the question just cited—we mean the physical maintenance of children. It would be wasting words in this or any respectable assembly, to try to prove that parents should provide food and clothing for their offspring. Yet here, and every where, in our mode of making this provision, many very grave questions may arise. Kind feeling is not enough. Without knowledge and forethought, we may hurt where we wish to help—we may kill where we wish to cure. At every step we need better counsel than any instinctive fondness, or childish caprice, or worldly fashion. The Creator has a lesson for us in the use of all his gifts, and if we do not heed it, what we give as bread may turn out a stone, and what seems to us a fish may sting like a serpent.
In providing food, clothing, air, exercise, for our children, we are to study those solemn and inexorable laws which God has enacted for the rule of the body. In this lower court of creation there is no pardoning power, and the wrong done to the constitution in childhood is a wrong for a lifetime. We apprehend that in no one point is our American society more in error and more at variance, not only with natural laws, but even with the best European standard, than in the physical education of children. They are fed often on the trash of the confectioner, instead of the simple aliments nearest the hints of nature, and by improper dress and hours they are forced into a precocious maturity of mind and body, equally hurtful to both.
Does any one doubt the importance or dignity of such caution? The doubt vanishes the moment we see the connection between physical education, and the whole tone of thought and feeling—nay, the entire aim of life. The tastes for food, and dress, and amusement, cherished in children of tender years, may be committing them to a judicious or a corrupt method of life—may be their initiation into a school of self-control and wisdom, or passion and extravagance. The drunkard, the sot, nay, the debauchee, may date their wretchedness from childhood. Many a family has been ruined by habits of extravagance that began in the finery and feasting of the nursery. They that dwell in cities should take close heed to the prevalent danger, and not think themselves safe merely because they do as other people do. Consider how common the error is to mistake precocity for promise—to disturb the sacred reserve of nature—to tear open the curtained bud of childhood, and boast of the forced growth so ruinous to the tender plant, and then let us learn anew to respect the bidding of the Creator and follow his appointed way. Here we should be willing to take a stand as nonconformists, and have it appear in the beginning, that we are not educating our children to be the apes of the world’s fashions, or slaves of its caprices, but to be rational and moral creatures, a blessing to their home and community, a light in the kingdom of God. Let them learn early to find happiness in common things—to enjoy simple pleasures—to love the glow of healthful action above the fever of artificial excitements, the constant bounties of nature beyond the costly gifts of luxury.
What we have said applies more directly to providing for children during their tender years. In rude communities here the care mostly stops, and the boy at least, as soon as he is strong enough to be master of his limbs, is left pretty much to take care of himself. But as society becomes more refined and luxurious, it is very obvious that the solicitude of parents looks more towards providing for the maturer years than for the minority of their children. It becomes, perhaps, the absorbing question, how shall we establish them properly in life—what effort or self-denial must we use to secure their future success?—a great question, and one which troubles many an earnest mind, and heaves society itself with misgivings.
It often presents itself in a very tangible form, and by some is confined to one point—to concern for property. I will not disparage the desire of parents to secure a comfortable living to their children. But it is safe to say that this desire is strong enough when compared with matters more essential even in their bearing on a comfortable living. Surely the chief assurance of a sufficient livelihood is a good practical education. A reasonable man will not think it important to leave more than a frugal competence to his children, yet he ought to think himself unkind, nay cruel, if he spare any labor or sacrifice needed to educate them to do their part effectively and happily in the world. A large inheritance is easily lost, and may be retained without adding any happiness or dignity to its owner or the community, but a good education stands by its possessor; the strength of his trials and the ornament of his joys.
We need to look well to this at a time when, under the very name of education, foul wrong is done to the active energies, and a systematic imbecility of mind and body has the stamp of elegance. That only is a good education which so stores the mind and brings out the powers as to fit one to take an honest place in life, and do well the work given us to do. Such a culture will have an eye upon the uncertainties of fortune, and prepare the pupil to provide for himself, and all who are reasonably dependent upon him. Such a culture it is the duty of every parent to give, and the right of every child to receive. It is clear, however, that it cannot be given without going in the face of many dainty prejudices, which are so ready to pamper unreasonable wants and slight the plain utilities. The Hebrew laws required, that children, even those of nobles should be taught some useful art, and the Saviour of men and the chief of his apostles were bred in accordance with this law. There is no security against shameful servitude short of this, that a youth shall have enough in himself, know enough, and can do enough, to take and keep an honorable place in the world. Too often this great truth is slighted, and men toil in such a way as to procure for their children a dainty training that enlarges the surface of their wants, whilst it lessens the domain of their energies, and so puts a mill-stone upon a son’s back, whilst thinking to give him bread.
