Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young

No repulsive Personal Applications

7. In reading the Scriptures, and, indeed, in all forms of giving religious counsel or instruction, we must generally beware of presenting the thoughts that we communicate in the form of reproachful personal application. There may be exceptions to this rule, but it is undoubtedly, in general, a sound one. For the work which we have to do, is not to attempt to drive the heart from the wrong to the right by any repellent action which the wrong may be made to exert, but to allure it by an attractive action with which the right may be invested. We must, therefore, present the incidents and instructions of the Word in their alluring aspect—assuming, in a great measure, that our little pupil will feel pleasure with us in the manifestations of the right, and will sympathize with us in disapproval of the wrong. To secure them to our side, in the views which we take, we must show a disposition to take them to it by an affectionate sympathy.

Our Saviour set us an excellent example of relying on the superior efficiency of the bond of sympathy and love in its power over the hearts of children, as compared with that of formal theological instruction, in the few glimpses which we have of his mode of dealing with them. When they brought little children to him, he did not begin to expound to them the principles of the government of God, or the theoretical aspects of the way of salvation; but took them up in his arms and blessed them, and called the attention of the by standers at the same time to qualities and characteristics which they possessed that he seemed to regard with special affection, and which others must imitate to be fit for the kingdom of God. Of course the children went away pleased and happy from such an interview, and would be made ready by it to receive gladly to their hearts any truths or sentiments which they might subsequently hear attributed to one who was so kind a friend to them.

If, however, instead of this, he had told them—no matter in what kind and gentle tones—that they had very wicked hearts, which must be changed before either God or any good man could truly love them, and that this change could only be produced by a power which they could only understand to be one external to themselves, and that they must earnestly pray for it every day, how different would have been the effect. They would have listened in mute distress, would have been glad to make their escape when the conversation was ended, and would shrink from ever seeing or hearing again one who placed himself in an attitude so uncongenial to them.

And yet all that might be true. They might have had yet only such appetites and propensities developed within them as would, if they continued to hold paramount control over them all their lives, make them selfish, unfeeling, and wicked men; and that they were, in a special though mysterious manner, dependent on the Divine power for bringing into action within them other and nobler principles. And so, if a physician were called in to see a sick child, he might see that it was in desperate danger, and that unless something could be done, and that speedily, to arrest the disease, his little patient would be dead in a few hours; and yet to say that to the poor child, and overwhelm it with terror and distress, would not be a very suitable course of procedure for averting the apprehended result.

Judge not, that ye be not judged

8. And this leads us to reflect, in the eighth place, that we ought to be very careful, in our conversations with children, and especially in addresses made to them in the Sunday-school, or on any other occasion, not to say any thing to imply that we consider them yet unconverted sinners. No one can possibly know at how early an age that great change which consists in the first faint enkindling of the Divine life in the soul may begin to take place, nor with what faults, and failings, and yieldings to the influence of the mere animal appetites and passions of childhood it may, for a time, co-exist. We should never, therefore, say any thing to children to imply that, in the great question of their relations to God and the Saviour, we take it for granted that they are on the wrong side. We can not possibly know on which side they really are, and we only dishearten and discourage them, and alienate their hearts from us, and tend to alienate them from all good, by seeming to take it for granted that, while we are on the right side, they are still upon the wrong. We should, in a word, say we, and not you, in addressing children on religious subjects, so as to imply that the truths and sentiments which we express are equally important and equally applicable to us as to them, and thus avoid creating that feeling of being judged and condemned beforehand, and without evidence, which is so apt to produce a broad though often invisible gulf of separation in heart between children, on the one hand, and ministers and members of the Church, on the other.

Promised Rewards and threatened Punishments

9. It is necessary to be extremely moderate and cautious in employing the influence of promised rewards or threatened punishments as a means of promoting early piety. In a religious point of view, as in every other, goodness that is bought is only a pretense of goodness—that is, in reality it is no goodness at all; and as it is true that love casteth out fear, so it is also true that fear casteth out love. Suppose—though it is almost too violent a supposition to be made even for illustration's sake—that the whole Christian world could be suddenly led to believe that there was to be no happiness or suffering at all for them beyond the grave, and that the inducement to be grateful to God for his goodness and submissive to his will, and to be warmly interested in the welfare and happiness of man, were henceforth to rest on the intrinsic excellence of those principles, and to their constituting essentially the highest and noblest development of the moral and spiritual nature of man—how many of the professed disciples of Jesus would abandon their present devotion to the cause of love to God and love to man? Not one, except the hypocrites and pretenders!

The truth is, that as piety that is genuine and sincere must rest on very different foundations from hope of future reward or fear of future punishment, so this hope and this fear are very unsuitable instrumentalities to be relied on for awakening it. The kind of gratitude to God which we wish to cherish in the mind of a child is not such as would be awakened towards an earthly benefactor by saying—in the case of a present made by an uncle, for instance—"Your uncle has made you a beautiful present. Go and thank him very cordially, and perhaps you will get another." It is rather of a kind which might be induced by saying, "Your uncle, who has been so kind to you in past years, is poor and sick, and can never do any thing more for you now. Would you like to go and sit in his sick-room to show your love for him, and to be ready to help him if he wants any thing?"

True piety, in a word, which consists in entering into and steadily maintaining the right moral and spiritual relations with God and man, marks the highest condition which the possibilities of human nature allow, and must rest in the soul which attains to it on a very different foundation from any thing like hope or fear. That there is a function which it is the province of these motives to fulfill, is abundantly proved by the use that is sometimes made of them in the Scriptures. But the more we reflect upon the subject, the more we shall be convinced, I think, that all such considerations ought to be kept very much in the back-ground in our dealings with children. If a child is sick, and is even likely to die, it is a very serious question whether any warning given to him of his danger will not operate as a hindrance rather than a help, in awakening those feelings which will constitute the best state of preparation for the change. For a sense of gratitude to God for his goodness, and to the Saviour for the sacrifice which he made for his sake, penitence for his sins, and trust in the forgiving mercy of his Maker, are the feelings to be awakened in his bosom; and these, so far as they exist, will lead him to lie quietly, calmly, and submissively in God's hands, without anxiety in respect to what is before him. It is a serious question whether an entire uncertainty as to the time when his death is to come is not more favorable to the awakening of these feelings, than the state of alarm and distress which would be excited by the thought that it was near.

The Reasonableness of Gentle Measures in Religious Training

The mother may sometimes derive from certain religious considerations the idea that she is bound to look upon the moral delinquencies and dangers which she observes in her children, under an aspect more stern and severe than seems to be here recommended. But a little reflection must convince us that the way to true repentance of, and turning from sin, is not necessarily through the suffering of terror and distress. The Gospel is not an instrumentality for producing terror and distress, even as means to an end. It is an instrumentality for saving us from these ills; and the Divine Spirit, in the hidden and mysterious influence which it exercises in forming, or transforming, the human soul into the image of God, must be as ready, it would seem, to sanction and bless efforts made by a mother to allure her child away from its sins by loving and gentle invitations and encouragements, as any attempts to drive her from them by the agency of terror or pain. It would seem that no one who remembers the way in which Jesus Christ dealt with the children that were brought to him could possibly have any doubt of this.

CHAPTER XXIV. CONCLUSION

Any person who has acquired the art of examining and analyzing his own thoughts will generally find that the mental pictures which he forms of the landscapes, or the interiors, in which the scenes are laid of the events or incidents related in any work of fiction which interests him, are modelled more or less closely from prototypes previously existing in his own mind, and generally upon those furnished by the experiences of his childhood. If, for example, he reads an account of transactions represented as taking place in an English palace or castle, he will usually, on a careful scrutiny, find that the basis of his conception of the scene is derived from the arrangement of the rooms of some fine house with which he was familiar in early life. Thus, a great many things which attract our attention, and impress themselves upon our memories in childhood, become the models and prototypes—more or less aggrandized and improved, perhaps—of the conceptions and images which we form in later years.

Nature of the Effect produced by Early Impressions

Few persons who have not specially reflected on this subject, or examined closely the operations of their own minds, are aware what an extended influence the images thus stored in the mind in childhood have in forming the basis, or furnishing the elements of the mental structures of future life. But the truth, when once understood, shows of what vast importance it is with what images the youthful mind is to be stored. A child who ascends a lofty mountain, under favorable circumstances in his childhood, has his conceptions of all the mountain scenery that he reads of, or hears of through life, modified and aggrandized by the impression made upon his sensorium at this early stage. Take your daughter, who has always, we will suppose, lived in the country, on an excursion with you to the sea-shore, and allow her to witness for an hour, as she sits in silence on the cliff, the surf rolling in incessantly upon the beach, and infinitely the smallest part of the effect is the day's gratification which you have given her. That is comparatively nothing. You have made a life-long change, if not in the very structure, at least in the permanent furnishing of her mind, and performed a work that can never by any possibility be undone. The images which have been awakened in her mind, the emotions connected with them, and the effect of these images and emotions upon her faculties of imagination and conception, will infuse a life into them which will make her, in respect to this aspect of her spiritual nature, a different being as long as she lives.

The Nature and Origin of general Ideas

It is the same substantially in respect to all those abstract and general ideas on moral or other kindred subjects which constitute the mental furnishing of the adult man, and have so great an influence in the formation of his habits of thought and of his character. They are chiefly formed from combinations of the impressions made in childhood. A person's idea of justice, for instance, or of goodness, is a generalization of the various instances of justice or goodness which ever came to his knowledge; and of course, among the materials of this generalization those instances that were brought to his mind during the impressible years of childhood must have taken a very prominent part. Every story, therefore, which you relate to a child to exemplify the principles of justice or goodness takes its place, or, rather, the impression which it makes takes its place, as one of the elements out of which the ideas that are to govern his future life are formed.

Vast Importance and Influence of this mental Furnishing,

For the ideas and generalizations thus mainly formed from the images and impressions received in childhood become, in later years, the elements of the machinery, so to speak, by which all his mental operations are performed. Thus they seem to constitute more than the mere furniture of the mind; they form, as it were, almost a part of the structure itself. So true, indeed, is this, and so engrossing a part does what remains in the mind of former impressions play in its subsequent action, that some philosophers have maintained that the whole of the actual consciousness of man consists only in the resultant of all these impressions preserved more or less imperfectly by the memory, and made to mingle together in one infinitely complicated but harmonious whole. Without going to any such extreme as this, we can easily see, on reflection, how vast an influence on the ideas and conceptions, as well as on the principles of action in mature years, must be exerted by the nature and character of the images which the period of infancy and childhood impresses upon the mind. All parents should, therefore, feel that it is not merely the present welfare and happiness of their child that is concerned in their securing to him a tranquil and happy childhood, but that his capacity for enjoyment through life is greatly dependent upon it. They are, in a very important sense, intrusted with the work of building up the structure of his soul for all time, and it is incumbent upon them, with reference to the future as well as to the present, to be very careful what materials they allow to go into the work, as well as in what manner they lay them.

Among the other bearings of this thought, it gives great weight to the importance of employing gentle measures in the management and training of the young, provided that such measures can be made effectual in the accomplishment of the end. The pain produced by an act of hasty and angry violence to which a father subjects his son may soon pass away, but the memory of it does not pass away with the pain. Even the remembrance of it may at length fade from the mind, but there is still an effect which does not pass away with the remembrance. Every strong impression which you make upon his perceptive powers must have a very lasting influence, and even the impression itself may, in some cases, be forever indelible.

Let us, then, take care that these impressions shall be, as far as possible, such as shall be sources of enjoyment for them in future years. It is true that we must govern them. They are committed to our charge during the long time which is required for the gradual unfolding of their embryo powers for the express purpose that during that interval they may be guided by our reason, and not by their own. We can not surrender this trust. But there is a way of faithfully fulfilling the duties of it—if we have discernment to see it, and skill to follow it—which will make the years of their childhood years of tranquillity and happiness, both to ourselves and to them.

THE END

1

See Frontispiece.

2

The "Boston Congregationalist."