Next to prayer itself, pious reading cannot fail to demand our attention as the second great spiritual help in the routine of home education. This should be simple and well suited to the understanding of young children, and, above all, should not be a dry and barren formality, but should be explained and amplified by the mother’s comments. How, unless questions are freely allowed—nay, encouraged—can the extent of the impression made by spiritual reading be measured? Then, what an inexhaustible resource does not this reading or its equivalent—descriptions by word of mouth—afford to a thoughtful parent! The beautiful narratives of the Old Testament, the stories of the four gospels, the many striking incidents in the lives of the saints, the legends of the faithful middle ages, the histories of the contemporaneous manifestations of God’s mercy, all offer mines of wealth to a skilful narrator. If, instead of goblin tales more fit for the entertainment of rational people than for the staple of a child’s too credulous meditations, these holy histories became the nursery rhymes of the future generation, it would be well indeed for the spiritual advance of our age. If among the romances of mediæval times more of those were chosen in which religion figures than of those where fairy and elf appear, it would be a better promise for the future health, moral and physical, of our people. Who knows how much of that nervousness which is the characteristic disease of our day is due to those unwholesome terrors of infancy, those threats of bogy and ogre, with which children are frightened into silence or lulled into uneasy sleep! The child who would be, in a manner, the companion of the boy Jesus, of the child Precursor, the infant Samuel, the Holy Innocents, the children of whom our Lord said, “Suffer them to come unto me, and forbid them not,” and of the many boy and girl saints—S. Rose of Viterbo, S. Aloysius Gonzaga, S. Stanislaus Kostka—would be a far healthier and more manly subject than the mental companion of deformed sprites and forest goblins. The young mind is so impressionable that it is the greatest possible mistake to let its first exercise of reason spend itself on unrealities; they are apt to take on an influence not readily shaken off, and to cumber the ground long after room is needed for more serious growths of thought. This may seem an exceptional mode of proceeding, perhaps an eccentric one, the contrary having for so many ages held sway, but we take leave to think that it has reason, expediency, and religion on its side.
To this great duty of example, which ramifies itself as often as there are distinct classes of influence, is added the duty of vigilance. Parents need not only the knowledge of what to impart, but the instinct of what to shun. As watchers over a citadel, they have to guard against the masked inroads of the enemy, and carefully to sift their children’s surroundings, whether social or domestic, lest any taint should lurk in the association. We have read somewhere in a book of devotion that those who carry great treasures in a frail vessel naturally take the greater care as to their gait and speed; they look well to see if the road is level, or to avoid its irregularities if it is not; they take heed to keep their eyes and mind intent on what they bear, so as to bring it safe to its destination. Even so does the mother carry in her hands the priceless treasure of a human soul, and her solicitude for its perfect preservation from all taint or attack should be little less than that of the child’s Guardian Angel himself. If, as we have just hinted, she should choose with such scrupulous care even the companions of his fancy, so much the more should this judicious censorship be extended to the real companions of his studies or recreations. Perhaps the influence of childish association is even greater than the mother’s own, and what the latter may have laboriously sown will be uprooted in a moment by the former. Children’s minds, in indiscriminate contact with each other, are as powder and spark brought together; if each had been kept until the right moment, and applied in the right way, we might have had an illumination; as it is, we have a conflagration. As childhood merges into youth, the choice of a school brings this question of companionship into prominence. In a public institution, it is not possible to admit only children who come, well-taught and docile-minded, from irreproachable homes; the very aim and end of the institution would thus be frustrated. Nor is it possible for its parents, once a child is admitted, to choose absolutely who, among its many school-fellows, shall be its special friends. Much may be done in that way by advice, tact, and prayer; still, guidance falls far short of absolute choice. It is therefore evident that the greater care should be taken to choose the school which in itself shall have the greatest influence in moulding the character of its scholars, and thereby in transforming into fitter companions for the new-comer those very children who, nolens volens, must needs be his everyday acquaintances. But the influence of home does not cease with the first day at school. Letters from home, breathing the old atmosphere, will carry the child back, week by week, to his old associations, be they good or bad; the holidays will bring him again within the fascination of the old circle, and occasional visits from the companions of his early childhood will complete the charm. Thus an infinite amount of good, or a corresponding amount of harm, may yet be done after the home education period has, strictly speaking, passed away.
