In most large families there is a bad boy, a black sheep in the flock, an Ishmael whom Abraham will drive out into the wilderness, to meet an angel if he can find one. That story of Hagar and her son is very old, but verified anew each year in families and nations. So in society there are criminals who do not keep up with the moral advance of the mass, stragglers from the march, whom society treats as Abraham his base-born boy, but sending them off with no loaf or skin of water, not even a blessing, but a curse; sending them off as Cain went, with a bad name and a mark on their forehead! So in the world there are inferior nations, savage, barbarous, half-civilized; some are inferior in nature, some perhaps only behind us in development; on a lower form in the great school of Providence—Negroes, Indians, Mexicans, Irish, and the like, whom the world treats as Ishmael and the Gibeonites got treated: now their land is stolen from them in war; their children, or their persons, are annexed to the strong as slaves. The civilized continually preys on the savage, reannexing their territory and stealing their persons—owning them or claiming their work. Esau is rough and hungry, Jacob smooth and well fed. The smooth man overreaches the rough; buys his birthright for a mess of pottage; takes the ground from underneath his feet, thereby supplanting his brother. So the elder serves the younger, and the fresh civilization, strong, and sometimes it may be wicked also, overmasters the ruder age that is contented to stop. The young man now a barbarian will come up one day and take all our places, making us seem ridiculous, nothing but timid conservatives!
All these three, the reputed pests of the family, society, and the world, are but loiterers from the march, bad boys, or dull ones. Criminals are a class of such; savages are nations thereof—classes or nations that for some cause do not keep up with the movement of mankind. The same human nature is in us all, only there it is not so highly developed. Yet the bad boy, who to-day is a curse to the mother that bore him, would perhaps have been accounted brave and good in the days of the Conqueror; the dangerous class might have fought in the Crusades and been reckoned soldiers of the Lord whose chance for heaven was most auspicious. The savage nations would have been thought civilized in the days when "there was no smith in Israel." David would make a sorry figure among the present kings of Europe, and Abraham would be judged of by a standard not known in his time. There have been many centuries in which the pirate, the land-robber and the murderer were thought the greatest of men.
Now it becomes a serious question, What shall be done for these stragglers, or even with them? It is sometimes a terrible question to the father and mother what they shall do for their reprobate son who is an offence to the neighborhood, a shame, a reproach and a heart-burning to them. It is a sad question to society, What shall be done with the criminals—thieves, housebreakers, pirates, murderers? It is a serious question to the world, What is to become of the humbler nations—Irish, Mexicans, Malays, Indians, Negroes?
In the world and in society the question is answered in about the same way. In a low civilization, the instinct of self-preservation is the strongest of all. They are done with, not for; are done away with. It is the Old Testament answer:—The inferior nation is hewn to pieces, the strong possess their lands, their cities, their cattle, their persons, also, if they will; the class of criminals gets the prophet's curse: the two bears, the jail and the gallows, eat them up. In the family alone is the Christian answer given; the good shepherd goes forth to seek the one sheep that has strayed and gone, lost upon the mountains; the father goes out after the poor prodigal, whom the swine's meat could not feed nor fill.[31] The world, which is the society of nations, and society, which is the family of classes, still belong mainly to the "old dispensation," Heathen or Hebrew, the period of force. In the family there is a certain instinctive love binding the parent to the child, and therefore a certain unity of action, growing out of that love. So the father feels his kinship to his boy, though a reprobate; looks for the causes of his son's folly or sin, and strives to cure him; at least to do something for him, not merely with him. The spirit of Christianity comes into the family, but the recognition of human brotherhood stops mainly there. It does not reach throughout society; it has little influence on national politics or international law—on the affairs of the world taken as a whole. I know the idea of human brotherhood has more influence now than hitherto; I think in New England it has a wider scope, a higher range, and works with more power than elsewhere. Our hearts bleed for the starving thousands of Ireland, whom we only read of; for the down-trodden slave, though of another race and dyed by Heaven with another hue; yes, for the savage and the suffering everywhere. The hand of our charity goes through every land. If there is one quality for which the men of New England may be proud it is this, their sympathy with suffering man. Still we are far from the Christian ideal. We still drive out of society the Ishmaels and Esaus. This we do not so much from ill-will as want of thought, but thereby we lose the strength of these outcasts. So much water runs over the dam—wasted and wasting!
