Essays 21-25

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

2
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

3
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

4
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.
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

6
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.

7
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.

Essay No. 22.
The Two Gospels
BY
The Right Rev. the Bishop of London, D.D.
I SUPPOSE that it would be very difficult to discover a greater contrast than exists to-day between the ideal of many in the world and the ideal of the New Testament.
The popular gospel to-day is a gospel of comfort. According to it, the great evil to be avoided at all costs is Pain ; the least misfortune, and still more, of course, a series of misfortunes, is held to prove at once either that there is no God or that God hates us.
If maternal duties involve discomfort and loss of society, they must be escaped at all costs. If a child cries and makes itself unpleasant, it must be given what it asks for at once, as crying is so bad for children, and future character is considered un¬important compared to present comfort. Further, compulsory military training is looked upon almost as an insult to a proud, freedom-loving people. "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat " is thought a barbarous saying fit for a barbarous and uncivilised
9

age. Schools must be more and more comfortable, and boys' holidays carefully provided with treats and entertainments, or there will be great dissatisfaction in a very important part of the household.
Now turn to the New Testament and mark the contrast.
Pain and trouble are to be expected, and are to be borne cheerfully as part of the discipline of a soldier on service. "We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God."
Undeserved suffering a proof that God does not love us ! Listen to the verdict of God upon the most unjustly persecuted Being that ever lived : "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased." In¬stead of the idea that the child or the boy is to tyran¬nise over his parents, we hear the blunt command : " Children, obey your parents, for this is right." Instead of the idea that life is to be tested by what can be got out of it, we hear : "What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul ? " "He that saveth his life shall lose it." Instead of the idea that the Christian is to expect everything to be smooth and easy, it is said : "Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."
The whole idea of the Church is that of a band of soldiers on a hard campaign under a blood-stained banner and a leader wounded again and again—a band always in training, always alert, always loyal

II
to one another, always ready to strike a blow for the right.
The two pictures are in absolute contrast, and we are bound to make up our minds which is to be our own ideal.
Am I in the least exaggerating when I paint these two pictures ? Look around and see for yourselves. Many of the shrewdest observers note a marked tendency to decay in our national character. We have won our great possessions in the world by gallant exploits on land and sea, by a self-discipline and sobriety of character which has been the admiration of the world. "You were a very great nation," acknowledged a foreigner the other day.
Am I exaggerating about the children, the boys, or the young men, so many of whom are content with vicarious exercise ? Is it not true also about the women ? Are the men as ready to become public leaders, or to take part in public work, as they were when England grew so great ? Is the Drink Bill of £161,000,000 defensible from any point of view ? Is the moral evil really abolished, or only driven under the surface ? Are we soldiers on a campaign, looking for a fight here and our reward hereafter, or are we idlers, crying, like the decadent Romans, for "bread and games " ?
Let us look, then, at the New Testament picture of the soldier we were all meant to be. Notice the following points about him.

12
(I) He is disciplined.
That is where the whole question of the moral and spiritual training of our youth comes in. It is the most cruel kindness to spoil children, or to let them have their way in youth. No one is a greater curse to himself and to the world than the undisciplined young man, or the hysterical or neurotic woman; and in many cases this arises from defects in early train¬ing.
You are a soldier on service. Is your temper under control ? Is your time strictly husbanded ? Are your own inclinations subordinated to the calls of duty ?
If you have got the idea that the universe exists for you, that the home was formed to give you com¬fort, that parents are there to save you worry, then, instead of being an efficient soldier and a help to the working force of a great Empire like this, you are an encumbrance, carried along to the great danger and discredit of the whole force.
(2) But a soldier is not only disciplined—he must expect danger, and trouble, and wounds.
All arguments against the goodness of God, based upon the theory that, if, good, He will never allow pain or loss to fall upon you, are defeated by the fact that His own Son endured the most deadly wounds and death, and, as it were, fell at the head of His troops.
If you are a soldier you must be, on the contrary,

almost surprised if you have nothing to bear. It is quite clear that this earth is "the star of suffering." * Other worlds may have other work in store, but only in this world may we suffer for God. And even if we are spared crushing sorrows—which may or may not come—we must be always "enduring hardness," and "not entangling ourselves in the affairs of this world, that we may please Him Who has called us to be soldiers." We must mortify then the flesh with the affections and lusts, so that the flesh may readily obey the spirit.
But more than that.
(3) Good soldiers fight.
Make no mistake about it. Public opinion on the moral question is nearly as slack as ever, and although in the temperance question it is greatly altered for the better, it still needs a combined effort to push home the advantage; and this is the motive for the C.E.T.S. Forward Movement which we have started this autumn. Do let us fight the public opinion which still condones so much mis-chievous and unnecessary drinking, and the still more damnable opinion that certain sins are necessary to human nature.
(4) Good soldiers fight together.
The growing loyalty in the Church and the readi¬ness to combine for work can only be increased by
* See "The Lessons in the Hospital," by Mrs. Hamilton King.

