The cause of education would be indefinitely furthered if, in addition to formal means, there were but this principle awakened in the hearts of the young, that what they have they must bestow. All are not natural instructors, but a large proportion are; and those who do possess such a talent are the best possible teachers to those a little younger than themselves. Many have more patience with the difficulties they have lately left behind, and enjoy their power of assisting more than those further removed in age and knowledge do.
Then the intercourse may be far more congenial and profitable than where the teacher receives for hire all sorts of pupils as they are sent him by their guardians. Here be need only choose those who have a predisposition for what he is best able to teach; and, as I would have the so-called higher instruction as much diffused in this way as the lower, there would be a chance of awakening all the power that now lies latent.
If a girl, for instance, who has only a passable talent for music, but who, from the advantage of social position, has been able to gain thorough instruction, felt it her duty to teach whomsoever she know that had a talent without money to cultivate it, the good is obvious.
Those who are learning, receive an immediate benefit by the effort to rearrange and interpret what they learn; so the use of this justice would be two-fold.
Some efforts are made here and there; nay, sometimes there are those who can say they have returned usury for every gift of fate; and would others make the same experiments, they might find Utopia not so far off as the children of this world, wise in securing their own selfish ease, would persuade us it must always be.
We have hinted what sort of Christmas-box we would wish for the children; it must be one as full, as that of the Christ-child must be, of the pieces of silver that were lost and are found. But Christmas with its peculiar associations has deep interest for men and women no less. At that time thus celebrated, a pure woman saw in her child what the Son of man should be as a child of God. She anticipated fur him a life of glory to God, peace and good-will towards men. In any young mother's heart, who has any purity of heart, the same feelings arise. But most of these mothers carelessly let them go without obeying their instructions. If they did not, we should see other children, other men than now throng our streets. The boy could not invariably disappoint the mother, the man the wife, who steadily demanded of him such a career.
And Man looks upon Woman, in this relation, always as he should. Does he see in her a holy mother, worthy to guard the infancy of an immortal soul? Then she assumes in his eyes those traits which the Romish church loved to revere in Mary. Frivolity, base appetite, contempt, are exorcised, and Man and Woman appear again, in unprofaned connection, as brother and sister, children and servants of one Divine Love, and pilgrims to a common aim.
Were all this right in the private sphere, the public would soon right itself also, and the nations of Christendom might join in a celebration such as "Kings and Prophets waited for," and so many martyrs died to achieve, of Christ-mass.