In all these melancholy cases what is it best to do? what shall the parents do to mend their dull boy, or their wicked one? There are two methods which may be tried. One is the method of force, sometimes referred to Solomon, and recommended by the maxim, "Spare not the rod and spoil the child." That is the Old Testament way, "Stripes are prepared for the fool's back." The mischief is, they leave it no wiser than they found it. By the law of the Hebrews, a man brought his stubborn and rebellious son before the magistrates and deposed: "This our son is stubborn and rebellious: he will not obey our voice. He is a glutton and a drunkard." Thereupon, the men of the city stoned him with stones and so "put away the evil from amongst them!" That was the method of force. It may bruise the body; it may fill men with fear; it may kill. I think it never did any other good. It belonged to a rude and bloody age. I may ask intelligent men who have tried it, and I think they will confess it was a mistake. I think I may ask intelligent men on whom it has been tried, and they will say, "It was a mistake on my father's part, but a curse to me!" I know there are exceptions to that reply; still I think it will be general. A man is seldom elevated by an appeal to low motives; always by addressing what is high and manly within him. Is fear of physical pain the highest element you can appeal to in a child; the most effectual? I do not see how Satan can be cast out by Satan. I think a Saviour never tries it. Yet this method of force is brief and compact. It requires no patience, no thought, no wisdom for its application, and but a moment's time. For this reason, I think, it is still retained in some families and many schools, to the injury alike of all concerned. Blows and violent words are not correction, often but an adjournment of correction: sometimes only an actual confession of inability to correct.
The other is the method of love, and of wisdom not the less. Force may hide, and even silence effects for a time; it removes not the real causes of evil. By the method of love and wisdom the parents remove the causes; they do not kill the demoniac, they cast out the demon, not by letting in Beelzebub, the chief devil, but by the finger of God. They redress the child's folly and evil birth by their own wisdom and good breeding. The day drives out and off the night.
Sometimes you see that worthy parents have a weak and sickly child, feeble in body. No pains are too great for them to take in behalf of the faint and feeble one. What self-denial of the father; what sacrifice on the mother's part! The best of medical skill is procured; the tenderest watching is not spared. No outlay of money, time, or sacrifice is thought too much to save the child's life; to insure a firm constitution and make that life a blessing. The able-bodied children can take care of themselves, but not the weak. So the affection of father and mother centres on this sickly child. By extraordinary attention the feeble becomes strong; the deformed is transformed, and the grown man, strong and active, blesses his mother for health not less than life.
Did you ever see a robin attend to her immature and callow child which some heedless or wicked boy had stolen from the nest, wounded and left on the ground, half living; left to perish? Patiently she brings food and water, gives it kind nursing. Tenderly she broods over it all night upon the ground, sheltering its tortured body from the cold air of night and morning's penetrating dew. She perils herself; never leaves it—not till life is gone. That is nature; the strong protecting the feeble. Human nature may pause and consider the fowls of the air, whence the Greatest once drew his lessons. Human history, spite of all its tears and blood, is full of beauty and majestic worth. But it shows few things so fair as the mother watching thus over her sickly and deformed child, feeding him with her own life. What if she forewent her native instinct and the mother said, "My boy is deformed, a cripple—let him die?" Where would be the more hideous deformity?
If his child be dull, slow-witted, what pains will a good father take to instruct him; still more if he is vicious, born with a low organization, with bad propensities—what admonitions will he administer; what teachers will he consult; what expedients will he try; what prayers will he not pray for his stubborn and rebellious son! Though one experiment fail, he tries another, and then again, reluctant to give over. Did it never happen to one of you to be such a child, to have outgrown that rebellion and wickedness? Remember the pains taken with you; remember the agony your mother felt; the shame that bowed your father's head so oft, and brought such bitter tears adown those venerable cheeks. You cannot pay for that agony, that shame, not pay the hearts which burst with both—yet uttering only a prayer for you. Pay it back then, if you can, to others like yourself, stubborn and rebellious sons.