_William Lyon Phelps_
CHAPTER TEN
_Religion in the Home_
During my forty years of teaching college under-graduates, if the lesson for the day was pertinent or an occasion afforded the opportunity, I talked to the men in the cla.s.sroom about their careers--not concerning vocational training; what I emphasized was the right mental att.i.tude toward life itself, the perhaps inarticulate philosophy underlying all choices and all ambitions.
I have always been able to speak more intimately to a group of young people than to an individual. The individual must take the initiative. I believe we have no more right to probe into the secret places of the heart than we have to pick a man"s pocket. Whenever a student came to me alone and on his own, then I was willing and glad to discuss anything with him. But I believe every man"s personality is sacred: an unauthorized or unasked-for attempt to enter it is the worst sort of trespa.s.sing.
In the cla.s.sroom anything may be discussed without embarra.s.sment. No teacher ever had a more intimate cla.s.sroom than mine. For my main interest in literature, which I taught professionally, is its relation to men and women. Browning said his poetry dealt exclusively with the human soul; and it so happens that four poems of Tennyson"s which, intentionally or not, are placed together, deal with four terrific pa.s.sions. The poems are "The First Quarrel," "Rizpah," "The Northern Cobbler," and "The Revenge." They deal respectively with s.e.x, mother love, drink, and patriotism. All four have produced happiness, and all four have produced murder. Life is dangerous.
Students naturally wish to be successful in their chosen careers. I told them the greatest and most important career was marriage; that, unlike other careers, marriage was a career open to every one of them. For among the many and striking differences between male and female we may observe this: not every woman can be married, but every man can. There is always some woman who will marry him.
The highest happiness known on earth is in marriage. Every man who is happily married is a successful man even if he has failed in everything else. And every man whose marriage is a failure is not a successful man even if he has succeeded in everything else. The great Russian novelist Turgenev said he would give all his fame and all his genius if there were only one woman who cared whether he came home late to dinner. It would have been well if he had known this when he was young.
I told my students: "Young gentlemen, although very few of you are now engaged to be married and not one of you is married, _your wives are alive_; they are living now. You do not know their names or where they are; but isn"t it exciting to think that you are every moment drawing nearer to each other? She is half an hour closer to you now than when you entered this cla.s.sroom. Some in California are sound asleep, for it is before dawn; some are eating breakfast in New York City; some are eating lunch in Europe. But all your wives are as real as if they were already living with you. What do you intend to do about it?"
Those preparing for the law or medicine take special studies; those preparing for athletic contests take special training. If they did not, they would be idiotic. Those who are preparing for marriage should not leave success to chance. For, while happiness is sometimes dependent on luck, in the majority of instances it is not; happiness usually follows the proper conditions.
Thus boys and girls, young men and women, will do well if they train their bodies and their minds to be successful husbands and wives long before marriage. It is worth it; for they are in training for the highest prize obtainable on earth, and yet one open to and won by millions.
Not being a physician and being ignorant of physiology, I know little about the value of s.e.x instruction. Yet however important s.e.x instruction may be to those about to be married, there is one thing more important--character. Two people unselfish and considerate, tactful and warmhearted, and salted with humor, who are in love, have the most essential of all qualifications for a successful marriage--they have _character_. People about to be married need training in character much more than they need instruction in s.e.x.
From childhood boys and girls find out how children come, but the secret of a good character, temperament, and disposition is not so readily found.
The reason why character is the most important requisite for success in marriage is not merely that it happens to be the chief cause of happiness, but that those who have character can turn an unsuccessful marriage into a successful one, instead of taking the easy way out, and acknowledging failure. No man or no woman is to blame for making a foolish marriage; it might happen to anyone. The test of character is not whether one has or has not made a foolish marriage; the test comes after the foolish marriage has been made. What a triumph then to turn that failure into a success, as the statesman turns a minority into a majority!
This article is addressed to young people, for those who marry late in life either do not need any suggestions or are already incurable. I am in favor of early marriages. I am delighted when either the boy"s parents or those of the girl have money enough so that the young pair can be married at twenty-two, before they begin professional study or work. And when there is little money but either or both have a job, then by all means they should be married. When young people marry, they take difficulties of housekeeping and privations as a lark, even as young people do camping out. When I was a boy, camping out was absolute bliss; now it would be absolute horror. Furthermore, in youth neither of them has "set"; they can accommodate themselves to each other.
The late President Harper of the University of Chicago was married at nineteen--not so young in his case, for he had already taken his doctor"s degree. He told me that during the first five or six years there were times when neither he nor his wife could mail a letter, because they did not have enough cash to buy one postage stamp. He laughed aloud as he recounted this, and added, "There was never one moment when either of us regretted our marriage."