14
resolute men on both sides who refuse to be brought into conflict on non-essentials.
(5) Good soldiers fight in loving loyalty to their leader on earth, because he is their leader, and in vital dependence upon their Leader in Heaven, because on Him alone they depend for daily wisdom, strength, and courage.
Let all good citizens, then, combine to fight shoulder to shoulder to enforce the New Testament Gospel as opposed to the gospel of the world, and it will not be too late to bring back the nation to such duty and discipline as may bring down upon it again the blessing of the duty-loving God.

Essay No. 23.
Moral and Religious Training
BY
The Rev. Charles Voysey, B.A.
•
NEARLY all hearts in this Realm are deeply stirred by the old, old question, How shall the moral and religious education of our children be carried on ? If the moral importance of each individual be supreme for the virtue and welfare of the whole community, it is obviously the first of all the duties, both of the State and of the Churches, to seek and find and adopt the best methods by which our children shall be trained up with a deep sense of their own indi¬vidual responsibility.
Now it is manifest that, as matters stand, the grown men and women are the sole agents for the training and education of the children. If all the grown-up people rightly understood and performed this solemn duty, all difficulties would be cleared away. But many among them do not understand their duty, and some even who understand it do not take any pains to perform it. For such as these, a right education becomes necessary. The teachers themselves have yet to be taught what to teach to the children and how to teach it in the best way. It

i6
reminds one of the old unanswerable question, " Which came first, the egg or the hen ? " We want the children to be well brought up. But how can they be well brought up by parents and teachers who do not know how to do it, or knowing how, yet fail to do so ? Our present dilemma is all due to the ignorance of parents and teachers or to their neglect of known duties. Anyway, the children are not to blame. They are the victims of those who have charge of them. Therefore we must begin by instructing and inspiring the parents and teachers who themselves are suffering from the neglect or ignorance of the parents and teachers before them. And this is clearly the function of Churches and teachers of religion and morals.
I do not see any other way of remedying the moral evils we complain of than by going to the source from which they spring. To cure the evils of Society and of the community is only possible by the true conversion of each individual, the bending of his will to use his Reason, Conscience and Love in all he thinks and says and does, so as to become a blessing to himself, his family, his country, and to the world at large, and thereby fulfil the loving pur¬pose of our Father for which every one of us was born. I think I need not dwell on the patent fact that the duty of training the young to grow up to be a blessing belongs first of all, though not exclusively,
to the parents. On them lies the solemn responsi

17
bility of teaching the first lessons of true virtue and religion. God has given to them the sole right, has conferred on them the immense privilege of absolute authority over their children, with the one plain and definite object of bringing up their children properly, to the best of their power. They have no right to delegate this obligation to others. If parents did but know it, they would shudder at the dreadful harm they inflict upon their children by the neglect of this duty. For the first ten years of a child's life at home, everything of its future welfare depends upon the teaching and training it gets from its parents. And it is scarcely possible to begin too soon. Long before the father's more active duties begin, the mother has to be diligent and sleepless in her efforts to train her infant. Many a good mother will tell you how she has laid the foundation of pious and loving obedience and has laid at least one precious stone of a beautiful character within the first few weeks of a child's life. Even such a tiny babe can be taught both obedience and patience and submission to a loving will by being trained to lie still and awake in its cradle, by cheerful and con¬soling motherly music instead of by angry and im¬patient scolding to check its irritable cry ; by cease¬less endeavour to call forth a loving and responsive smile instead of too often an audible expression of weariness or wrath. No one but a mother, unless the father be tender like her, can possibly know the

18
good that may be done or the harm that may be done to a child's character during the earliest months of its life. I have said this not only for the mother's sake and for the babe's, but because it is true that you cannot begin too soon to train a child in the right way, if you only know it.
Passing on to the stage of consciousness and the possession of will, the child will now need a training in the limitation of its desires for pleasures and for having its own way. It is downright cruelty to give a child all it asks or cries for; to deny it nothing that you can give; to let it run hither and thither into all kinds of mischief and danger because you are so silly and so weak as to allow it ; and to shield a child from a breath of disappointment or sorrow is a fatal example of mistaken kindness. You may say out of the depths of your ignorance, "Why should I not let the poor child do as it likes ? the days of dis¬appointment and sorrow will come soon enough, and it is cruel to vex him while he is but a child." But I tell you you are only preparing him for far worse disappointment and misery by not teaching him to bear it patiently now, by not training him to curb his desire for mere enjoyment, and by actually encouraging him in trying to get his own way. Desires for mere pleasure only grow by indulgence, and self-will increases by gratification till it becomes a self-imposed tyranny. You should not wantonly punish your child, but whatever proper discipline