Yet more sternly we must carry out the doctrine of the need of an education essentially self-relying. The father has and should have more tender solicitude for thedaughter than the son, and there is no affection that the blessed God has breathed into the human heart more beautiful and holy than this, giving as it does such grace to the rudest and the most refined homes, teaching gentle speech to many a rough peasant, and imbuing the most cultivated man with a delicacy and tenderness beyond any of the charms of courts or chivalry. Yet this sentiment needs to be wise as well as kind; nay, wise in order to be kind; and a just father will strive to train his daughter to be equal to either fortune. However large or small his fortune, he will remember its uncertainties, and beware of sanctioning the too prevalent folly which regards woman as born to be petted and dependent, and brands a rational and self-relying education as masculine and ungraceful. If we have our eyes open, we must see the wretchedness of this system, and regard every daughter as cruelly treated who is not enabled without loss of self-respect, in case of need, to take a stand for herself, and prefer to an uncongenial marriage or a degrading dependence, reliance upon her own arts of accomplishment or utility. The same preparation that fits her to meet the time of trial, fits her to adorn prosperity, and to be that noble creature, the woman who guides an affluent household with energy and love, and who adds to the graces most prized in the social circle the grace that is born of God and radiates the light of Heaven.
Of course it is utterly idle to urge the need of such an education for sons and daughters, by limiting its usessolely to worldly advantage. We go up to the true basis of life for firm ground to build upon. Take that ground decidedly, and then we view all true culture as part of the training of souls under the Kingdom of God. We are not to live by bread alone, but by every Divine word, by all of God’s gifts to us. They are cruel parents who slight the moral and spiritual wants of their children and train them in worldly passions. This is, in the saddest sense, giving them a stone instead of the Bread of Life. So we all think and are ready to say. Take care lest our conduct belies our words. Whatever its position or professions may be, that is a wretched household, whose polity is not based upon a Divine standard—which does not acknowledge a rectitude above the world’s ways and breathe faith in God and things eternal. The very discipline of a true home will be modelled after the heavenly order, and will try to win the spirit of the benignant Father of all, who tempers firmness with kindness so wonderfully in the government of his creatures.
Firmness is not enough—kindness is not enough, but the two must go together. Firmness without kindness becomes the stony austerity that crushes the will into servile conformity instead of training it to filial obedience; kindness without firmness readily becomes a feeble expediency that changes with the hour in a facility serpentine in more senses than one. Firmness with kindness gives a discipline authoritative and flexible, applying just principles in a mild prudence suited to all times and needs. Of old perhaps the rigid temper most abounded, andausterity made parental rule a rod of iron; but now the other extreme most prevails, and a feeble indulgence allows self-will to be the law of childhood, and fosters in many a dwelling a juvenile jacobinism, which needs only time and chance to ripen into utter anarchy. This error does cruel wrong to parent and child—to the child by fostering an ungovernable temper, a perverse caprice that scoffs at all restraint and chafes even at the limitations which God has imposed; to the parent by bringing upon him the contempt of those who owe him respect, and by the painful conviction that the indulgence begun in apparent kindness has been as fatal as wilful severity. Away with the folly and the puny sentimentalism from which it springs! Let us look at the law of God founded in the written Word and in the very nature of things. The family is the safeguard of society—a government founded by Heaven itself. Parents are to rule, children are to obey. This principle, if carried out with energy and discretion, will adapt itself to the various ages and circumstances of life. The element of authority will be imbued with the attractive power of the truth and love upon which it rests, and as the child grows into youth or maturity, the authority that trained him, without losing its dignity, will appear less and less an arbitrary will—nay, authority itself will seem but the sterner aspect of persuasion.