Marriage can be wonderful from every point of view when it is a combination of the highest physical delight with the highest spiritual development. It is indeed the sublimation of the senses. The great novelist George Meredith, who hated priggishness in all its forms, said in a letter: "I have written always with the perception that there is no life but of the spirit; that the concrete is really the shadowy; yet that the way to spiritual life lies in the complete unfolding of the creature, not in the nipping of his pa.s.sions. An outrage to Nature helps to extinguish his light. To the flourishing of the spirit, then, through the healthy exercise of the senses."
Could there be a better description of the union of physical and spiritual development in marriage than his phrase "the complete unfolding of the creature"?
To his son Meredith wrote: "Look for the truth in everything, and follow it, and you will then be living justly before G.o.d. Let nothing flout your sense of a Supreme Being, and be certain that your understanding wavers whenever you chance to doubt that He leads to good. We grow to good as surely as the plant grows to the light. Do not lose the habit of praying to the unseen Divinity. Prayer for worldly goods is worse than fruitless, but prayer for strength of soul is that pa.s.sion of the soul which catches the gift it seeks."
What is love? From the age of six or seven on boys and girls fall in love with a good many different persons. But this is not the same thing as married love, which grows by companionship and by sharing sorrows as well as pleasures. Many years ago a college friend of mine, a splendid fellow with everything to make life worth living, was married to a fine girl. He died suddenly, during the first week of the honeymoon. I said to a man of sixty, "Can anything be more tragic than that?"
"Yes," he replied unhesitatingly, "it is more tragic when the husband or wife dies after twenty-five years of marriage."
He was right; the loss after twenty-five years is more terrible; and in the instance I mentioned the shattered and desolated bride was in two years happily married to a second husband.
The overwhelming pa.s.sion of love is certainly rapture, and marriage is its most satisfying consummation. But true love is not so expressive in desire for possession as it is in consideration for the welfare of the beloved object. "Oh, how I love you!" may not mean as much as "Don"t go out without your rubbers on." Do you remember that pa.s.sage in Guy de Maupa.s.sant where the husband said just that to his wife? And they were astounded when the maiden aunt, who had lived with them for years without a word of dissatisfaction, who had gone in and out of the room as unremarked as the family cat, who was thought to be incapable of emotion, suddenly burst into a storm of weeping and cried, "No one has ever cared whether or not I had my rubbers on!"
Yet expressions of love and pa.s.sion, embraces and caresses, are also essential. I told my students, "After you are married never leave the house, even if only to post a letter at the corner, without kissing your wife." This very simple act is a tremendous preservative of married happiness.
I also advised them during the first twenty years of marriage to occupy the same bedroom. Quarrels and even insults given in the heat of anger are certain to happen in nine marriages out of ten. It is supremely important not to let these flames of resentment become a fatal conflagration. They must not last. Never go to sleep with resentment in your hearts.
"And blessings on the falling out That all the more endears, When we fall out with those we love, And kiss again with tears!"
Although happy marriages are common (unhappy ones are still news), the only ideal, flawless marriages I ever heard of were those of the Brownings and the Hawthornes; in both instances the husbands were men of genius and the wives positively angelic.
Since the greatest of all the arts is the art of living together, and since the highest and most permanent happiness depends on it, and since the way to practice this art successfully lies through character, the all-important question is how to obtain character.
The surest way is through religion--religion in the home. All that we know for certain of every person is that he is imperfect. Human imperfection means a chronic need for improvement. The most tremendous and continuous elevating, purifying, strengthening force is religious faith.
My parents neglected my social training. I am sorry they did. They were careless about my clothes and my personal appearances. I am sorry for it. But I am supremely grateful for their religious and spiritual training. Every day of my life I am grateful. I would rather belong to the church than belong to any other organization or society or club. I would rather be a church member than receive any honor or decoration in the world.
It amuses me when I read novels written by those who never had any religious faith or who have lost it, novels that describe religious training in the home as producing unhappiness and hypocrisy and morbidity, the atmosphere one of thick gloom. As I look back on my childhood, it seems to me that our house was full of laughter. Table conversation was enlivened with mirth. If there ever was a merry household, it was ours. Our daily existence was full of fun, and Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July, and birthdays were delirious.
This is normal and natural and logical. Religious faith is a central heating plant--it warms and energizes one"s whole existence. It gives a reason for life itself, for development. It gives a philosophy for conduct, and, far more important, it _emotionalizes_ conduct even more strongly than athletics and patriotism.
Of all essential things, the most essential in married life and in the bringing up of children is religion. When two people are engaged and are making plans for living together, they are sure to discuss religion. You remember how suddenly Marguerite turned to Faust and asked him point-blank, "Do you believe in G.o.d?"