I9
and corporal chastisement you withhold now, will bear hereafter tenfold more pain and mortification than you can imagine.
By the time that your child is grown old enough to talk to on what I call "serious " things, your first duty is to tell him the truth about himself, to explain to him that he is not his body, that he is a living soul, quite invisible, living within his body, and can only be seen by his invisible loving Father, whose real child he is, while his body is only child of his parents. It will be easy to explain that the bodies of you and his mother and himself will all have to die some day, just as every other living thing and person has to die ; but that you and his mother and he will all live on for ever because you are God's children and He will never part with you. Tell him that he would never have been here at all, nor you, nor his mother, unless God had loved you one and all. Tell him that if there were no other proof of God's love to you it is amply proved by His making you what you are and by putting you all together in these sweet relationships ; by giving you some part of His own nature—Reason, Conscience, and Love —each and all specially designed to make you useful, to make you good, to make you happy in yourselves, and to enable you to make each other happy. Tell him that whenever he does what is right and without fear of punishment or hope of reward, our Father is pleased with him, and whenever he does what he

20
knows to be wrong or even does right with a wrong motive, God is not pleased. For nothing will please
Him but our being good at heart and trying our best to be good and loving. Teach him day by day to be sensible and not silly ; to try to get all the wisdom and knowledge he can ; to learn to make himself useful; to speak only what is strictly true, to hate and abhor all falsehood, most of all, prevari-
cation or a subtle mixture of truth and falsehood; not to be afraid of any punishment, but only to be
afraid of doing wrong or speaking or feeling
wickedly. Teach him to quell all anger and to shun all kinds of cruelty. Tell him to listen to his
Conscience and remember that to do or feel anything
against his Conscience is sin, is disgraceful and shameful in a child of God. Tell him that he ought
never to excuse his sin by blaming other people or saying that he "could not help it." Most of all tell him about Love, what it is and what it was given to him for, viz. : that he might gladly live and work for others more than for himself.
Oh, ye fathers and mothers, if you could only see for yourselves, if only you could deeply and
clearly understand what true Love is, what it is for,
and what it reveals to us of the Loving God who made us, you would bend all your energies upon this
the divinest part of the teaching and training of your children. Not merely by precept, but by ceaseless example you would try to cultivate the love which

2I
God has put into their little hearts. Train them to do all their duties for love, to be conscientious for love, to be truthful for love, to be pure and clean for love, to be just as well as kind and gentle for love, to find pleasure in giving up to one another for love, and whenever the peace has been broken by selfishness or strife, to heal all wounds by love, to confess freely every transgression and to try to make amends, to forgive heartily every wrong done —and all for love; remind them that to be loving is the only way to be truly happy themselves, to make them happy in the thought of God, to reconcile them to their hard tasks and irksome duties and self-denials; that to be loving is to confer the sweetest gift we can ever give to enrich the happiness of those around us. Let them be saturated with the spirit of those words, "It is more blessed to give than to receive," and again, "Overcome evil with good "; let them see by your own conduct and character in dealing with your fellow-men and in thinking of them and speaking of them and feeling towards them that your impulse is always love—the love which includes justice and strict discipline as well as kindness and gentleness and forbearance and forgiveness.
And all along, from beginning to end of your training them up in love, you will be teaching and proving to them how deep and strong that Love of God Himself must be who has thus provided for our true welfare and happiness and has given us the un-

22
speakable, priceless power of being a blessing to all who come within our reach. If parents did but re¬member and look at with the utmost seriousness what enormous powers for goodness God has actually given to them and to their children, and which, alas ! they have too often suffered to lie dormant ; if they would but look gravely and with adequate sorrow and shame at the sins and miseries of the world—all due to their neglect of these precious gifts of God—they would begin at once to mend themselves and to qualify themselves for the sacred duty of teaching their children true religion and virtue. The world's happiness and welfare are now waiting only for this transcendent change, this true conversion, this new-birth from the death of sin into the life of righteous¬ness. When each individual realises that he is not a mere body, but is a living soul, living bare and naked in the sight of a holy and loving God who is his true Father and Friend, the whole aspect of life and duty will be changed, will be transfigured from the life of a mere animal into the true life of a man—an immortal child of God. When he goes on from that blest awakening to see what God has done for his soul ; what precious gifts of Reason, Conscience, and Love He has poured out upon him, for what benign and holy and blissful purpose these gifts were bestowed, not only upon himself but upon every other soul likewise, his heart will be kindled with a celestial fire of love to his Maker and drawn

23
by that love more and more into the paths of wisdom and goodness, and he will grow from strength to strength until he reach the perfect stature of a son of God. Depend upon it, act upon it, live upon it —that the better we love one another the more we shall love God, and the more we love God the more we shall love one another. The man will then see, if he have children, what he ought to teach and how he ought to train them, and that on no other person in the wide world rests the solemn obligation to teach and to train them but himself and their mother. And this true religious training must ALL BE DONE AT HOME AND BY• THEMSELVES by ceaseless good example and by such precepts and punishments as can be readily understood and are thoroughly effective. And when the children have to go to school, they will have been already taught the essentials of true religion and virtue, and all they need further to be taught by the professional teachers, also by example, is to see the exquisite fruits of such teaching and to have the lessons of home repeated in the school and in the playground.
When all our children are taught of the Lord in a natural way by His sons and daughters who are their fathers and mothers, then we may expect the fulfilment of the promise : "Great shall be the peace of thy children." "Now abideth faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is Love."

