028. The Lad’s Life

The Lad’92s Life

Gen_44:30 : ’93Seeing that his life is bound up in the lad’92s life.’94

These words were spoken by Judah, as descriptive of the tenderness and affection which Jacob felt toward Benjamin, the youngest son of that patriarchal family; but they are words just as appropriate to many a parent in this house’97since ’93his life is bound up in the lad’92s life.’94 I have known parents that seemed to have but little interest in their children. A father says, ’93My son must look out for himself. If he comes up well, all right; if he turns out badly, I cannot help it. I am not responsible for his behavior. He must take the same risk in life that I took.’94 As well might the shepherd throw a lamb into a den of lions and then say, ’93Little lamb, look out for yourself!’94

It is generally the case, that even the beast looks after its young. I have gone through the woods on a summer’92s day, and I have heard a great outcry in a bird’92s nest, and I have climbed up to see what was the matter. I found out that the birds were starving, and that the mother bird had gone off, not to come back again. But that is an exception. It is generally the case that the old bird will pick your eyes out rather than let you come nigh its brood. The lion will rend you in twain if you approach too nearly the whelps; the fowl in the barnyard, clumsy-footed and heavy-winged, flies fiercely at you if you come too near the little group, and God intended every father and mother to be the protection and the help of the child. Jesus comes into every dwelling and says to the father or mother, ’93You have been looking after this child’92s body and mind; the time has come when you ought to be looking after its immortal soul.’94 I stand before hundreds of people with whom the question, morning, noon, and night, is, ’93What is to become of the child? What will be its history? Will it choose paths of virtue or vice? Where will it spend eternity?’94

I read of a vessel that foundered. The boats were launched; many of the passengers were struggling in the water. A mother with one hand beat the waves, and with the other hand lifted up her little child toward the lifeboat, crying, ’93Save my child! Save my child!’94 The impassioned outcry of that mother is the prayer of hundreds of Christian people who sit listening this morning while I speak. I propose to show some of the causes of parental anxiety, and then how that anxiety may be alleviated.

I find the first cause of parental anxiety in the inefficiency and imperfection of parents themselves. We have a slight hope, all of us, that our children may escape our faults. We hide our imperfections, and think they will steer clear of them. Alas, there is a poor prospect of that! There is more probability that they will choose our vices than choose our virtues. There is something like sacredness in parental imperfections when the child looks upon them. The folly of the parents is not so repulsive when the child looks at it. He says, ’93Father indulges in it; mother indulges in it; it can’92t be so bad.’94 Your boy, ten years of age, goes up a back street smoking his cigar’97an old stump that he found in the street’97and a neighbor accosts him and says, ’93What are you doing this for? What would your father say if he knew it?’94 The boy says, ’93Oh, father does that himself!’94 There is not one of us that would deliberately choose that his children should in all things follow his example, and it is the consciousness of imperfection on our part as parents, that makes us most anxious for our children.

We are also distressed on account of the unwisdom of our discipline and instruction. It requires a great deal of ingenuity to build a house or fashion a ship; but more ingenuity to build the temple of a child’92s character, and launch it on the great ocean of time and eternity. Where there is one parent that seems qualified for the work, there seem to be twenty parents who miserably fail. Here is a father who says, ’93My child shall know nothing but religion; he shall hear nothing but religion; he shall see nothing but religion.’94 The boy is aroused at six o’92clock in the morning to recite the Ten Commandments. He is awakened off the sofa on Sunday night to see how much he knows of the Westminster Catechism. It is religion morning, noon, and night. Passages of scripture are plastered on the bedroom wall. He looks for the day of the month in a religious almanac. Every minister that comes to the house is told to take the boy aside, and talk to him, and tell him what a great sinner he is.