And here is, perhaps, the best place to touch upon the holy influence which an elder brother or sister may exercise on a younger one. This, one of the most powerful means of good, is only second to that of the parents themselves, and may furnish a very beautiful illustration of true and discerning brotherly love. It is spiritual friendship engrafted upon the stock of natural affection, itself a noble virtue and most sweet tie, which has often, even in heathen times, produced great effects. Under this figure of brotherhood God has typified his union with creatures; he made himself our Brother through the incarnation; and everywhere brotherhood is synonymous with the dearest and purest fellowship. Our brothers and sisters in the flesh, especially if they are younger than ourselves, are as much our care and charge as they are of our parents; and of this we have a striking instance in the very first book of the Pentateuch, and only a few years after the sinless creation of Adam. Cain’s defiant plea, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” failed to meet with God’s endorsement, but brought instead the terrible answer that he should be “a fugitive and a vagabond upon the earth.” In the daily companionship of brotherhood, this scene is often re-enacted; souls are slain by their own kindred, and the world smiles and passes blindly on. But God has set a mark upon the murderer by which the devils know him and kill him not, because they know too well whose road he is even now treading, and that in the last day his mark shall be revealed to all. Here is the dark side of that continuous education which is as potently at work in dens of shame and places of pleasant danger as it is in Christian homes and schools. Here is that nefarious education which neutralizes or obliterates the happy past, and leads our young men by tortuous paths of gradual vice to the end of many such deceptive panoramas—the gallows or suicide.
False example, insidious promptings, rash indulgences, intoxicating freedom, wily friendship—through these and many kindred forms, subtle may be and proportionately dangerous, the devil, in the person of your brother or your seeming friend, leads you on till the murder of Abel is repeated, and the insolent excuse flung back to heaven: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The system of rewards and punishments has much to do with the moral training of youth. With regard to this, we may startle our readers by broaching views so different from those time-honored ones that pretend to find their sanction in the Biblical rule, “Spare the rod, and spoil the child,” as to seem heretical to good old-fashioned, jog-trot parents.[36] But what if the Scripture itself were to fail them? What authority have they for understanding “the rod” in its literal instead of its figurative sense? The rod was, with the Hebrews, an emblem of power: witness the miracles of Aaron in Egypt, and the blossoming of his rod when his supreme authority was called in question by the rebellion of Core. “The rod” may therefore very plausibly be taken as meaning parental authority, and the text would thus imply nothing more than a declaration that the carelessness of the parent will be responsible for the wrong-headedness of the child. In this sense we prefer to read this passage, and for this reason: physical punishments and rewards will be indissolubly associated in a young child’s mind with his good or bad actions, just as they are coupled in the memory and instinct of a dog with the various desirable or undesirable things it has been taught or forbidden to do. This produces a low and degrading standard by which moral actions are henceforward measured by the child, and later on will lead to the impression that the absence of such tangible consequences argues the right to do as he pleases, irrespective of merely moral restraints; whereas, if the rewards and punishments meted out to him are of the moral and intellectual order, his conception of the principle of duty will be abstract and independent. Childhood has a natural leaning towards deception; therefore truth should be made not only prominent, but attractive. To own a fault, and even to confess it unasked, should be an understood palliation of the fault itself; whereas any attempt at concealment should be treated as a far graver offence than the action concealed. In a word, the principle of Christian honor should be the keynote of home education, and any meanness should be condemned as the most contemptible of all faults. Sensitive as children are to the slightest alteration of manner in their regard, they would feel keenly the silence and avoidance which this plan presupposes in their parents’ conduct towards them when guilty of a dishonorable action, and, by associating the idea of wrong with that of disgrace, would very soon be brought to a truer estimate of morals than if wrong with them was only the synonyme of pain. Again, the system of physical punishment invariably leads to defiance; it stirs up a spirit of contradiction and sullenness which gradually encrusts the young mind with the deplorable proof-armor of ultimate indifference. We need give but one example—a personal one—of the immense superiority of moral over physical punishment. As a child, we were stubborn and self-willed, and were frequently treated, not exactly to corporal indignities, but to threadbare schoolroom devices for overcoming temper. Two or three times it happened that, these worn-out means proving as inefficient as “water on a duck’s back,” fatherly authority had to be invoked. It always took one form—silence. For a week there would be none of the happy familiarities between father and child, but, instead, a cessation of the usual pleasant and indulgent intercourse, and now and then a grave look of displeasure as the culprit would make some spasmodic and despairing advance. This was the only punishment which made the slightest impression, and the keen remembrance of it lasts to this day. Sometimes, when we were older, another variety was tried. Instead of being, according to the old code, starved on bread and water in a dark closet, we were seated alone at a table, while the rest of the family ate together as usual; every dish was ceremoniously brought up and served at our solitary meal, and every servant in the house was perfectly aware of the cause; no one spoke or offered us the least attention beyond the ordinary formalities, and we were treated half like a distinguished prisoner, half like an excommunicated person. The result was admirable, prompt in the extreme, and certain to ensure an unusually long term of subsequent docility.