For all this we need an unworldly faith and a spiritual mind. They that would nurture others in the true life must themselves be nurtured upon its true element.For themselves they must breathe the prayer for daily bread in a true sense of its meaning—a true sense of dependence on God for moral power as for bodily strength. Nothing short of a temper and purpose truly religious will make the household a school of faith and a home of wisdom and peace. We are apt to be too negligent, indeed, of modes of instruction and forms of worship. Too often a parent neglects to tell his children what is deepest in his own heart, and with many not wholly worldly persons, the years pass away without any regular habits of Christian teaching and worship in the family. The remedy cannot come from mere formalism, but it must spring from a truer heart—more of the right spirit showing itself in the right way—in all wisdom and prudence, charity and devotion.
Speaking thus, who of us does not see a startling thought staring us in the face—the thought that our own personal character is the measure of our influence, and that we cannot expect to teach or impress what we have not taken to our own hearts. We cannot cheat our children into the virtue which we affect, for they will find us out, and distinguish what we do and are, from what we say. Influence cannot rise above the level of character, nor the fountain above the fountain-head. What motive to a truer life—what warning against vice and godlessness—what encouragement in all good—that the chief patrimony of children is the character of their parents, and with this treasure small gifts are wealth, and without this treasure rich gifts are poor indeed. Unhappy is the man who leaves to his children the influence of a heart hard as stone anda worldliness wily as a serpent! Precious the influence—blessed the memory of a parent, whose life has made the ways of wisdom pleasant and peaceful, secured to his offspring a childhood pure and happy, given a sacred and cheerful remembrance to be the handmaid of an immortal hope.
The affections, it has been said, press downward more strongly than they rise upward, and parents love their children more than children can love them in return. If this were so, it would but the more illustrate the fact, that life is not utterly selfish, and men live not for themselves alone. It is true, that we do not live for ourselves alone. The merchant at his counting-houses has thoughts beyond his gold and merchandize—visions more fair and kindly than these; and the hard-handed workman who does his ruder labor, spares of his earnings for his children at school. But the love is not all on one side, although time may be needed to adjust the balance, and teach childhood to appreciate a true parental care. God holds the balance, and will make it true. In the motive and in the result, he secures the reward of fidelity. Time and eternity will show, that the love which he has inspired shall win harvests of blessings that cannot perish.
REVERENCE IN CHILDREN.
The Ten Commandments, the foundations of all law, both religious and civil, among civilized nations, are divided, all are aware, into two tables: the first treating of duties relating directly to God—the second treating of duties relating to man—the two covering the essential grounds of religion and morals. The command to honor father and mother begins the second table of the Law. Why should it not? for what so fitly stands at the head of the moral code, as the law that puts order into the household? The family is the form of government, first in time and first in importance. Home is older than church or court; a parent’s authority prior to that of priest or judge. With the family, social order began—without family union, social order must end.
There is something striking in the transition from the first to the second table—the transition from Jehovah’s assertion of his own sovereignty to his tender regard for the welfare of men. We seem to be looking down from the awful mountain with its barren crags into the peaceful valley with its pleasant homes and grassy lawns, rejoicing that the summits pealing with thunder send downrefreshing breezes and fruitful showers into those plains below.
Looking up to God, who claims of us supreme homage as his due, and then in his own sovereign right urges upon us to fulfil our dues to each other, we speak now of the duties of children or the honor to be rendered by them to parents.
Do any ask what are the grounds of the Commandments? The grounds are obvious, and the law, which God enacts, instead of being an arbitrary decree, is in entire harmony with the nature of things. It would perhaps be needless to dwell on these grounds, were there not something in the temper of our times, that calls them in question—in fact, certain notions of intellectual liberty among theorists, that combine with the passions and caprices of youth to unsettle many a household, and threaten the peace of society itself. Against the sentimentalist, who makes light of all natural ties to glorify the individual’s own intuitions or affinities, and against the little rebel, who comes to the same conclusion by a much shorter process, we urge the Divine law, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
Honor them, because God bids it, and bids it not merely in the written code, but by the whole order of his providence, by the very constitution of society. However we may dispute about the best form or true foundation of government—maintain monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, to be the best form—declare Divine law, social compact, or popular will, to be the true foundation, all must agreein the Divine origin of the family and the Divine right of parental government. The instincts of nature, the words of revelation, the dictates of experience and expediency, all agree in this, and all illustrate the mind of God, the Creator of the family. The mind of God himself speaks or should speak through the parent to the child, so, that filial obedience is fitly another name for piety; so, that prayer itself borrows its most hallowed word from the reverence nurtured at home.
