Essay No. 21
An Open Letter to Young Parents
BY
The Right Rev. the Bishop of Durham, D.D.
FRIENDS AND FELLOW-PARENTS,--Let my first word be one of heartfelt respect. I think of the possible readers of this letter with a strong sense of their high calling and grand opportunities. Any one of them—above all, any two of them, two joined by God in one—may contribute nobly to the strength, purity, and brightness of life, not only in their own home but far around it. So let me pay my homage to them as persons of the greatest moral importance in our English life to-day.
A German schoolmaster four hundred years ago used always to lift his hat and bow to his scholars when he entered the schoolroom. He saluted their possibilities. He reverenced the possible eminence and influence to be attained in manhood by any one or more of that group of boys. Far greater reason have I for a mental reverence as I think of you, my readers. For you are already parents, and so are already called to a high dignity. Meanwhile, you are young parents, with a long and developing
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future, I hope, before you. I salute your splendid possibilities.
And now what have I to say ? My first point is just this—that you are young. Your home is new, your children are little ones. The family life is still in the making. It is not yet crystallized into shapes difficult to alter. It lies before you, rich in oppor-tunities for the best choices as to method and habit, as to ideals and their realization. Parents whose children, are grown up and gone would give any¬thing sometimes to begin again. You are beginning, and you can begin aright.
I shall assume further that you are Christians. Your union has been sealed and hallowed in the Holy Name. You acknowledge Christ our Lord as the Third in your covenant," and you wish to carry out that fact in practical reality. You have read those noble passages in the New Testament where St. Paul paints the picture of the Christian Home (Eph. v., vi.; Col. iii., iv.), and you respond to the splendid invita¬tion and ambition. Those words of sacred wisdom and sympathy have called your heart out. You feel that the picture is not only an ideal. It is practical, it is feasible; it can be realized. Yes, you can live it out, if only you place your human will in the line of the will Divine.
Now, taking you thus for granted, what message do I wish to bring you ?
First, I appeal to you parents to live your own
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life always, every hour, with the thought of your children strong within you. For their dear sakes aim high yourselves, as married people. Make it a fixed purpose, husband with wife, wife with husband, to live so towards one another that the children, who (consciously or not) watch everything, may always be the better for it. For their sakes keep temper and tongue always under wholesome discipline. For their sakes let your bearing towards each other be always true to your vows. Let love and respect (I use the word respect advisedly) grow always together, each deepening the other. Never forget the courtesies of affectionate honour towards one another. And never—no, never—let your children hear from your lips the unkind word, the cynical word, the sarcastic, bitter word, about other people.
I must emphasize that last point. It is so very often forgotten, yet it is so infinitely important to re¬member it, if you really want to train your children into a character and behaviour which shall bear the stamp of a noble home ideal.
Then let me beg you, as earnestly as I can, in the highest interests of those most beloved little lives, not to spoil them. Be always and unvaryingly loving to them, encouraging them in every way from the very first to feel at home with you. As they grow, let them learn to confide everything to you. But do not spoil them. Gently, but really, make them feel, in their earliest days, that your word, your quiet
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word, is law; you will probably have little trouble that way afterwards if only you begin aright. Guide and govern their habits with a steady hand. Do not let them settle for themselves what to eat and what to refuse. Quietly and wisely guide their reading as they grow in mind. Watchfully repress rude and casual conduct to strangers. Forbear, for their sakes, to "show them off " (when once the earliest babyhood is over) before your visitors; do not let them learn, only too early, to think themselves important and unusual. Give them as early as you can a high ideal of doing right, a dread of lying, a dislike of unfair¬ness and selfishness. Teach them, under it and over it all, the fear of God—that fear which means not shrinking but worship, not slavery but the sense of a pure and wonderful Presence, holy and loving, ruling their young hearts and lives.
In your own persons take care to set them in this great matter a living and moulding example. Resolve that you will yourselves be seen by them to fear God, and to live it out. Let them know that you read, and believes and reverence the Bible, and that you pray to your Lord, and that you keep His Day quiet and godly, and that you find in His worship your own help and strength. Gather them as soon as possible around you in family prayer—. that beautiful bond of home affection and home Christianity.
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Religion thrust into children is fatally repellent.
Religion lived before them, in fear and love, and carried out in common things, has a magnetically moulding power which makes religious lessons live. The parents who act so may confidently hope to be their children's inspiring teachers. Their lives will justify their lips.
Then, as they grow in receptive conditions, let the great idea of Duty drop deep into their souls and colour all their thoughts. Make duty beautiful by putting love into the lesson. But do not weaken its grandeur as duty. There is nothing more needed in our time than the revival of that word in living power. Train your young ones, by example, and then by plain precept, to put "right " first and "pleasant " second. As they grow, develop the lesson by appli¬cations to greater and greater things, not least to the high interests and claims of their Country, and of the needs around them, and of the cause of God and righteousness in the world. But begin, in the most literal sense, at home. Let the rights of others and the duties of themselves in the home-life come to be instinctively remembered, as early as possible, in the light of your example.
There is much more to be said about the grand opportunities of young parents ; but perhaps I have said enough to bring home my main message, that is to say, that your opportunities are so grand. Just now, that first of all human institutions, God's first provision for man's good, Home, is in great danger
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of crumbling down. All sorts of disturbing and undermining influences are working against it. It is attacked by the growing hurry of life, the quickening of locomotion, the greed of "pleasure," the slackening of reverence, the relaxation of rightful authority, the oblivion about responsibility. You, in the forenoon of life, can hardly realize as we seniors do the very serious degree to which Home is less home-like now, in countless cases, than it was forty or even thirty years ago. There was abundant life and brightness then, but there was less unrest, more time at home spent together, more care for courtesies and con¬sideration. There was more home godliness, more parental teaching and training. These are very precious things, and it is sorrowful to think of them as if they were like the sand-cliffs in Norfolk, under¬mined and shaken down by the sea, a piece at a time, perhaps bringing some old church-tower down in the ruin.
But it is worse than useless merely to lament such a process in the world of Home. The danger is a call to action, and it is just you, young parents, who can, if you will, take action—action full of help and hope. Begin each within the doors of your own home, and do what you personally can to conserve, and order, and sweeten, and strengthen, under God's blessing, your own children's lives along with your own. Contribute thus your item to the great enter¬prise of saving Home, and you will not labour in vain.
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When the walls of Jerusalem were being rebuilt, after the great Captivity, we read that every man worked at the repair just opposite his own house. So the circuit was completed, vast and strong, by the many contributed efforts, man by man, house by house. You will help likewise to raise a yet greater and more necessary fortification, building your bit of the wall of Home around the temple of virtue.
Believe me, sincerely yours,
HANDLEY DUNELM.
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