Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

IS IT POSSIBLE?

The economic aspects of the great philanthropic scheme[14] which brought timely relief to the national conscience before the setting in of the hard winter of 1891, are, perhaps, outside our province, but there are educational aspects of it which, we are in some measure, bound to discuss. In the first place, the children in many homes hear, “I do not believe that”—it is possible for the leopard to change his spots. ‘General’ Booth’s scheme brings this issue before us with startling directness, and what the children hear said to-day at the table and by the fireside will probably influence for all their lives their attitude towards all philanthropic and all missionary endeavour. Not only so, but we ourselves, who stand in some measure in loco parentis to the distressed in mind, body, or estate, are compelled to examine our own position. How far do we give, and work, for the ease of our own conscience, and how far do we believe in the possibility of the instant and utter restoration of the morally degraded, are questions which, to-day, force themselves upon us. We must be ready with a yea or a nay; we must take sides, for or against such possibilities as should exalt philanthropic effort into a burning passion. The fact is, this great scheme forced a sort of moral crisis upon us.

Whether or no the scheme commends itself to us for its fitness, seasonableness, and promise, one thing it has assuredly done: it has revealed us to ourselves, and that in an agreeable light. It has been discovered to us that we, too, love our brother; that we, too, yearn over “the bruised” with something of the tenderness of Christ. The brotherhood of man is no fancy bred in the brain, and we have loved our brother all the time—the sick, the poor, the captive, and the sinner, too; but the fearful, and unbelieving, and slothful amongst us—that is, the most of us—have turned away our eyes from beholding evils for which we saw no help. But now that a promise of deliverance offers, more adequate, conceivably, than any heretofore proposed, why, the solidarity of humanity asserts itself; our brother who is bruised is not merely near and dear; he is our very self, and whoso will ease and revive him is our deliverer too.

The first flush of enthusiasm subsides, and we ask, Are we not, after all, led away by what Coleridge calls the “Idol of Size”? Wherein does this scheme differ from ten thousand others, except in the colossal scale on which the experiment is to be tried? And perhaps we should concede at the outset that this hope of deliverance is “the same, only more so,” as is being already worked out effectually in many an otherwise sunless corner of the great vineyard. Indeed, the great project has its great risks—risks which the quieter work escapes. All the same, there are aspects in which the remedy, because of its vastness and inclusiveness, is new.

Hitherto we have helped the wretched in impossible circumstances, not out of them. Our help has been as a drop in the bucket, reaching to hundreds or thousands only of the lost millions. Even so, we cannot keep it up; we give to-day, and withhold to-morrow; worse than all, our very giving is an injury, reducing the power and the inclination for self-help. Or, do we start some small amateur industry by way of making our people independent? This pet industry may sometimes be a transparent mask for almsgiving, and an encroachment upon regular industries and the rights of other workers.

Now and then is a gleam of hope, now and then a soul and body snatched into safety; but the hardest workers are glad of the noise of the wheels to keep the eternal Cui bono? out of their ears. There is so much to be done, and so little means of doing it. But this scheme—what with the amplitude of its provisions, what with the organisation and regimentation it promises, the strong and righteous government, the moral compulsion to well-doing—considering these, and the enormous staff of workers already prepared to carry it out, the dreariest pessimist amongst us concedes that General Booth’s scheme may be worth trying. “But,” he says, “but——

DO WE BELIEVE IN CONVERSION?”

Everything turns on the condition the originator wisely puts first. There is the crux. Given money enough, land enough, men enough, fully equip and officer this teeming horde of incapables, and some sort of mechanical drill may be got through somehow. But, “when a man’s own character and defects constitute the reasons for his fall, that character must be changed and that conduct altered if any permanent beneficial results are to be obtained.” The drunkard must be made sober; the criminal, honest; the impure, clean. Can this be done? is the crucial question. Is it possible that a man can emerge altogether out of his old self and become a new creature, with new aims, new thoughts, even new habits? That such renovation is possible is the old contention of Christianity. Here, and not on the ground of the inspiration of the sacred text, must the battle be fought out. The answer to the one urgent question of the age, What think ye of Christ? depends upon the power of the idea of Christ to attract and compel attention, and of the indwelling of Christ to vivify and elevate a single debased and torpid human soul.

Many of us believe exultingly that the “All power” which is given into the hands of our Master includes the power of upright standing, strength, and beauty for every bruised human reed. That this is so, we have evidence in plenty, beginning with ourselves. But many others of us, and those not the less noble, consider with Robert Elsmere, that “miracles do not happen.” The recorded miracles serve as pegs for the discussion; the essential miracle is the utter and immediate renovation of a human being. Upon this possibility the saving of the world must hang, and this many cannot receive, not because they are stiff-necked and perverse, but because it is dead against natural law as they know it. Proofs? Cases without end? The whole history of the Christian Church in evidence? Yes; but the history of the Church is a chequered one; and, for individual cases, we do not doubt the veracity of the details; only, nobody knows the whole truth; some preparation in the past, some motive in the present inadvertently kept out of sight, may alter the bearings of any such case.

This is, roughly, the position of the honest sceptic, who would, if he could, believe heartily in General Booth’s scheme, and, by consequence, in the convertibility of the entire human race. To improve the circumstances, even of millions, is only a question of the magnitude of the measures taken, the wisdom of the administration. But human nature itself, depraved human nature, is, to him, the impossible quantity. Can the leopard change his spots?