After a while the boy comes to that period of life when he is too old for chastisement, and too young to know and feel the force of moral principle. Father and mother are sitting up for the boy to come home. It is nine o’92clock at night’97ten o’92clock’97it is twelve o’92clock’97it is half-past twelve, and they hear the night-key jingle in the door. They say he is coming. George goes very softly through the hall, hoping to get upstairs before he is accosted. The father says, ’93George, where have you been?’94 ’93Been out!’94 Yes, he has been out and he has been down and he is on the broad road to destruction, for this life and the life to come. The father says, ’93There is no use in the Ten Commandments; the catechism seems to me to be an utter failure.’94 Ah, my friend, you make a very great mistake. You stuffed that child with religion until he could not digest it; you made that which is a joy in many households an abhorrence in yours. A man in mid-life said to me, ’93I can’92t become a Christian. In my father’92s house I got such a prejudice against religion, I don’92t want any of it. My father was one of the best men that ever lived, but he had such severe notions about things, and he jammed religion down my throat, until I don’92t want any of it, sir.’94 There have been some who have erred in that direction. In some families it is all scolding and fretfulness with the child; from Monday morning to Saturday night it is that style of culture. The boy is picked at and picked at and picked at. Now you might better give one sound chastisement and have done with it, than to indulge in such perpetual scolding and fretfulness. There is more health in one good thunderstorm, than in three or four days of cold drizzle.

Here is a parent who says, ’93I will not err on the side that parent has erred, in being too strict with his children. I will let mine do as they please. If they want to come in to prayers they can; if they want to play at cards, they can; they can do anything they please’97there shall be no hindrance. Go it! Here are tickets for the opera and theater, son. Take your friends with you. Do whatever you desire.’94 One day a gentleman comes in from the bank to his father’92s office and says, ’93They want to see you over at the bank a minute. Father goes into the bank. The cashier says, ’93Is that your check?’94 Father looks at it and says, ’93No, I never gave that check; I never cross a ’91t’92 in that way; I never make the curl to a ’91y’92 in that way. It is not my check; that’92s a forgery. Send for the police!’94 ’93Ah,’94 says the cashier, ’93don’92t be so quick; your son did that!’94 The fact was that the boy had been out in dissipating circles, and ten and fifty dollars went in that direction, and he had been treated and he had to treat others, and the boy felt he must have five hundred dollars to keep himself in that circle.

That night the father sits up for the son to come home. It is one o’92clock before he comes into the hall. He comes in very much flushed, his eye glaring and his breath offensive. Father says, ’93My son, how can you do so? I have given you everything you wanted and everything to make you comfortable and happy, and now I find, in my old age, that you are a spendthrift, a libertine, and a drunkard.’94 The son says, ’93Now, father, what’92s the use of your talking in that way? You told me I might have a good time and to go it. I have been acting on your suggestion, that’92s all.’94

And so one parent errs on one side, and another parent errs on the other, and how to strike a happy medium between severity and too great leniency, and train our sons and daughters for usefulness on earth and bliss in heaven, is a question which agitates every Christian household. Where so many good men and women have failed, it is not strange that we should sometimes doubt the propriety of our theory and the accuracy of our kind of government.

Again, parental anxiety often arises from an early exhibition of sinfulness in the child. The morning-glories bloom for a little while under the sun and then they shut up as the heat comes on; but there are flowers along the Amazon that blaze their beauty for weeks at a time; yet the short-lived morning-glory fulfils its mission as well as the Victoria Regia. There are some people who take forty, fifty, or sixty years to develop. Then there are little children Who fling their beauty on the vision and vanish. They are morning-glories that cannot stand the glare of the hot noon sun of trial. You have all known such little children. They were pale; they were ethereal; there was something very wonderfully deep in the eye; they had a gentle foot and soft hand, and something almost supernatural in their behavior’97ready to be wafted away. You had such a one in your household. Gone now! It was too delicate a plant for this rough world. The heavenly gardener saw it and took it in. We make splendid Sunday-school books out of such children, but they almost always die. I have noticed that for the most part, the children that live sometimes get cross and pick up bad words in the street and quarrel with brother and sister and prove unmistakably that they are wicked’97as the Bible says, going astray from the womb, speaking lies.