Essay No. 24,
Thoroughness
BY
The Rev. H. B. Gray, D.D.
(Late Warden of Bradfield College, Berks.)
IN an age when life was simple, and when personal safety was less secure than at present, men learned to depend on themselves, and to lean very little on other people. The result was thoroughness in aim and act. In our own day, when life is complex, and when Society implies the dependence of each on the other, men have gradually lost that capacity for being thorough which has marked the greatest lives in all history.
It was a Preacher of old time who gave the in-junction : "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might."
A modern Statesman has bequeathed to our own nation the same principle : " Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well."
If modern society has lost that capacity, it has lost also with it the capacity for producing a breed of great men.
And if this assumption be true, it is specially applicable to modern youth of both sexes. It is
25

26
difficult enough in any case for a boy or girl, from the very incompleteness of their character, to be thorough. For in what are called our moral move-ments, there are two parts which prompt us to speak and to act. They are : (1) the will; (2) the intellect. Now it is quite possible for a boy or girl to have a good will, and yet not possess a sufficient intellect to be thorough. Thoroughness requires imagination and intellect as well as good will.
That fact is seen often in uneducated persons who are grown up. Whenever we get into contact with them, we find there is something lacking in them which we ourselves who are educated possess in greater measure, however imperfectly. They have not the power to be thorough. They put out as it were a little finger to the work which they have to do, or, at any rate, only half their manhood. But they are unable (to use a popular phrase) to "put their whole back " into anything. And so they com¬paratively fail. They cannot become leaders of men.
There is an old saying that "genius is the tran-scendent capacity for taking trouble "—a saying not true if it merely means doggedly working mechanic¬ally through the daily routine of life's duties, but most true if it means (1) the ability to picture before¬hand all those details which are essential to the success of the project at which we aim, and, added to that (2), the force of character determining us to carry out all these details to reach the end in view.

27
That is true thoroughness—which is only the Saxon word for penetration—the ability to foresee and to act on our foresight. There is a story of the mighty hunter, who, when asked how he managed to accomplish seemingly most impossible leaps, replied : "I throw my heart over, and my horse follows." There was a subtle underlying truth there; he was able to picture beforehand, and his will was such that he made his picture a fact.
On the other hand, the story from the Bible of the old dying prophet Elisha and his interview with the weakling King of Israel, Joash, will be remem-bered.
A thorough man, even in death forgetful of him¬self, but mindful of his country, the prophet told the king " to smite upon the ground," implying that, if he did so strongly enough, he would stamp out his country's foes—the Syrians. A thorough man would have continued repeating the symbolical act. But the feeble ruler "smote thrice and stayed."
"And the man of God was wroth with him, and said : ' Thou shouldst have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst con¬sumed it; whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.'
What Joash lacked was thoroughness. It was beyond the -powers of his character to do his duty thoroughly.
And this is the text of my leaflet.

Thoroughness, never the leading feature in the character of the young, has to be enforced by precept and by example.
Now it is to be feared that the modern theory of training boys and girls, so far from tending to develop this quality, is calculated to retard it.
Doubtless in many ways the life of youth has been made more pure, more happy, and more gentle by our modern educationists. The roughness and neglect which were the environment of many who were boys in the 'fifties and 'sixties of the last century have given place to another treatment, where fatherly, and even grandmotherly, care has been bestowed by the teacher on the pupil, and where the weakling is protected against himself. It is no longer a case of the survival of the fittest and the sub¬mergence of the unfit.
All this is very excellent. But I am convinced that there has been a serious corresponding loss. Our modern system has shown now for many years (specially in our Preparatory Schools) a tendency to "nurse boys into nothingness."
Their bodily, mental, and moral wants are so excessively cared for by their elders that the young have lost individuality ; they have been so much accustomed to have everything done for them in every department of life, that they seem to have lost the power to do much by and for themselves. In fact, they have lost the power of initiative, and therefore

29
the sense of individual responsibility. Selfishness and lassitude have been the result, instead of the energy which characterised some former generations.
Bolstered up in every conceivable way, boys have lost a sense of modest independence, and gained a ludicrously disproportionate sense of their own importance.
It is not only foreign nations that have observed and criticised this in the modern young Englishman, but our own flesh and blood—New Zealanders, Aus¬tralians, and Canadians, who see us far more clearly than we see ourselves, and who ridicule and abomi¬nate the extraordinary swagger which the young Englishman sometimes assumes out of all proportion to his true worth, and our Colonial friends teach him some rude lessons in proper behaviour when the tender nursling of modern English education comes into their midst.
Now the contention of this leaflet is that all this false and sham self-assertion is the deadly foe of real thoroughness. Not to enlarge on the other causes which have limited the conception of patriotism among the young—the craze for gladiatorial games, and for selfish amusements which narrow the sense of love of country into a parochial, or at most pro¬vincial, sentiment—the selfishness of the youth of the present day (stimulated from the cradle upwards) has had a serious effect on the spirit of the race, and seems likely, if no reaction be aroused, to stifle all

