Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

offers for them the true plea, “They know not what they do.” The steps of the argument are incontrovertible; the error lies in the initial idea,—such conception of Jehovah as made the conception of Christ inadmissible, impossible. Thus reasoned the Jew upon whom his religion had the first claim. The patriotic Jew, to whom religion itself was subservient to the hopes of his nation, arrived by quite another chain of spontaneous arguments at the same inevitable conclusion:—“The Jews are the chosen people. The first duty of a Jew is towards his nation. These are critical times. A great hope is before us, but we are in the grip of the Romans; they may crush out the national life before our hope is realised. Nothing must be done to alarm their suspicions. This Man? By all accounts He is harmless, perhaps righteous. But He stirs up the people. It is rumoured that they call Him King of the Jews. He must not be permitted to ruin the hopes of the nation. He must die. It is expedient that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” Thus the consummate crime that has been done upon the earth was done probably without any consciousness of criminality; on the contrary, with the acquittal of that spurious moral sense which supports with its approval all reasonable action. The Crucifixion was the logical and necessary outcome of ideas imbibed from their cradles by the persecuting Jews. So of every persecution; none is born of the occasion and the hour, but comes out of the habit of thought of a lifetime.

It is the primal impulse to these habits of thought which children must owe to their parents; and, as a man’s thought and action Godward is—

“The very pulse of the machine,”

the introduction of such primal ideas as shall impel the soul to God is the first duty and the highest privilege of parents. Whatever sin of unbelief a man is guilty of, are his parents wholly without blame? Let us consider what is commonly done in the nursery in this respect. No sooner can the little being lisp than he is taught to kneel up in his mother’s lap, and say “God bless ...” and then follows a list of the near and dear, and “God bless ... and make him a good boy, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” It is very touching and beautiful. I once peeped in at an open cottage door in a moorland village, and saw a little child in its nightgown kneeling in its mother’s lap and saying its evening prayer. The spot has ever since remained to me a sort of shrine. There is no sight more touching and tender. By-and-by, so soon as he can speak the words,

“Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,”

is added to the little one’s prayer, and later, “Our Father.” Nothing could be more suitable and more beautiful than these morning and evening approaches to God, the little children brought to Him by their mothers. And most of us can “think back” to the hallowing influence of these early prayers. But might not more be done? How many times a day does a mother lift up her heart to God as she goes in and out amongst her children, and they never know! “To-day I talked to them” (a boy and girl of four and five) “about Rebekah at the well. They were very much interested, especially about Eliezer praying in his heart and the answer coming at once. They said, ‘How did he pray?’ I said, ‘I often pray in my heart when you know nothing about it. Sometimes you begin to show a naughty spirit, and I pray for you in my heart, and almost directly I find the good Spirit comes, and your faces show my prayer is answered.’ O. stroked my hand and said, ‘Dear mother, I shall think of that!’ Boy looked thoughtful, but didn’t speak; but when they were in bed I knelt down to pray for them before leaving them, and when I got up, Boy said, ‘Mother, God filled my heart with goodness while you prayed for us; and, mother, I will try to-morrow.’” Is it possible that the mother could, when alone with her children, occasionally hold this communing out loud, so that the children might grow up in the sense of the presence of God? It would probably be difficult for many mothers to break down the barrier of spiritual reserve in the presence of even their own children. But could it be done, would it not lead to glad and natural living in the recognised presence of God?

A mother who remembered a little penny scent-bottle as an early joy of her own, took three such small bottles home to her three little girls. They got them next morning at the family breakfast and enjoyed them all through the meal. Before it ended the mother was called away, and little M. was sitting rather solitary with her scent-bottle and the remains of her breakfast. And out of the pure well of the little girl’s heart came this, intended for nobody’s ear, “Dear mother, you are too good!” Think of the joy of the mother who should overhear her little child murmuring over the first primrose of the year, “Dear God, you are too good!” Children are so imitative, that if they hear their parents speak out continually their joys and fears, their thanks and wishes, they too will have many things to say.

Another point in this connection: the little German child hears and speaks many times a day of der liebe Gott; to be sure he addresses Him as “Du,” but du is part of his everyday speech; the circle of the very dear and intimate is hedged in by the magic du. So with the little French child, whose thought and word are ever of le bon Dieu; he also says Tu, but that is how he speaks to those most endeared to him. But the little English child is thrust out in the cold by an archaic mode of address, reverent in the ears of us older people, but forbidding, we may be sure, to the child. Then, for the Lord’s Prayer, what a boon would be a truly reverent translation of it into the English of to-day. To us, who have learned to spell it out, the present form is dear, almost sacred; but we must not forget that it is after all only a translation; and is, perhaps, the most archaic piece of English in modern use: “which art,”[5] commonly rendered “chart,” means nothing for a child. “Hallowed” is the speech of a strange tongue to him—not much more to us; “trespasses” is a semi-legal term, never likely to come into his everyday talk, and no explanations will make “Thy” have the same force for him as “your.” To make a child utter his prayers in a strange speech is to put up a barrier between him and his “Almighty Lover.” Again, might we not venture to teach our children to say “dear God”? A parent, surely, can believe that no austerely reverential style can be so sweet in the Divine Father’s ears as the appeal to “dear God” for sympathy in joy and help in trouble, which flows naturally from the little child who is “used to God.” Let children grow up aware of the constant, immediate, joy-giving, joy-taking Presence in the midst of them, and you may laugh at all assaults of “infidelity,” which is foolishness to him who knows his God as—only far better than—he knows father or mother, wife or child.

Let them grow up, too, with the shout of a King in their midst. There are, in this poor stuff we call human nature, founts of loyalty, worship, passionate devotion, glad service, which have, alas! to be unsealed in the earth-laden older heart, but only ask place to flow from the child’s. There is no safeguard and no joy like that of being under orders, being possessed, controlled, continually in the service of One whom it is gladness to obey.

We lose sight of the fact in our modern civilisation, but a king, a leader, implies warfare, a foe, victory—possible defeat and disgrace. And this is the conception of life which cannot too soon be brought before children.