Only remember that with young boys men who have had the greatest experience are generally agreed that it is better not to put the stress on religious motives. Practically, for a young boy, it is better to treat the whole thing as dirty, nasty, and blackguardly. And the whole subject must always be spoken of with reserve, without any emotion, and with much "dry light."
With most lads I should go a step further; I should give the boy one of the White Cross papers, "A Strange Companion."[14] It is impossible to lay down hard and fast rules; it is impossible to make so many jam-pots of even young humanity, to be tied up and labelled and arranged upon the same shelf. Each individuality has to be dealt with in all its mysterious idiosyncrasy. One boy may be so reserved that it is better to write to him than to talk face to face; another may find the greatest possible strength and comfort in freedom of speech and the feeling that there is no barrier between him and his mother with regard to being able to tell her freely of any temptations that may assail him. Your mother's instincts will be your best guide as to what method to adopt with each of your boys.
If the father of the lad can be induced, at any rate before he enters a boarding-school, to follow the advice of that remarkable man, Mr. Thring, the founder of Uppingham School, in his address to our Church Congress, and write a letter of plain warning and counsel to the lad, it would be an unspeakable help. "My first statement," says Mr. Thring, "is that all fathers ought to write such a letter to their sons. It is not difficult, if done in a common-sense way."[15]
But now I come to what on all hands we must allow to be a point of extreme difficulty. I think all head-masters, deeply concerned in the moral welfare of the boys under their charge, would emphatically endorse the following words of Dr. Butler's:
"It is certain, it must needs be, that boys should, at an early period of their boyhood, come to hear of the nature of sexual relations. From whom should they first learn it? Should it be with every accompaniment of coarseness, of levity, of obscenity? From some ribald groom in the stables? From some impure maidservant who has stolen into the household and the nursery? From some brother only a year or two older, who has just received his first initiation in impurity at a private school and is too young to understand its danger? Worst of all, from the idlest, and most corrupt, and most worthless set of boys at this same private school, who surround the newcomer within a few days, perhaps a few hours, of his first joining, and, with knowing looks and enticing words, try to probe his childish knowledge, and leave him half-ashamed of himself and keenly inquisitive for full initiation, if he finds that he knows nothing of this engrossing mystery? Is it right, is it fair, is it consistent with religious duty or with common-sense, that a little boy of eight, or ten, or twelve, should be sent at this impressionable age to hear for the first time of facts of human nature which must ere long be known, and are part of God's appointment? Does not every dictate of humanity and of reason point to the conclusion that the dawn of this knowledge should be invested with all that is tender, and loving, and pure, and sacred, instead of being shrouded in the mists of innuendo or blazoned forth in the shamelessness of bestiality? There is really no answer but one to such a question, and the plain truth is that fathers, perhaps still more mothers, must recognize the duty which lies upon them to teach their children, at such times, in such words, and with such reservations as the character of each child may suggest, the elements at least of that knowledge which will otherwise be learnt but a very little later from a widely different set of instructors. I lay down the principle as admitting of no exception—I do not anticipate even one dissentient voice from any who now hear me—that no boy ought ever to be allowed to go to school without learning from his father or his mother, or from some brother or tried friend considerably older than himself the simple facts as to the laws of birth and the terrible danger of ever coming to talk of these phenomena as matters of frivolous and filthy conversation."
I can only beseech you to give due weight to these words of one who had many years' experience of a large public school. Over and over again, at all my meetings of educated mothers, I have reiterated his question in similar words, "Is it right, is it fair, that your boy should learn the sacred mysteries of life and birth from the sources which Dr. Butler enumerates, and to which you abandon him, if you refuse to speak; sources of unclean and lying information by which I have no hesitation in saying that the mind and conscience of many men are more or less permanently defiled, even when the life has been kept outwardly pure?" Can you hesitate for one moment to allow that the springs of the life which you will be the first to acknowledge comes from God should well up from a pure source, till, like Wordsworth's stream—
and that the whole subject should be so bound up in the boy's mind with his father's love for his mother, his mother's love for his father, with his own existence, and that of his sisters, that he would shrink with utter loathing from the filthy so-called "secrets" that are bandied about among schoolboys? I know that the task of conveying this knowledge presents many difficulties, but again I ask, "What is there in our life that is worth doing which is not difficult?" Long ago the definition of a difficulty to me has become "a thing to be overcome." It is not in sitting down helplessly before a difficulty that the way will open. With us, as with the Israelites on the brink of that raging midnight sea, it is in a brave obedience to the Divine command, "Go forward!" that the path opens through the trackless sea, and we find that the great waters that seem ready to overwhelm us are in reality a baptism into new life.
III
Again I seem almost to hear the cry of your heart, "I know I ought to speak to my boy, but how am I to do it?"