3©
the finer and more forceful sentiments which once made the nation great.
But (that I may bear directly on my theme) this organised selfishness is, I conceive, the very antithesis of thoroughness in life. To be thorough, in any wide sense, we must enlarge our sympathies, and let them have free play on the wide circles of the world in which we live.
This kind of teaching seems (to one, at least, who has been watching for the last forty years the "signs of the times") the least observable feature in modern education, and yet the most indispensable factor in the personality of anyone who undertakes the vast responsibility of being a leader of the young, and who has it, therefore, within his power to make or to mar the future destinies of our race and of the Empire at large.
We do not want Professors, nor Nurses, but MEN for this supremely important task.
It will perhaps not be thought presumptuous to add a closing word for the guidance of those Parents and Teachers whose fate it is to wrestle with weak and flabby youthfulness in either sex :
(1) Let the lessons, whether from book or from the mouth of the Teacher, be short, but insist always on the completion of the task.
(2) Let there be no "soft options," i.e. a con-

31
cession to the sloppy desire of the child to learn or to do what is easiest.
(3) On the other hand, let there be no continued brain pressure in one direction. Rapid changes in work are physiologically wholesome for the young.
(4) As a rule, do not be afraid of over-exercising his or her varied energies. Want of occupation engenders lassitude of physical and moral fibre.
Children, like the young in lower stages of creation, are ever on the move to construct or to destroy.

ESSAY No. 25

National Decay, or National Vitality ?

THE COST IN HUMAN LIFE OF LACK OF DISCIPLINE
BY
Fleet-Engineer Quick, R.N., Retired.
TEN years ago an eminent American engineer visited the leading factories and ironworks of England and Scotland and expressed the utmost surprise at the lethargy and bloated condition of the workmen. He briefly summed up the situation thus : "If our American men did no more work than your men we should have to shut up half the factories in the States, for we could not get any foreign orders. Your men drink twice as much as our men, and do only about half the work." The average annual consumption of alcohol per head in the United States for the three years 1895-6-7 was 1.13 gallons, against 2.12 gallons per head in the United Kingdom. Later figures show an average in 1906 of 2.1 gallons of alcohol per head per annum for England; 1.6 gallons for Ireland, and only 1.4 gallons per head for Scotland.
Now, for the 30-year period, 1840-70, there can be no doubt that the British workman stood foremost
* Reprinted from The Maidenhead Advertiser.
33

34
of all the working classes in the world both for quality and quantity of work produced. Can it be truthfully said that he does so to-day ? If he does not, what are the causes of his altered position ? In the first place, it cannot be denied that most foreign workmen have improved in a very marvellous manner, both in skill, in physical health and strength, and in general energy, in consequence of the compulsory military training they have received since the Franco-German War of 1870.
In 1898 Great Britain's share of the commerce of the world was I71/4 per cent. less than it was in 1882, but Germany's share was 93/4 per cent. greater in 1898 than it was in 1882, and later figures show that foreign shipping work is increasing more rapidly than British.* Thus in 1904, British shipping enter¬ing and clearing our ports was 64.3 per cent. of the whole, but in 1907 our proportion had fallen to 61 per cent., while the proportion of foreign shipping had increased from 35.7 to 39 per cent. Thus, whilst Germany is advancing, we are slipping backwards. In 1897 it was officially reported that "One of the reasons of the growth of the trade in Germany is to be found in the enlarged average output of the workmen." The average output of iron ore per workman in Germany has risen in ten years from
* On April 4 last, Reuter's correspondent wrote concerning the shipping at Hong Kong in 1907 : " In British river steamers there is a decreased tonnage of 212,137 tons. . . . In foreign ocean vessels an increase of 334 ships of 627,380 tons is shown."

35
264 tons to 368, or 4o per cent.; and that of pig iron has risen from 164 tons to 227 tons, or 38 per cent. The manufactured iron made has similarly increased. The increase in the output of American workmen is still larger. There is not any compulsory military training for the American workmen, but all the child¬ren, boys and girls, are taught patriotism in schools, to march and salute their flag, and physical exercises. Nearly all American young men belong to rifle corps, and nearly all are good rifle shots, i.e. they have some skill with the rifle. Russian workmen are also largely increasing their output, and are rapidly be-coming very intelligent, as a result principally of the habits of order and discipline they acquire when going through their military service. Professor Virchow, the eminent scientist, has stated in one of his papers that the British working classes give most of their energies to excessive sexual indulgence and excessive drinking. That statement must be approxi¬mately accurate, or it must be an awful slander. Unfortunately, those people who have lived abroad with foreign workpeople as well as with the British working classes at home confirm Virchow's state¬ment, although they may not state their views quite so plainly, while some make an additional charge against the British by saying that the balance of their energies is devoted to betting, or to some other form of gambling. The worry of gambling pro¬duces sleeplessness, diminishes virility, and causes

36
the production of neurotic, feeble, and criminal off¬spring.
One thing is very certain—that the average Britons of the present day have not the physical strength and endurance of some of the foreign races, although we have always considered ourselves superior to all other nations in these respects. As to the strength and endurance of some of the foreign races, we may mention the extraordinary march of the Russians to Mery ; the quick marches of the Italian and French troops, heavily accoutred ; that the Indian bearers in Natal made " Five journeys to Frere, the men three times carrying the wounded the whole distance of 25 miles in a single day " ; "whilst a regular Hindustanee carrier, with a weight of 8o lb. hung on his shoulders, runs over too miles in 24 hours " (these men eat rice with a little butter only—no meat or alcohol). Mr. B. C. Henry states that three Chinese coolies carried him 23 miles in five hours and then returned to get breakfast, making a journey of 46 miles without food. On another occa¬sion two men carried him 35 miles, and were return¬ing by boat when it ran aground, and they were 27 hours without food, and then they offered to carry him 15 miles farther.
Compare the stockbrokers' walk to Brighton with these facts, and the stockbrokers' results do not show very grandly. The German Military Attaché in Japan reported in 1902 that he saw Japanese troops

37
march 8o miles in one day, each with a load of 7o lb.—(See "Royal United Service Institution Journal.")
The miners of Chili and Bolivia are strong and healthy, magnificently muscular, and have handsome figures, but they drink very sparingly of all liquids —principally water, with a little weak coffee or cocoa. The same is true also of the Mexicans and natives of Guatemala, whose principal food consists of "fritolies" and "tortillas," a kind of pancake made from maize flour.
By special training we may produce a few athletes who can compete with foreign athletes, but the strength of the millions of average men is the point to be considered. No one can pretend that our average country-bred or town-bred men can equal the performances of the men above referred to. We are paying the penalty for our excessive use of tea, sugar, fancy foods, and fancy drinks, such as mineral waters, to say nothing of the most debilitating of all drinks—English gin. The bloated condition of many of our people at the present time is undoubtedly due to the excessive drinking of sugar-brewed beer, which is now so generally in favour. Certainly, in the interests of our race, present and future, all brewers should be prohibited by heavy penalties from using anything but pure malt and hops in the pro¬duction of beer, whether the public prefer beer made from chemicals and drugs or not.

38
The fall of our birth-rate and our physical and moral deterioration may, by ill-informed people, be ascribed to poverty and overcrowding, but the writer had experience of the slums of London fifty years ago, as well as recently, and also of slums in European, Asiatic, and American cities, and he is reluctantly compelled to come to the conclusion that the vicious habits of the British people have brought about this decay of vitality rather than the unavoid¬ably bad physical conditions under which they have lived. Nine-tenths of the physical evils arising from overcrowding in both town and country would be avoided if the people would but keep their windows open both day and night. At the beginning of this new century it would be well for us all if we could clear our minds of cant and face the truth, acknow¬ledging that we have been indeed "miserable sinners," devoid alike of common sense and a just appreciation of our own vital interests and the mar¬vellous prosperity we have enjoyed during the past fifty years. Peace and prosperity have brought us all, the highest and lowest in the land, into a habit of self-indulgence and luxury, which has been and is most fatal to our vitality and manliness as a race. That war and famine are not without some compen¬sations is proved by the fact stated by Dr. Newsholme (page 128, "Vital Statistics"), that during the siege of Paris, 1870-7I, "while the general mortality was doubled, that of infants is said to/ have been reduced

39
by about forty per cent., owing to mothers being obliged to suckle their infants." "The same increase of adult and diminution of infant mortality was seen, during the Lancashire cotton famine, when mothers were not at work in the mills." Again, while the poor Irish people produce 479 children for every hun¬dred marriages, of which only to per cent. die under one year of age, we, wealthy and luxurious English people, produce only 361 children for every hundred marriages, of whom over 16 per cent. die under one year of age. In wealthy, prosperous Glasgow, in November, 1900, the children under five years of age died at the rate of 48 per cent. per annum, 562 child¬ren under five dying in four weeks.
Since 1875 the Cult of Comfort at any Cost has been preached practically by hosts of well-meaning people, who have been ignorant of the teachings of past history, ignorant of the progress, aspirations, and capabilities of foreign nations, utterly ignorant of anthropological science, and totally devoid of fore¬sight.
Popular writers and sweet-voiced speakers have
proclaimed the rights of everybody to ease, comfort, sport, music, literature, art, and amusements of
every kind, without counting the high price which
the inflexible laws of Nature invariably demand from those nations which indulge in effeminate luxuries,
and which neglect the stern calls of duty. Duty and discipline, devotion to God, to the family, to the

