Parent and Child Volume III., Child Study and Training

by Mosiah Hall

If selfishness is ever overcome, if it is ever transformed into service, it will be when love is triumphant; for love alone is great enough to sacrifice itself for another. Love only can reach the sublime heights of faith and exaltation, of reverence and worship. Love alone has the power to say, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him."

There is, however, a strange contradiction or opposition in love. Sometimes it is as weak and timid as a bashful girl, at other times, as strong and heroic as an Amazon; now it is like the harmony in music or the delicate coloring of a sunset; again, like the thunderous roar of Niagara or the consuming fire of Vesuvius.

Love is an instrument with many strings, some so delicate that they catch the sweetest symphonies of the soul, others so powerful that they resound to the mighty storms and tempests of life, and some so vibrant that they throb to the sorrows and heartaches of a bleeding world.

Affection is awakened in the child with his first smile in recognition of his mother's face. How shall this budding affection be rightly nurtured and developed so that it shall flower and bring forth good fruit? It is desired that he shall be generous and possess good will towards others, that he shall have sympathy and the spirit of sacrifice for those dear to him; but too often the fruit of promise is eaten into by the worm of selfishness.

"Selfishness is the most universal of sins and the most hateful. Dante placed Lucifer, the embodiment of selfishness, down below all other sinners in the dark pit of the Inferno, frozen in a sea of ice. Well did the poet know that this sin lay at the root of all others. Think, if you can, of one crime or vice which has not its origin in selfishness."

As already stated, the primary instincts of the child favor the development of selfishness and the gratification of the appetites and passions. The utmost care, therefore, must be exercised by the parents, from the very beginning, if the affections and desires of the child are to be trained away from itself and not permitted to become self-centered. Happy is the child whose mother knows how to direct those earliest manifestations of love. The undisciplined senses and appetites easily degenerate into indulgence of passion, or grow into that moral control which delights in temperance.

The inborn desire for praise and recognition may express itself in bragging vanity, or expand into heroic endeavor. So, too, there is a physical love which expresses itself in a mere caress and a higher, purer, more glorious love which manifests itself in service and self-sacrifice. The tremendous hug of the little arms and the kiss of the rosy lips are manifestations of physical love; while the child is in this loving mood the wise mother should ask of him some little service, slight at first, but sufficient to make him put forth some effort to serve her. In this way she can transform this mere selfish love into the beginning of that spiritual love which Christ commended when He said, "If ye love me, keep my commandments."

The parent stands to his child for the time being, as the one supreme source of every power and blessing; the wise parent may establish between himself and the little one almost the same beautiful and solemn relationship as that which exists between the Supreme Giver of all good and His children. "Not every one that sayeth unto me, 'Lord, Lord,' shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in Heaven."

"Love is to be tested always by its effect upon the will. From the beginning the will must be made strong and unselfish by repeated acts of loving self-sacrifice. Contrast the selfish, all-absorbing love of Romeo for Juliet, who could not live without the physical presence of the one he loved, with that grandly beautiful love of Hector for Andromache, who, out of the very love he bore her, could place her to one side and answer the stern call of duty that she might never in the future have cause for painful blush.

"I knew an ideal home where husband and wife were filled with the most exalted love I have ever known, but the husband died. The wife said: 'All that was beautiful or attractive in my life went out with my husband, and yet I know that I must, for the love I bear him, remain and rear our child as he would have him reared.' As I listened to these words, quietly uttered by the courageous wife, I realized what love, real love, could help the poor, stricken heart to endure."