Rewards are no less important than punishments. Of these, knowledge and religious opportunities should, in our idea, form the staple. They are thus invested with a personal interest to the child; they come before him as things specially concerning his own good behavior and his parents’ appreciation of it. For instance, the mother reads him Scripture stories and the legends of the saints; he listens with absorption, and longs to read the book himself, but the road through the alphabet and spelling-book is uninviting. Why not teach him through the book itself? The illuminated capitals will strike him by their beauty, the pictures will lend force to the difficult words, and help his memory to connect them with the illustrated subject. Instead of finding church services an irksome interruption to his games, he might be made to look upon them as the highest rewards he can obtain. For a well-learnt lesson in catechism, he might be taught to chant one of those immortal poems, the Psalms; for proficiency in Bible history, he might be taken to some of the most picturesque of our solemn ceremonies, and hear, on the way, of the typical manner in which it is connected with that history; for an act of childish self-denial, he might be allowed to serve as acolyte at Mass. Even these rewards, however, should not be injudiciously multiplied, for familiarity would beget irreverence,—the worst stumbling-block that could be laid in a child’s spiritual path. We think that a Christian education in the early days of childhood could go no further in perfection than this—the thorough identification of all happiness with religion.
We have yet to speak of a detail in household economy, which, in point of interest, is one of the foremost. Personal attention to a child is a part of the mother’s duty of vigilance, and the fashionable custom of leaving such attention to domestics cannot be reprobated too strongly. This personal care is, first of all, an instinct of nature which it must require a very thick coating of frivolity entirely to supersede; and it is, secondly, a duty of religion from which even great physical sickness cannot conscientiously release the parent. Numberless evils flow from a neglect of this imperious duty. The forsaken child will learn in time to forget its mother, to think of her as a splendid being very far from him—one not to be annoyed by his cries or made nervous by his romps, but to be gazed at from afar, like a grand picture or work of art. Happy child if an affectionate, compassionate nurse takes the vacant place of his own mother, and makes him familiar with those sweet, nameless trivialities that make up the world of a child’s heart; but, even so, how sad the necessity for such comfort! How much more sad, then, the position of the unloved child, neglected even by its nurse, or left to the well-meaning but questionable petting of the other servants! They will not be reticent, though they may be obsequious, and the future character of their charge will be warped beyond remedy. Pride, too, will be ridiculously fostered, and will drive tenderness away; a certain recklessness will be infused into the child’s habits, and reverence, refinement, sensitiveness, will be petrified within him. He will feel himself of no value, since no one cares for him, and, if no happy influence stops his downward course, he will be a cynic before he is twenty-five.
We have said so much in this strain, and made so much of the gloomy side of the question, that we feel bound to speak a little more fully of the model Christian home, not only as it should be, but—thank God that we can say it!—as it very often is. We know that, according to Father Faber’s beautiful expression, “God has many Edens in this world,” and surely among our Christian homes many deserve this name.
There are those in which the father is not absorbed in business and the mother by fashion, where the servants are happy and attached members of the family, where daily prayer and cheerful work alternate with each other in order, where recreation does not degenerate into riot, nor work conduce to moroseness. Healthy exercise and early hours keep the doctor from the door, while constant industry repulses the proverbial visitor who always “finds mischief for idle hands to do.” The father is the genial companion of his children, and does not lose their respect by gaining their confidence; the mother is the guardian spirit of the household, the wise woman of the Proverbs, “whose children rose up and called her blessed; her husband, and he praised her.” Towards each other the husband and wife behave as they would before the angels of God, because they remember that he who scandalizeth “a little one” is accursed, and that the angel of “the little one,” who is there continually beside him and in some sort represents him in heaven, “beholds the face of the Lord.” The children are submissive, not through fear, but through reason and love; for the acknowledged superiority of their elders has a rational force with them, and they think themselves honored in obeying those who are wiser than they. They have Jesus of Nazareth ever before their eyes—the Boy who, as he grew in years, “waxed strong in wisdom and grace,” and who, though he was God, “went down, and was subject to them.”
This life, peaceful, orderly, religious, the life of the cloister translated into the home, is in itself education. Its holy influence is not confined to space or time, but will live in the hearts of the scattered family through youth and manhood to extreme old age. In fancy, they will be able to reconstruct that home; in spirit, to revisit it long after its dearest inmates shall have left it for their heavenly home, long after its material frame shall have passed away to other, perhaps to careless, hands. In their various resting-places, whether a new home, the daughter of that shrine, or only a rock just above the level of the sea of fortune, the hallowed remembrance will come back to them freighted with hope and strength for the future. Even in heaven, the Son of God is called Jesus of Nazareth, and can we forget the home and the mother that made us what we are?