Anxiety on the part of parents also arises from the consciousness that there are so many temptations thrown all around our young people. It may be almost impossible to take a castle by siege’97straightforward siege’97but suppose in the night there is a traitor within, and he goes down and draws the bolt and swings open the great door, and then the castle falls immediately. That is the trouble with the hearts of the young; they have foes without and foes within. There are a great many who try to make our young people believe that it is a sign of weakness to be pure. The man will toss his head and take dramatic attitudes and tell of his own indiscretions, and ask the young man if he would not like to do the same. And they call him verdant, and they say he is green and unsophisticated, and wonder how he can bear the Puritanical strait-jacket. They tell him he ought to break from his mother’92s apron-strings, and they say, ’93I will show you all about town. Come with me. You ought to see the world. It won’92t hurt you. Do as you please, it will be the making of you.’94 After a while the young man says, ’93I don’92t want to be odd, nor can I afford to sacrifice these friends, and I’92ll go and see for myself.’94 From the gates of hell there goes a shout of victory. Farewell to all innocence’97farewell to all early restraints favorable to that innocence which, once gone, never comes back.

How many traps there are set for our young people! That is what makes parents so anxious. Here are temptations for every form of dissipation and every stage of it. The young man, when he first goes into dissipation, is very particular where he goes. It must be a fashionable hotel. He could not be tempted into these corner nuisances, with red-stained glass and a mug of beer painted on the sign-board. You ask the young man to go into that place and he would say: ’93Do you mean to insult me?’94 No; it must be a marble-floored barroom. There must be no lustful pictures behind the counter; there must be no drunkards hiccoughing while he takes his glass. It must be a place where elegant gentlemen come in and click their cut glass and drink to the announcement of flattering sentiment. But the young man cannot always find that kind of a place; yet he has a thirst and it must be gratified. The down-grade is steeper now, and he is almost at the bottom. Here they sit in an oyster cellar around a card-table, wheezing, bloated, and bloodshot, with cards so greasy you can hardly tell who has the best hand. But never mind; they are only playing for drink. Shuffle away! shuffle away! The landlord stands in his shirt-sleeves with hands on his hips, watching the game and waiting for another call to fill up the glasses.

It is the hot breath of eternal woe that flushes that young man’92s cheek. In the jets of gaslight I see the shooting out of the fiery tongue of the worm that never dies. The clock strikes twelve; it is the tolling of the bell of eternity at the burial of a soul. Two hours pass on, and they are all sound asleep in their chairs. Landlord says, ’93Come, now, wake up; it’92s time to shut up.’94 They look up and say, ’93What?’94 ’93It’92s time to shut up.’94 Push them out into the air. They are going home. Let the wife crouch in the corner, and the children hide under the bed. They are going home! What is the history of that young man? He began his dissipation at the Waldorf-Astoria and completed his damnation in the worst grog-shop in Navy Street.

But sin even does not stop here. It comes to the door of the drawing-room. There are men of leprous hearts that go into the very best classes of society. They are so fascinating’97they have such a bewitching way of offering their arm. Yet the poison of asps is under the tongue, and their heart is hell. At first their sinful devices are hidden, but after a while they begin to put forth their talons of death. Now they begin to show really what they are. Suddenly’97although you could not have expected it, they were so charming in their manner, so fascinating in their address’97suddenly a cloud, blacker than was ever woven of midnight or hurricane, drops upon some domestic circle. There is agony in the parental bosom that none but the Lord God Almighty can measure’97an agony that wishes that the children of the household had been swallowed by the grave, when it would be only a loss of body instead of a loss of soul. What is the matter with that household? They have not had the front windows open in six months or a year. The mother’92s hair suddenly turned white; father, hollow-cheeked and bent over prematurely, goes down the street. There has been no death in that family’97no loss of property. Has madness seized upon them? No! no! A villain, kid-gloved, patent-leathered, with gold chain and graceful manner, took that cup of domestic bliss, elevated it high in the air until the sunlight struck it, and all the rainbows danced about the brim, and then dashed it down in desolation and woe, until all the harpies of darkness clapped their hands with glee, and all the voices of hell uttered a loud ha! ha! Oh, there are scores and hundreds of homes that have been blasted, and if the awful statistics could be fully set before you, your blood would freeze into a solid cake of ice at the heart. Do you wonder that fathers and mothers are anxious about their children, and that they ask themselves the questions day and night, ’93What is to become of them? what will be their destiny?’94

I shall devote the rest of my remarks to alleviation of parental anxiety. Let me say to you, as parents, that a great deal of that anxiety will be lifted if you will begin early with your children. Tom Paine said, ’93The first five years of my life I became an infidel.’94 A vessel goes out to sea; it has been five days out. A storm comes on it; it springs a leak; the helm will not work; everything is out of order. What is the matter? The ship is not seaworthy, and never was. It is a poor time to find it out now. Under the fury of the storm the vessel goes down, with two hundred and fifty passengers, to a watery grave. The time to make the ship seaworthy was in the dry dock, before it started. Alas for us, if we wait until our children get out into the world before we try to bring upon them the influence of Christ’92s religion!