A chief reason why bringing up children is so difficult is that example is so much more important than precept. I am a qualified literary critic, although I never wrote a novel; I am a qualified drama critic, although I never wrote a play; I am a qualified baseball and lawn tennis critic, although I never was a first-cla.s.s player. But when parents endeavor to bring up children to reflect honor on the family and be useful members of society, the parents must set a good example. A man once wrote to Carlyle asking him if he ought to teach his little children to say prayers. The severe Scot replied: "Yes, but only if you pray yourself. Don"t teach them anything in which you yourself do not believe."
The Scot was right. To teach little children to say their prayers when the parents never say them themselves is like teaching a dog to say his prayers, a trick that seems to amuse many people. To have little children say grace at the table when no adult in the room has any faith is again only a pretty trick. But to send them to church and Sunday School when the parents stay away is far worse; it is culpable. Then the children regard church-going, praying, and religion as one of the innumerable burdens and penalties of childhood, from which they will escape as soon as they reach independence.
When Overton, the great Yale athlete, who was killed in the war, left his Tennessee home to go to college, his father told him that he would not give him any advice as to morals or behavior; "but, Johnny, will you promise me that you will never go to sleep at night until you have said your prayers?" John promised, and afterward told his father he had kept his word.
If both young husband and wife share a similar religious belief, it is an enormous a.s.set; and immense help to permanence in married happiness.
Now, one cannot believe in G.o.d and in Our Lord merely by wishing to do so. Yet I often think that many who do not believe do not really wish to with pa.s.sionate earnestness; with as strong a wish as they have for money or good looks or popularity.
There are many who say and more who think without saying: "If I only had the faith I had as a child! Then I believed in G.o.d and in Jesus Christ and in Heaven." One might almost as well say, "If I only had the knowledge of algebra I had as a child!" Why do small boys and girls know algebra and why in later years do they not know it? Because when they were at school, they gave their attention to it; they studied it; they thought about it. But after leaving school they may never have opened an algebra book or considered the subject again.
What does one expect? If one expresses regret for the lost faith of childhood, it is proper to ask: "How long is it since you read the Gospels? How long is it since you prayed?"
Since religious faith is such an a.s.set to happiness, such a foundation for character and for married life and bringing up children, one might make an effort to recover it, or at least to consider it.
I believe Sunday should be a day of joy and happiness. Sunday afternoon games and recreation are fine, but one enjoys them more if one has been to church in the morning or spent part of the day in either solitary or community worship. Those parents who selfishly seek only their own pleasures every weekend, who do nothing but amuse themselves--are they likely to bring up their children successfully?
To those who have no faith and to those who have lost it let me recommend some wise words by Dean Inge. There are those who are as explosively and suddenly "converted" as was St. Paul; but there are also those who cannot have such an experience; and many, many are the ways to G.o.d. Give the matter serious attention; it deserves it. It is the most serious of all things.
Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best. It means in music to prefer Beethoven not only to jazz but to Brahms. So it is in all forms of art, in athletics, in politics, in everything.
Now, the Person celebrated in the Gospels is the greatest Personality in all history. He knew more about life than Shakespeare. He was the greatest nerve specialist who ever lived. "Come unto me ... and you shall find rest unto your souls." His way is incomparably the best way; it is the way to peace of mind, to courage, independence, fearlessness, to joy. If we find faith lacking, try His way.
Listen to Dean Inge; he is discussing the illumination of the mind that _follows recognition_ of the Master:
"This illumination must be earned, or rather prepared for, by a strenuous course of moral discipline. The religious life begins with Faith, which has been defined ... as the resolution to stand or fall by the n.o.blest hypothesis. This venture of the will and conscience progressively verifies itself as we progress on the upward path. _That which began as an experiment ends as an experience._ We become accustomed to breathe the atmosphere of the spiritual world."
Young people about to be married, young people recently married, young fathers and mothers, should give religion the most serious consideration. To neglect it, to be indifferent to it, is worse and more foolish than to be antagonistic. Religion is not a frill or an ornament or a luxury; still less is it a thing to clutch at only in danger or in heartbreak.
Religion is the greatest creative force in the world; it has made thousands of saints and thousands of heroes; it has revolutionized innumerable individual lives. It has changed people from selfishness to unselfishness; from cowardice to courage; from despair to hope; from vulgarity to decency; from barrenness of life to fruitfulness. When religion can change the lives of millions, when it can produce supreme creations in art, it is a force worth serious consideration.
Religious faith has produced the finest architecture, the finest painting, the finest music, the finest literature in the world.