single-not even in health and length of life, says Dr. Pomeroy" and one should be very sure he has a good excuse who refuses an opportunity to mate worthily. Child-Training. 19. Society's chief interest in preserving and purifying the family is doubtless that the child of to-day is the citizen of the future. Married men are relatively less numerous in the criminal class than bachelors, verifying the foreign proverb, "The man without a home is more dangerous than an asp or dragon." In the words of Bacon, "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune." He is likely to be more temperate, more industrious, more stable, more public-spirited, than the mere boarder. But the state's chief concern for the family is due to the fact that it must depend so largely upon home training for its supply of healthy, intelligent, upright citizens. 20 § 20. In the upbringing of childhood, as between heredity, training, and conversion, the greatest of these is conversion; but it is greatly promoted before and after by heredity and training." 28 21. Let the White Cross be raised everywhere. When a military officer, about to tell a foul story, said, in the presence of General Grant, "I White Cross. believe there are no ladies present," General Grant replied emphatically, "There are gentlemen present." The story was not told. In like case preachers even have sometimes failed to protest-alas, in some cases, it is the preacher who tells the story. He says: Colonel T. W. Higginson was a contributor, with other officers, to a symposium in the Chicago Inter-Ocean concerning the most striking instance of bravery observed by them during the late war. "On mature reflection, passing by some hairbreadth escapes, I should award the palm to something done by a young assistant surgeon of mine, not quite twenty-one years old, Dr. Thomas T. Miner, then of Hartford, Conn. It was at an exceed ingly convivial supper-party of officers, at Beaufort, S. C., to which a few of my younger subalterns had been invited. I saw them go with some regret, since whisky was rarely used in my regiment, and I had reason to think that it would circulate pretty freely at this entertainment. About Dr. Miner I had no solicitude, for he never drank it. Later I heard from some of the other officers present what had happened. They sat late and the fun grew fast and furious, the songs sung becoming gradually of that class which Thackeray's Colonel Newcome did not approve. Some of the guests tried to get away, but could not; and those who attempted it were required to furnish in each case a song, a story, or a toast. Miner was called upon for his share, and there was a little hush as he rose up. He had a singularly pure and boyish face, and his manliness of character was known to all. He said, 'Gentlemen, I cannot give you a song or a story, but I will offer a toast, which I will drink in water, and you shall drink as you please. That toast is, Our Mothers.' Of course, an atom of priggishness or self-consciousness would have spoiled the whole suggestion. No such quality was visible. The shot told; the party quieted down from that moment and soon broke up. The next morning no less than three officers from different regiments rode out to my camp, all men older than Dr. Miner and of higher rank, to thank him for the simplicity and courage of his rebuke. It was from them I first learned what had happened. Anyone who has had much to do with young men will admit, I think, that it cost more courage to do what he did than to ride up to the cannon's mouth." Such courage as that is daily needed among young men ; not for their own sakes only, but also for the defense of the very foundations of the family. In one of the German universities, where unclean stories were formerly expected on convivial occasions, a corps of the students have adopted white caps as a symbol of the purity of word and deed on which they have resolved. Such heroes, rich in noblest heredity, can say with the ancient knight: "My strength is as the strength of ten There are many such knights of purity among our young men. The Kentucky lawyer who, in a Washington Court, to excuse his foul client and himself, raised the usual plea of detected villains, "They all do it," ought to have been sued for slander by the pure men of his own city. Let us cherish no unfounded suspicions, but be sure this evil is so great that there is no danger of doing too much either in prevention or cure." § 22. Not only our tobacco stores and picture stores and theater bill boards but our homes are becoming decidedly Frenchy in their "art." " Dr. Parkhurst tells of paintings in the parlors Purity in Art. of some of his church people that no one would venture to look at except when alone. The pictures on the home walls should be not merely innocent but a power for good; scenes of heroism and self-sacrifice, such as, "The Huguenot Lover," "Christ or Diana," "The Rich Young Ruler," which in photographs, if not in engravings, come within range of even the cottager's purse. The pictures. that surround childhood are a vital part of its training." 23. Hygienic education, including both information. and exercise, important in all schools, should be especially insisted on in schools for girls. In this age of "rights" a child's right to be well born should be jealously guarded by society, for its own sake as well as the child's. The ancients were not wholly wrong in connecting disease and sin. Sin often causes disease, and disease often occasions sin. Dr. H. S. Pomeroy, referring to the habit of walking among British women, says: "This cus tom must come in vogue here if we are to have strong and healthy women among the upper classes.' Intemperance Family. 24. Intemperance, beyond its hygienic and moral menace to the victim, is a social peril, not only in its relation to politics and pauperism and disas Related to the order, but especially in its relations to heredity and home training. Not only the drunkard but the tippler also gives to society defective progeny, predisposed to disease and immorality; and, by the father's evil example in the home, if not by divorce or separation due to his cruelty or shiftlessness, also prevents proper family training." Motherhood. § 25. In the department of heredity, far above the negative quality of physical purity towers the positive power of true motherhood. Professor Drummond, who makes evolution "a process not a power" and so theistic, although he has not canceled the Scotch verdict against all forms of evolu tion," has given us in his Ascent of Man, a true and beautiful distinction between the selfish masculine struggle for life and the unselfish feminine "struggle for the life of others"-selfish nutrition being the chief function of the male; unselfish reproduction, of the female, in all forms of life. He finds in the earliest motherhood of the animal world the germs of its loftiest self-sacrifice." But in the controversy between Professor Drummond and Mr. Benjamin Kidd, while the latter may well stand corrected as to his claim that animal evolution has no element of self-sacrifice, he is profoundly right in claiming that the altruism that has developed social ethics was effectively introduced by Christ, nineteen centuries ago." Even cultured motherhood in Greece and Rome exposed and killed unwelcome offspring. It is Christian mother-love only that fully realizes that apostrophe in the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians to the love that "seeketh not her own, beareth all things, believeth all things," and "never faileth." What we think of as natural family love is largely the outcome of centuries of Christian teaching as to the sacred right to life of every human soul. Christianity has "turned the hearts of fathers to the children.” “ § 26. While family heredity counts for much, family training counts for more. Mr. W. M. F. Round, of the New York Prison Association, shows very Training clearly, from the experiments of child-sav- Mightier than ing institutions, that good training can in Heredity. most cases checkmate bad heredity." As a rule the best blood can be overmatched by bad training, or the worst by good training. Hence, right home training is even more important to the individual and to society than heredity." 38 Home is the divinely appointed training school of obedience, self-control, and unselfishness. Parents who do not insist on strict obedience in their children are the enemies not only of their children but also of society. Visiting Sing Sing Prison the warden said to me, 66 Obedience is the first lesson we have to teach here." Many have to learn it there because they did not learn it at home. Of 1120 convicts in Michigan in four years ending 1881, 617 are said to have come from homes where one or both parents were professedly pious.* It is wise, to a certain degree, to win childhood to study and obedience by kindergarten attractions, but in a child's earliest years. he needs also to be trained to do things, even when he does not wish to, because he is told to do so; to obey authority, and subordinate pleasure to duty. The kindergarten itself, I believe, should introduce at times such discipline, as well as plays; cultivating the will as well as intellect and emotion; and much more should the * This is stated in Rev. Dr. Clokey's Dying at the Top, p. 81. |