I stood in a house in one of the Long Island villages, and I saw a beautiful tree, and I said to the owner, ’93That is a very fine tree, but what a curious crook there is in it!’94 ’93Yes,’94 said he, ’93I planted that tree, and when it was a year old I went to New York and worked as a mechanic for a year or two. and when I came back I found that they had allowed something to stand against the tree; so it has always had that crook.’94 And so I thought it was with the influence upon children. If you allow anything to stand in the way of moral influence against a child on this side or that side, to the latest day of its life on earth and through all eternity it will show the pressure. No wonder Lord Byron was bad. Do you know his mother said to him, when she saw him limping across the floor with his unsound foot: ’93Get out of my way, you lame brat!’94 What chance for a boy like that?

Two young men come to the door of sin. They consult whether they will go in. The one young man goes in and the other retreats. Oh, you say, the last had better resolution. No, that was not it. The first young man had no early good influence; the last had been piously trained, and when he stood at the door of sin discussing the matter, he looked around as if to see some one, and he felt an invisible hand on his shoulder, saying, ’93Don’92t go in; don’92t go in!’94 Whose hand was it? A mother’92s hand, fifteen years ago gone to dust. A gentleman was telling me of the fact that some years ago there were two young men who stopped at the door of a well-known theater in New York. The question was whether they should go in. That night there was to be a very immoral play enacted in that theater. One man went in; the other stayed out. The young man who went in, went on from sin to sin, and through a crowd of iniquities, and died in the hospital, of delirium tremens. The other young man who retreated, chose Christ, went into the Gospel, and is now one of the most eminent ministers of Christ in this country. And the man who retreated gave as his reason for turning back from that theater that night, that there was an early voice within him, saying, ’93Don’92t go in! don’92t go in!’94

But I want you to remember, O father! O mother! that it is what you do that is going to affect your children, and not what you say. You tell your children to become Christians while you are not, and they will not. Do you think Noah’92s family would have gone into the ark if he had not gone in? They would say, ’93No, there is something about that boat that is not right; father has not gone in.’94 You cannot push children into the kingdom of God; you have got to pull them in. There has been many a general in a tower or castle looking at his army fighting, but that is not the kind of a man to arouse enthusiasm among his troops. It is a Garibaldi or Napoleon I who leaps into the stirrups and dashes into the conflict and has his troops following him with wild huzza. So you cannot stand off in your impenitent state, and tell your children to go ahead into the Christian life, and have them go. You must yourself dash into the Christian conflict; you must lead them and not tell them to go. Do you know that all the instruction you give to your children in a religious direction goes for nothing unless you illustrate it in your own life? It is what you are, not so much what you teach. Have a family altar. Let it be a cheerful place, the brightest room in your house. Do not wear your children’92s knees out with long prayers. Have the whole exercise spirited. If you have a melodeon or an organ or a piano in the house, have it open. Then lead in prayers. If you cannot make a prayer of your own, take Matthew Henry’92s prayers or the Episcopal Prayer-book. None better than that. Kneel down with your little ones morning and night, and commend them to God. Do you think they will ever get over it? Never! After you are under the sod a good many years, there will be some powerful temptation around that son, but the memory of father and mother at morning and evening prayers will have its effect upon him; it will bring him back from the path of sin and death. Are your children safe for heaven? You can tell better than any one else. I put to you the question, ’93Are your children safe for heaven?’94 I heard of a mother who, when the house was afire, in the excitement of the occasion, got out a great many of the valuable things’97many choice articles of furniture’97but did not think to ask until too late, ’93Is my child safe?’94 It was too late then. The flames had encircled all; the child was gone! Oh, my dear friend, when sea and land shall burn in the final conflagration, will your children be safe?

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage