Chapter XVII: The Education of Parents

"O dearest, dearest boy! my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn."--_Wordsworth._

"How admirable is the arrangement through which human beings are
led by their strongest affections to subject themselves to a
discipline they would else elude."--_Herbert Spencer._

"My friend," said an old Quaker, to a lady who contemplated adopting a child, "I know not how far thou wilt succeed in educating her, but I am quite certain she will educate you." How encouraging and strengthening it should be for parents to reflect that, in training up their children in the way they should go, they are at the same time training up themselves in the way _they_ should go; that along with the education of their children their own higher education cannot but be carried on. In "Silas Marner," George Eliot has shown how by means of a little child a human soul may be redeemed from cold, petrifying isolation; how all its feelings may be freshened, rejuvenated, and made to flutter with new hope and activity.

Very simple is the pathos of this matchless work of art. Nothing but the story of a faithless love and a false friend and the loss of trust in all things human or divine. Nothing but the story of a lone, bewildered weaver, shut out from his kind, concentrating every baulked passion into one--the all-engrossing passion for gold. And then the sudden disappearance of the hoard from its accustomed hiding-place, and in its stead the startling apparition of a golden-haired little child found one snowy winter's night sleeping on the floor in front of the glimmering hearth. And the gradual reawakening of love in the heart of the solitary man, a love "drawing his hope and joy continually onward beyond the money," and once more bringing him into sympathetic relations with his fellow men. "In old days," says the story, "there were angels who came and took men by the hand and led them away from the city of destruction. We see no white-winged angels now. But yet men are led away from threatening destruction; a hand is put into theirs which leads them forth gently towards a calm and bright land, so that they look no more backward, and the hand may be a little child's."

Children renew the youth of their parents and enable them to mount up with wings as eagles, instead of becoming chained to the rock of selfishness. We do not believe that "all children are born good," for it is the experience of every one that the evil tendencies of fathers are visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation. Nevertheless all men are exhorted by the highest authority to follow their innocency, which is great indeed as compared to _our_ condition who--

"Through life's drear road, so dim and dirty,
Have dragged on to three-and-thirty."

"Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein." Evil tendencies are checked and good ones are educated or drawn out by children, for they call to remembrance--

"Those early days, when I
Shined in my angel-infancy,
Before I taught my tongue to wound
My conscience with a sinful sound,
Or had the black art to dispense
A several sin to every sense,
But felt through all this fleshly dress
Bright shoots of everlastingness."

When daily farther from the east--from God who is our home--we have travelled, children are sent to recall us or at least to make us long "to travel back, and tread again that ancient track."

Whatever we attempt to teach children we must first practise ourselves. Whatever a parent wishes his child to avoid he must make up his mind to renounce, and, on the other hand, if we leave off any good habit, we need not expect our children to continue it. Only the other day I heard a boy of five say to his father, "You must not be cross, for if you are, I shall be that when I grow up." "Mother," said a small urchin, who had just been saying his prayers at her knees; "Mother, when may I leave off my prayers?" "Oh, Tommy, what a notion! What do you mean?" "Well, mother, father never says his prayers, and I thought I was old enough to leave them off."

In young children the capacity for mimicry is very strong. They imitate whatever they see done by their elders. How wrong, then, is it for people to say or do before even a very young child what they would not say or do before an adult, supposed to be more observant! We must not say, "Oh, there's no one present but the child," for "the child" is reading, marking, and inwardly digesting character as it is exhibited in words, looks, and deeds. For the sake, then, of their children, if not for their own sakes, parents should seek to be very self-restrained, truthful, and, above all things, just. Right habits are imparted to children almost as easily as wrong ones.

The education of parents begins from the day their first child is born. A young man and woman may be selfish and egotistical enough until the "baby" comes as a teacher of practical Christianity into their home. Now they have to think of somebody beside themselves, to give up not a few of their comforts and individual "ways," for the one important thing in the house is King "Baby." If they really love their children, parents will become truthful in act as well as in word, knowing that truthful habits must be learned in childhood or not at all. They will be so just that "You'r' not fair" will never be rightly charged against them. And, as regards sympathy, they will try to be the friends and companions in sorrow and in joy as well as the parents of their children.

Nor is it only the moral nature that is developed in the school of parenthood. Even to attempt to answer the wise questions of children is a task difficult enough to afford healthy exercise to the greatest minds. When a child begins to cross-examine its parents as to why the fire burns, how his carte-de-visite was taken, how many stars there are, why people suffer, why God does not kill the devil--grown-up ignorance or want of sympathy too often laughs at him, says that children should not ask tiresome questions, and not only checks the inquiring spirit within him, but misses the intellectual improvement that would have come from endeavouring to answer his questions.

"Little people should be seen and not heard" is a stupid saying, which makes young observers shy of imparting to their elders the things that arrest their attention. Children would gladly learn and gladly teach, but if they are frequently snubbed they will do neither. Men such as Professor Robinson of Edinburgh, the first editor of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," have not been above receiving intellectual improvement and pleasure from a little child. "I am delighted," he wrote in reference to his grandchild, "with observing the growth of its little soul, and particularly with its numberless instincts, which formerly passed unheeded. I thank the French theorists for more forcibly directing my attention to the finger of God, which I discern in every awkward movement and every wayward whim. They are all guardians of his life and growth and power. I regret indeed that I have not time to make infancy and the development of its powers my sole study."

Some parents seem to imagine that they sufficiently perform their duty when they give their children a good education. They forget that there is the education of the fireside as well as of the school. At schools and academies there is no cultivation of the affections, but often very much of the reverse. Hence the value to the young of kindly home influences that touch the heart and understanding.

Among the poems of George Macdonald are the following pretty and playful lines called simply "The Baby"--

"Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here.
Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the skies as I came through.
What makes your forehead smooth and high?
A soft hand stroked it as I went by.
What makes your cheek like a warm white rose?
I saw something better than any one knows.
Whence that three-cornered smile of bliss?
Three angels gave me at once a kiss.
Where did you get that coral ear?
God spoke, and it came out to hear.
Where did you get those arms and hands?
Love made itself into bonds and bands.
Whence came your feet, dear little things?
From the same box as the cherubs' wings.
How did they all first come to be you?
God thought about me, and so I grew.
But how did you come to us, you dear?
God thought about you, and so I am here.

Yes, God is thinking about our highest interests when He sends children to us. They are sent as little missionaries to turn us from evil and to develop within us the Divine image. When we see sin stirring in our children, no stroke seems too heavy to crush the noxious passion before it grows to fell dimensions and laughs to scorn the sternest chastisement. Heaven is saying to us, "Physician, heal thyself; strike hard, strike home; purge thine own heart of the evil. Lest your children should suffer, restrain your temper, curb your passions, master your unholy desires."

This, then, is one of the most important reasons why God "setteth the solitary in families." He desires not only that they should train up children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, but also that they may by doing so be brought to Him themselves. When the day of account comes, after life's brief stormy passage is over, He wishes them to be able to say, "Here am I, for I have been educated by the children whom Thou hast given me."