40
King and State, have been all alike ignored by these apostles of ease and comfort.
These popular prophets have disregarded the teachings of Heraclitus, the philosopher of Ephesus, who 2,40o years ago proclaimed the great truth that the most important matter in life is not what we were, nor what we are, but what we are becoming.
Here are some of the bitter fruits of the Creed of Comfort as preached by the so-called "Friends of the People " :
(I) In 1876 our average birth-rate was 36.5 per ',ow. To-day it is 26 per i,000, or a fall of over 28 per cent. in thirty-three years. This form of moral and physical dry-rot has seized hold not only on the British race in Great Britain, but on those of the same race who live in the other parts of our gigantic Empire, and so their birth-rate has fallen heavily, and is still falling rapidly. This also is the case of those of the Ango-Saxon race who are now citizens of the United States.
(2) The physical evils that would befall women who wilfully decreased the birth-rate were pointed out in some medical journals in 1885. The Reports of the Registrar-General show that the deaths of females from diseases peculiar to women and from diabetes have trebled since 1870; while the deaths from diseases of the circulation, such as heart disease, have increased rapidly, and now outnumber the deaths due to pulmonary consumption.

41
(3) We have succeeded in stamping out some diseases and in largely reducing the death-rate due to zymotic and other purely physical causes, such as typhus, small-pox, and their congeners, but the amount of ill-health and disease arising from what may be termed moral causes has very largely in-creased. Nervous diseases, insanity and suicide have advanced by leaps and bounds since 1876.
(4) The reduction of the birth-rate has certainly not increased the health, happiness and endurance of the women of England and Wales, for the deaths at child-birth (not due to puerperal fever) have largely increased.
The Registrar-General's Reports show also that the death-rate of infants by premature birth has very largely increased since 1876, while the mortality of infants from congenital defects has increased over one hundred per cent. since 1875. Thus, thanks to the Cult of Comfort at any Cost, we have continu¬ously to increase the number of Homes for Cripples, Homes for the Paralysed, for Epileptics, and for the Feeble-minded, and our Asylums for the Insane ; whilst numberless families have to support invalid or "peculiar" members who are utterly incapable of useful or profitable occupation, and are thus a terrible burden on the resources of the parents, and a still more terrible injury to the young and healthy members of the family.
(5) In the early years of the last century there

42
were 1,070 boys born to every 1,000 girls. In recent years the proportion has fallen to 1,032 boys to every i,000 girls, and the Registrar-General's Report states : "The proportion of boys to girls born in England and Wales is smaller than in any other European country. . . . The proportion has been gradually but steadily diminishing for many years past."
At the census in 1901 there were over one million and seventy thousand more females than males in England and Wales alone. Thus we have far fewer able-bodied men of the working and fight¬ing age in proportion to our population than any other European Power. And with the large excess of females in this land the position of women must, to a large extent, become degraded, whatever amount of political power they may obtain.
(6) The growth of an effeminate sentimentality, which, shutting its eyes in great measure to the ex-perience of mankind, considers physical discomfort and pain to be the greatest evils of life, forgetting how far more fatal to the happiness of men and women are the moral evils. This school of thought, blind to the teachings of Nature and of Revelation, would, in its dealings with mankind, eliminate from the world all coercion and punishment, regardless of the warnings of history, which show that it is only through discipline and suffering that the finest qualities of men and women are developed, and that

43
nations have attained to the greatest heights of eminence and of power.
Such is the deadly price the British people have to pay for their "Cult of Comfort at any Cost."
The only salvation must come from ourselves—from the men and women, the boys and girls of every class. God has given us every opportunity. He has done everything possible for us. It is for us now, before it is too late, to make a wise use of the glorious and magnificent opportunities He has so freely bestowed upon us. We must abandon the pursuit of the soft, sweet, silly-sportive and sickly-sentimental, and give our lives to duty, discipline, and devotion to God, to our family, King and country.
The primeval law of God, " Increase and multi¬ply," must be obeyed by all healthy men and women, or the British race must die out.
All our young men and maidens must be taught that marriage must be their great aim in life; and to achieve that honourably and happily they must from their earliest years be taught the duty and dignity of hard work, and of saving every penny possible for establishing a home free from debt. The habit of saving should be formed at an early age, and the honour and glory of being independent of help, even in time of trouble, should be inculcated. The culti¬vation of health, wealth and honour is THE WAY OF HAPPINESS-AND THE WAY OF LIFE.
The better the people perform their duties in this

44
life, the better they serve God and conform to His will.
The Cult of Charity is but little less deadly than the Cult of Comfort. For the indiscriminating and almost boundless charity of our people has produced hordes of professional beggars in all ranks of life. Many clever people have elevated the crime of beg¬ging into a science, while others have practised it as an artistic occupation. In not a few cases chapels and churches encourage young children to beg, until begging becomes second nature to them; and having begged for others in their youth, they feel no shame in after life to beg for luxuries for themselves. Thus, "Briton and Beggar" are becoming synonymous terms, and very few of either sex, however good their income may be, ever save one quarter of the sums that foreigners would save under similar conditions. The females spend all they get in dress and gadding about, while our benighted young men "blue every stiver " they can get hold of in sports.
We hear much of men and women's rights, but little of men and women's duties.
We have the terrible problems of poverty, crime, prostitution, and unemployment always before us. Tramps and vagrants are continuously increasing in numbers, and we go gaily on manufacturing these classes—all from our zeal for humanity. Our laws, made in the name of Christianity and humanity, occasionally torture and ruin the innocent and help-

45
less, while they feed, clothe, and splendidly lodge the culprit. Let me explain :
There are often cases of theft by employees brought before the magistrates, who, as a rule, ad¬minister the law most mercifully. I make no com¬plaint of the administration of the law, but I accuse the gross ignorance of our humanitarians who make such cruelly destructive laws. There are thousands of cases of the insane inhumanity of our laws every year where the innocent and helpless are tortured. I have known of them for many years, and have expected that some of our great, good, and wise men would remedy the matter.
Recently, men in fair employment have been proved guilty of robbery, and have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment. In the last case the man, who had been in regular employment for a year, had a wife and four children. Now, I ask, what will become of the latter, not only during the imprison¬ment of the bread-winner, but what will become of the whole of them in the coming years ? Criminals must be punished. Pardon for crime is an unpardon¬able sin. There are more men, women, and children in these islands ruined by being pardoned for their offences than from any other cause; and the prose¬cutors in the recent cases are not to be blamed. But the law is to be blamed.
I do not write in a hurry. I have seen cor-
poral punishment inflicted on Englishmen and on

46
foreigners also. I have read and heard hundreds of arguments against corporal punishment. We have no corporal punishment for ordinary criminals in this sentiment-ridden land. But between 30,000 and 40,000 habitual vagrants are ever on our roads, and these are principally created by our system of im¬prisonment, instead of flogging, for crime. These are ulcers which destroy our national vitality, and they are continuously increasing in number. (See Report of Committee on Vagrancy. Cd. 2,852.)
I do not wish to send the humanitarians—the lovers of criminals—into hysterics, so I will say as briefly as possible that, in my opinion, the law should be altered so that first offenders should be allowed the option of taking a flogging in lieu of imprisonment in certain cases, so that, in the case of a married man, the wife and family shall suffer as little as possible.
"Comes the moment to decide,
•
Then it is the brave man chooses,
And the coward stands aside."-LowELL.
Our men and boys are brave enough to risk limb, if not life, at football, boxing, wrestling, etc., and I am sure that any man in decent health would prefer a sound flogging than to be detained in jail for a month or more, while his wife and children are starv¬ing, begging, stealing, or doing things even worse than these,

47
The first object of punishment should be as a deterrent ; its second object should be as a corrective —that is, as a moral tonic to strengthen the will to do that which is right. Punishment should not be inflicted as a revenge for injuries received. But these are mere platitudes. Plainly and straightforwardly, I believe in the sanctifying power of the whip.
The brave Briton—any brave man—would rather suffer in his own skin than that his wife and children should starve. Personally, I do not consider it de¬grading to flog or to be flogged. The degradation lies in deserving punishment.
We have no time to lose if the British race is to be saved. We must "wake up " to the stern fact that we live in a world governed by unchanging, inflexible, and relentless laws, wherein there is NO MERCY for folly, weakness, or mistakes due to good intentions founded on ignorance.
We must earn life, or we shall certainly receive punishment.
There is no middle course.
There is no escape.
We have had many warnings during the last fifty years.
We have no excuse.
We cannot plead ignorance.
"That servant, which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with many stripes."

48
These are the words of Christ.
Ancient and modern history and the teachings of science show conclusively that it is not wealth that causes disaster, but the squandering of wealth and health in luxury and folly which brings destitution, disease, dishonour, and death to nations as well as to individuals.
Next to health, wealth is the greatest material blessing that can be conferred on man, provided he has wisdom to use it rightly.
A more bright and brilliant future than has ever dawned on any nation will be the lot of our British
race in this century if we will but exercise a little
common sense and "Turn away from the wicked-ness we have committed, and do that which is lawful and right." The past is dead and gone. The future
is in our own hands. But we have not a day to lose. If we will, we may take advantage of our oppor¬tunities immediately, and, casting off our errors,
sentimentalism, weakness, cant, softness, indolence, extravagance and greed for luxuries, rise to a virtu¬ous, vigorous and more virile life, economising our health and wealth, and securing a noble future for our Empire and our race!