Trace out the law of dependence, and see how fully it urges the commandment—the law of dependence that rests with parents so much of the welfare of the child. Not merely food, clothing, and home, but all the higher goods of life, experience, wisdom, virtue, are to be looked for thus. As a general rule, benignant Providence itself has its chosen almoner in father and mother, and the gifts are blessed as they are received in reverence. We may indeed suppose monstrous cases, in which unnatural parents exact such folly or wrong, that obedience ceases to be a virtue. Such cases are not frequent enough to alter the general law, and even in these, a true child, in refusing to conform to what is evil in the sight of God, will do it in such a way as still to keep the commandment, and treat tenderly even a perverse father, and expostulate with his tyranny in a temper fitted more to subdue than irritate its violence. Such monstrous cases need little notice in any Christian community, where parents are generally ready enough to do the best, and give the most in their power for their children. In fact, for them, the Decalogue hasno law, as if nature needed no decree to enforce parental love, and the affections of themselves pressed heavily enough downwards. The great need was and is of enforcing the obligation, that looks upward from child to parent. Our modern culture, with all its scope and refinement, has no substitute for this obligation; nay, needs it more than ever to check the wilfulness and laxity so likely to come from precocious fancy and unbridled temper. Experience is constantly showing, that even the external promise connected with the commandment meets the wants of our own times also, and now, as of old, filial obedience secures an efficient life and peaceful civilization,—“that it may be well with thee, and that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God shall give.” How many bright and dark chapters of recent history show how close is the connection between stability of society and filial respect—between allegiance to every worthy institution and the discipline that learns to regard a superior authority at home. This outward sanction the Gospel accepts, and carries it into the spiritual kingdom. By many a precept the apostles enforce the command, and by word and example, by the beatitudes of the mount, and the obedience of the cross, our Saviour imparts new blessing and worth to its observance.
We have a foundation then to build upon, and filial respect rests upon the Word of God, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. Ifworthy it will appear first of all as a feeling of affectionate reverence. It will not be worship as with the Chinese absolutist, nor mere friendship, as in the code of many a radical. The parent is of the same nature with the child, and is not to be adored; he is superior in age, experience and authority, and should have more than the friendly courtesy of an equal. Superior in degree, though not in kind, he is to be regarded with affectionate respect and deference. Any subjection more or less than this comes of wrong, and leads to wrong. To exact utter servitude is tyranny—to lower reasonable authority into flattery, entreaty, or apology, is an imbecile indulgence which a child should be as unwilling to ask as a parent to give.
If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put down by analysis and experience, than the sentimentalist’s notion, that the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most of the spontaneous play of genius—those which rejoice in poetry, music, and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear, that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left to itself. No—our principles have vastpower over our feelings, and they who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of the very trellis which overlooks it.
The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.
Manners are but lesser morals, and closely connected with the greater morals. Good manners begin at home, and if they do not begin there, the desire for them is apt to end in poor affectation. The soul of politeness is mutual deference, and where should this have its origin but in the respect most directly sanctioned by God? Too often the true filial honor is forgotten, and, perhaps, from thoughtlessness more than disrespect, children are sometimes seen usurping the prerogatives of age, speaking in tones of petulant authority, and crowding themselves into the places of elders. The best place for them is their own place. Their own dignity, as well as that of their parents, is best furthered by the deference, that gives the household its best order and makes it the school of the graces, that adorn society with its pleasing gradations, and cheer the way to its best virtues. Full enough is the temptation, especially in cities, to fall short of this true deference and to rob childhood and youth of their best character. Manners, instead of being nurtured on the Christian root, are left too much to the dancing-master, and there are hostsof boys and girls adept in postures and airs proper for the ballet, and strangers to the reverence and simplicity that most honor them in honoring their elders. Precocious passion for dress and society is the bane of the one, and ridiculous affectation of manhood, especially of its follies, is the shame of the other. The girl, instead of being calmly at rest in a child’s healthful slumber, is aping the belle in the ball-room; and the boy is walking the street with his cigar, perhaps boasting of his powers at the bottle, instead of being where he should be, in his bed, getting strength for true manliness, not fevering himself into a ludicrous manikin. “Learn to show piety at home,” is thus another form of the ancient law, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
The sentiment so essential to good manners will show itself as a rule of conduct, and filial honor will take the form of obedience. During the years of dependence this obedience is to be entire, for the parent must think and act for the child. No matter what precocity of memory or imagination, what privileges of education or amount of attainments, may seem sometimes to reverse the order of precedence, the child is to follow the parent’s counsels, and in so doing will gain alike in wisdom and discipline, for the experience of age is wiser than the pert wit of youth, and submission to a superior will is essential to a true schooling for the vicissitudes of life. It is not well to overstrain prerogative, and to insist on obedience as a sacrifice, where it might be made an attraction, if the reasons of the case are fully set forth. Nor is it well tomake obedience wholly dependent upon a statement of reasons, for many things must be done for reasons that youth cannot appreciate, and kindness is never so decided as when the impatient shortsightedness of childhood is overruled by the far-seeing wisdom of maturity. Reason there should be in every request; but if the request were allowed to wait until the reasons could be understood, parental care would cease with the first restraint, and childhood would be left to itself at the first task or pain. God himself is our helper here, for he, who calls us in so many things to walk by faith without sight, has fitted youth for the same discipline, and made mild authority in the end more attractive and efficient than premature argument or feeble flattery.
