Health: Five Lay Sermons to Working-People

by John Brown

There is another practice which I must notice, and that is giving children laudanum to make them sleep, and keep them quiet, and for coughs and windy pains. Now, this is a most dangerous thing. I have often been called in to see children who were dying, and who did die, from laudanum given in this way. I have known four drops to kill a child a month old; and ten drops one a year old. The best rule, and one you should stick to, as under God's eye as well as the law's, is, never to give laudanum without a Doctor's line or order. And when on this subject, I would also say a word about the use of opium and laudanum among yourselves. I know this is far commoner among the poor in Edinburgh than is thought. But I assure you, from much experience, that the drunkenness and stupefaction from the use of laudanum is even worse than that from whiskey. The one poisons and makes mad the body; the other, the laudanum, poisons the mind, and makes it like an idiot's. So, in both matters beware; death is in the cup, murder is in the cup, and poverty and the workhouse, and the gallows, and an awful future of pain and misery,—all are in the cup. These are the wages the Devil pays his servants with for doing his work.

But to go back to the bairns. At first a word on our old friends, the bowels. Let them alone as much as you can. They will put themselves and keep themselves right, if you take care to prevent wrong things going into the stomach. No sour apples, or raw turnips or carrots; no sweeties or tarts, and all that kind of abomination; no tea, to draw the sides of their tender little stomachs together; no whiskey, to kill their digestion; no Gundy, or Taffy, or Lick, or Black Man, or Jib; the less sugar and sweet things the better; the more milk and butter and fat the better; but plenty of plain, halesome food, parritch and milk, bread and butter, potatoes and milk, good broth,—kail as we call it. You often hear of the wonders of cod-liver oil, and they are wonders; poor little wretches who have faces like old puggies, and are all belly and no legs, and are screaming all day and all night too,—these poor little wretches under the cod-liver oil, get sonsy, and rosy, and fat, and happy, and strong. Now, this is greatly because the cod-liver oil is capital food. If you can't afford to get cod-liver oil for delicate children, or if they reject it, give them plain olive oil, a tablespoonful twice a day, and take one to yourself, and you will be astonished how you will both of you thrive.

Some folk will tell you that children's feet should be always kept warm. I say no. No healthy child's feet are warm; but the great thing is to keep the body warm. That is like keeping the fire good, and the room will be warm. The chest, the breast, is the place where the fire of the body,—the heating apparatus,—is, and if you keep it warm, and give it plenty of fuel, which is fresh air and good food, you need not mind about the feetikins, they will mind themselves; indeed, for my own part, I am so ungenteel as to think bare feet and bare legs in summer the most comfortable wear, costing much less than leather and worsted, the only kind of soles that are always fresh. As to the moral training of children, I need scarcely speak to you. What people want about these things is, not knowledge, but the will to do what is right,—what they know to be right, and the moral power to do it.

Whatever you wish your child to be, be it yourself. If you wish it to be happy, healthy, sober, truthful, affectionate, honest, and godly, be yourself all these. If you wish it to be lazy and sulky, and a liar, and a thief, and a drunkard, and a swearer, be yourself all these. As the old cock crows, the young cock learns. You will remember who said, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And you may, as a general rule, as soon expect to gather grapes from thorns, and figs from thistles, as get good, healthy, happy children from diseased and lazy and wicked parents.

Let me put you in mind, seriously, of one thing that you ought to get done to all your children, and that is, to have them vaccinated, or inoculated with the cow-pock. The best time for this is two months after birth, but better late than never, and in these times you need never have any excuse for its not being done. You have only to take your children to the Old or the New Town Dispensaries. It is a real crime, I think, in parents to neglect this. It is cruel to their child, and it is a crime to the public. If every child in the world were vaccinated, which might be managed in few years, that loathsome and deadly disease, the small-pox, would disappear from the face of the earth; but many people are so stupid, and so lazy, and so prejudiced, as to neglect this plain duty, till they find to their cost that it is too late. So promise me, all seriously in your hearts, to see to this if it is not done already, and see to it immediately.

Be always frank and open with your children. Make them trust you and tell you all their secrets. Make them feel at ease with you, and make free with them. There is no such good plaything for grown-up children like you and me as weans, wee ones. It is wonderful what you can get them to do with a little coaxing and fun. You all know this as well as I do, and you all practise it every day in your own families. Here is a pleasant little story out of an old book. "A gentleman having led a company of children beyond their usual journey, they began to get weary, and all cried to him to carry them on his back, but because of their multitude he could not do this. 'But,' says he, 'I'll get horses for us all'; then cutting little wands out of the hedge as ponies for them, and a great stake as a charger for himself, this put mettle in their little legs, and they rode cheerily home." So much for a bit of ingenious fun.

One thing, however poor you are, you can give your children, and that is your prayers, and they are, if real and humble, worth more than silver or gold,—more than food and clothing, and have often brought from our Father who is in heaven, and hears our prayers, both money and meat and clothes, and all worldly good things. And there is one thing you can always teach your child; you may not yourself know how to read or write, and therefore you may not be able to teach your children how to do these things; you may not know the names of the stars or their geography, and may therefore not be able to tell them how far you are from the sun, or how big the moon is; nor be able to tell them the way to Jerusalem or Australia, but you may always be able to tell them who made the stars and numbered them, and you may tell them the road to heaven. You may always teach them to pray. Some weeks ago, I was taken out to see the mother of a little child. She was very dangerously ill, and the nurse had left the child to come and help me. I went up to the nursery to get some hot water, and in the child's bed I saw something raised up. This was the little fellow under the bedclothes kneeling. I said, "What are you doing?" "I am praying God to make mamma better," said he. God likes these little prayers and these little people,—for of such is the kingdom of heaven. These are his little ones, his lambs, and he hears their cry; and it is enough if they only lisp their prayers. "Abba, Father," is all he needs; and our prayers are never so truly prayers as when they are most like children's in simplicity, in directness, in perfect fulness of reliance. "They pray right up," as black Uncle Tom says in that wonderful book, which I hope you have all read and wept over.

I forgot to speak about punishing children. I am old-fashioned enough to uphold the ancient practice of warming the young bottoms with some sharpness, if need be; it is a wholesome and capital application, and does good to the bodies, and the souls too, of the little rebels, and it is far less cruel than being sulky, as some parents are, and keeping up a grudge at their children. Warm the bott, say I, and you will warm the heart too; and all goes right.

And now I must end. I have many things I could say to you, but you have had enough of me and my bairns, I am sure. Go home, and when you see the little curly pows on their pillows, sound asleep, pour out a blessing on them, and ask our Saviour to make them his; and never forget what we began with, that they came from God, and are going back to him, and let the light of eternity fall upon them as they lie asleep, and may you resolve to dedicate them and yourselves to him who died for them and for us all, and who was once himself a little child, and sucked the breasts of a woman, and who said that awful saying, "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones, it had been better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the midst of the sea."