Are not our own experience and observation full of ill.u.s.trations 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 pa.s.sion to exhaust its own springs of enjoyment. How signal an ill.u.s.tration 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 pa.s.sion. 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.bler 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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.s. 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 G.o.d. What weight are we carrying, that we need to lay aside? What evil habit is fixing itself upon us, shutting out the light of G.o.d, chilling the better affections, deadening the n.o.bler powers, and threatening, perhaps, beneath its insidious smile to take from existence more of 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 G.o.d anew. For him the former things have pa.s.sed 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. G.o.d 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
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 parental solicitude, 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 a.s.sembly, 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 G.o.d 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 const.i.tution 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 amus.e.m.e.nt, 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d. 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 a.s.surance 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 n.o.bles 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 the daughter than the son, and there is no affection that the blessed G.o.d 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 n.o.ble 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 G.o.d 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 uses solely 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 G.o.d. We are not to live by bread alone, but by every Divine word, by all of G.o.d"s gifts to us. They are cruel parents who slight the moral and spiritual wants of their children and train them in worldly pa.s.sions. 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 rect.i.tude above the world"s ways and breathe faith in G.o.d 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, and austerity 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 circ.u.mstances 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 G.o.dlessness--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 and a 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 ill.u.s.trate 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. G.o.d 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.
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 G.o.d--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 a.s.sertion 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 gra.s.sy lawns, rejoicing that the summits pealing with thunder send down refreshing breezes and fruitful showers into those plains below.
Looking up to G.o.d, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sions 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 G.o.d bids it, and bids it not merely in the written code, but by the whole order of his providence, by the very const.i.tution 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 agree in 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 ill.u.s.trate the mind of G.o.d, the Creator of the family.
The mind of G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 has no 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 subst.i.tute 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 G.o.d 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 inst.i.tution 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 beat.i.tudes 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 G.o.d, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. If worthy 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.