Obedience, thus considered, will not be servile but filial, and will find its own honor in doing honor to its guardians. It will lead children to ask constantly what they can do for the happiness of the family and the welfare of its members. This duty is too little thought of, especially where there is none of that pressure of want which compels children to help in the maintenance of the family. No matter how great the wealth of parents or the retinue of servants on the watch for every care, there is still place for the earnest co-operation of each member of the family, and no refinements of living have abolished the duty of mutual help, and the grace of mutual deference. In most families the services of the children are needed for many friendly offices of greater or less importance, and none will deny that the comfort of every household isclosely connected with what the children do or fail to do for its welfare. So early does the work, the responsible work of life begin, and so early may its springs of beneficence be opened.
Let any true household illustrate what we mean. What beauty in the filial confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that lighten a father or mother’s care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! What power over the pains of sickness, or the languor of convalescence, in the solicitude and consideration which children may show, and showing, may bring to the weary pillow a balm more healing than medical art! And if stinted means require frugal expenditures, or even the active labor of the young, what worth in the filial thoughtfulness that anticipates the necessary economy, instead of repining encourages frugality, and asks to be useful instead of insisting on being indulged.
And when fortune, station, or intellectual eminence reward youthful aspiration, the aspirant never wins more respect than when he makes his parents his confidants and companions. Here our common nature is not at fault, for whenever in any public exercise or examination a young person does remarkably well, we all think at once of the parents, and the pleasure of the assembly is not completeuntil the people have confirmed their own enjoyment by sympathy with the father and mother. There is great power in this fact, and what it implies—great power in the fact that children honor parents by being truly honorable, and repay best the sacrifices of so many anxious years by making their own lives a credit and comfort to father and mother. This benefit lasts as long as life itself, and the integrity and efficiency of mature years carries out to the limit of existence the affectionate reverence of childhood.
Here the whole world is one, and the human heart is the same in all ages, and history and experience meet. What state of society can be blind to the meaning of the imprecation which was pronounced at the entrance into the promised land, and joined in the same doom the idolator and him who should “set light by his father and mother?” What philosophy can gainsay the sage of the Book of Proverbs, whose sententious moralizing rises into prophetic grandeur as he speaks of the unnatural son: “The eye that mocketh at his father or refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” Who needs any interpretation of the feelings of David, or Joseph, or Solomon, in their joy or trial? How heartrending was the grief of the Psalmist over his recreant son—“Would to God, I had died for thee, my son, my son!” What beauty, as well as simplicity in the inquiry of Joseph for his father, when the prime minister of Egypt dismissed his courtly train, and weeping aloud, could only ask “Doth my father yet live?” What grandeur far above its gold and gemssurrounded the throne of Solomon, when he rose to meet his mother, and called her to a seat at his right hand. “And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother, for I will not say thee nay.” What pathos and sublimity in the Saviour of men, when, embracing home and heaven in his parting words on the Cross, he commended his spirit to the Eternal Father, and intrusted his mother to the beloved disciple’s care. We need no more than this to show how the gospel glorifies the law, and crowns its morality and piety alike in its perfect love—“Woman, behold thy son”—“Disciple, behold thy mother.”
Hear the amen that goes from Calvary to Sinai—and Honor thy father and thy mother!