Good Form and Christian Etiquette

by S. M. I. Henry

Children should be taught by both word and example that when they are about to meet any person on the street they should fall back into single file at the right, while still far enough distant as to obviate all danger of interference. Who has not found himself caught on the street in a mob of schoolgirls or boys, often both together, who needlessly monopolize the walk, as with loud talking, wrangling, jesting, jaws working at both words and gum, they publish as upon the housetop the utter lack of good form in the homes from which they have come? The first blame for this disgusting spectacle always falls upon the children; but in truth it all belongs to the homes out of which they have tumbled pell-mell without that instruction and those fixed habits which would have insured decorum and decency.

Every child should be taught to give courteous recognition to acquaintances. The boys should lift the cap to each other as well as to their elders, always to father and mother, if they chance to meet them on the street; and the girls by some modest feminine salute of bow or word. But some one may object that it seems “far-fetched” to train boys to this formal mannerism. To which I reply in the old adage that the “boy is father of the man.” The man in every relation in life will follow the lead of boyish habits unless indeed in the interests of some great conviction or self-interest he makes all things new. This can be done, but even then the traces of early habits will often remain to bring shame and confusion at some critical point when pleasure or profit are at stake.

III.

The social life of boys and girls should be recognized and provided for as a department of the school in which they shall become educated in those things which make for social righteousness and purity later on. As boys treat each other, they will, as a rule, treat each other as men. As boys and girls behave toward each other, so will they as a rule behave as men and women. Courtesy is necessary to the highest degree of success in any enterprise. The boy who is habitually courteous toward other boys will be successful in winning his way as a man among men with any important message with which he may be commissioned; and if he is so instructed that he is gentle, considerate, and true to his mother, sisters, and girl associates, he will be a safe friend as a man, a representative of Christ to his own wife and children, and help to make that home which must stand as a witness for God in the last days.

The children in whose interests I am writing must be in a peculiar sense messengers of light to the world. They will be on the field of action in the very last scenes of the earth’s history, when souls must be snatched by a power of which we have little comprehension—the power to win quickly; the power to reveal the truth as in a flash of light, so that it will be recognized at sight by the bewildered, desperate soul that has awakened at the last moment to its peril and privilege, and with scant space for repentance and cleansing, cries out for help; and the Holy Spirit must find somewhere those whom he can train and use for the service which in those days must be done to reach every creature, high as well as low, with the gospel.

The truth is worthy of the best possible investment. Its messengers should be free from every offensive habit, custom, and manner—thoroughly equipped in all that is most graceful, most scholarly, as genuine Christian scholarship goes; most refined, most chaste, and agreeable in both public and private intercourse. They should be the most suitably, and that means the most simply and tastefully, dressed.

The theory of the world considers as “good form” that each individual should dress according to the class which he represents; and the Christian who conscientiously and consistently dresses as his name “Christian” would indicate that he should dress, will be respected by even the frivolous “butterfly of fashion,” and will stand a good chance of a hearing by that same “butterfly,” even in the most solemn message, provided it is accompanied with the simple, easy courtesy of good breeding, such as can not be suddenly assumed “for effect,” but which is the result of life-long training. There are honest souls among so-called “social butterflies,” and some workers must be trained to go out into the highways where they flit away their hopeless lives, as well as into the byways and hedges, where social wrecks are huddled in darkness and desolation.

The men and women who must do this work are now boys and girls in our homes or schools, and very much which shall determine the scope of their influence depends upon what the Spirit of God shall find available in them for use. A truly well-trained, courteous man or woman can be used anywhere, among any people; while the uncouth and untrained must be kept in a limited sphere. The truly cultured man or woman whose every gift and grace has been sanctified and consecrated, will be more sure to know what to do in the homes of the wretched and the haunts of vice for the alleviation of distress and the saving of a soul than those who have never thought it worth while to cultivate winsome qualities.

God has so arranged human life and relations that even the most aristocratic and exclusive must take note of, and plan for doing, the same every-day things that are alike common to all; and the only question of deportment which can ever come between the uncouth and the refined, concerns the methods of doing these same most common things.

The mother in the humblest home, with the most meager opportunities, if she has a high enough appreciation of the mission to which her child is called as a representative of the precious “faith of Jesus,” can, in him, place at the disposal of the Holy Spirit such graces of gentleness, such a beauty of holiness, such winsome kindliness, such tact and address, as shall open the way for anything which he has to bring. But to do this she must begin with the child in his relation to the other children of his own age with whom he stands on an equal footing. To treat with deference and politeness only those who because of age or position are recognized as his superiors, would train the child to sychophancy.