Three gateways span the path of earthly existence: one at the entrance
which we call the gate of birth; one at the close which we call the gate
of death, and one at the entrance to the wondrous Land of the Teens,
which we call the gate of manhood or of womanhood. At each of these
gates a wonderful gift is presented to each individual. At the gate of
birth it is the gift of earthly life, at death it is the gift of
continued life, and at the gate which opens into the Land of the Teens
it is the gift of creative life. You see that each gift is of life.
The path of earthly life, beginning at the gateway of birth, passes
through the sunny meadow-land of Childhood, and also through a strange,
mysterious land to which we have referred as the Land of the Teens,
before reaching the Heights of Maturity. This Land of the Teens is
peculiar in that the inhabitants are neither children nor adults, and
yet, with the inexperience of children, they have many of the desires
and emotions of grown-up people. This constitutes an element of great
danger, while another source of danger is the fact that adequate
guidance is not always given in this transition period, or, if
proffered, is proudly rejected by those who think that being in their
"teens" makes them wise above that which is written.
When we visit foreign lands we are grateful for guidance and direction,
especially if we are not acquainted with the language; so, if we do not
hire a guide we, at least, buy a guide-book. It seems to me, then, that
we ought not to rebel against guides through the Land of the Teens,
realizing that one who has traveled through a country can point out
beauties and warn against dangers which would not be recognized by the
inexperienced traveler.
We can visit England, Italy, or Germany many times, and at each journey
can profit by former experiences, but we pass through the Land of the
Teens but once, and the lessons we learn on that journey we can only
utilize for the benefit of others. This is why many people on the
Heights of Maturity are anxious to light a beacon for those who are
still in their "teens." They would gladly help others to shun the
by-paths where they have met disaster, for they have learned the very
solemn truth that in youth one is determining what maturity shall be.
The seeds sown in the sunny meadow of Childhood and in the broader
fields of the Land of the Teens are harvested in the uplands of
Maturity, and the harvest is always greater than the seed sown. The
petulance and pouting of the child hardens into the gruffness,
bad-temper, and moroseness of the man; the idleness and shirking of the
youth becomes the shiftlessness and unreliability of the adult; the
boy's neglect of duty and unwearied search for pleasure may be harvested
in dissipation and ruin in mature life. It is, then, a very serious
thing to be passing through one's "teens," and the wise youth will
welcome any guide who will show him a safe path. May I claim the
privilege of acting for a little time in that capacity?
The King of this land has made laws for its government and wisdom, has
builded paths wherein one may walk in safety. The laws made by the King
are not harsh and cruel, but are beneficent, and he denies no real good.
He says to the traveler, "You belong to me, and I am desirous of your
highest welfare; therefore, obey me and you shall be rewarded; disobey
me and you shall be punished." It needs some moral courage to bravely
stay in the path of Wisdom, for there are many allurements to leave it;
more particularly as the inexperience of the traveler does not warn him
of the dangers of following pleasures that lead away from wisdom's ways.
The guide worthy of trust must not fail to point out these dangers; and
the prudent youth will listen to the warning voice and walk in Wisdom's
ways, for "all her ways are pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."
We talk much about our personal liberty, and assert that we have a right
to live in Maine or California, but we have not that much liberty in
regard to dwelling in the Land of the Teens. If we are ever to reach the
Heights of Maturity we must spend ten years in the Teens. We cannot sell
our domain, nor give it away, and we cannot even hire some one to
cultivate it for us. This being the case, it becomes important for us
to study the soil and how best to develop its advantages.
We find that the land has three divisions: the Domain of the Body, the
Field of Intellect, and the Garden of the Heart,--the same divisions
that exist in the Sunny Land of Childhood, and that we have been
cultivating ever since we were born. These are the kingdoms which came
to us with the gift of life. We recognize that the gifts which come to
us at birth and death are of life for ourselves alone, and we have had
no thought during our childish years except to develop our powers for
our own advantage. It may be we have not felt perfectly satisfied with
our lot in life, but we have felt that we were not responsible for this.
We did not choose to be born in America instead of Asia, though we do
not rebel at this fact. We did not select to be white instead of black.
It is not our fault if we are born of a family in which consumption is
an inheritance; and, on the other hand, we can claim no credit to
ourselves if we have inherited strong bodies with healthful tendencies.
It is our misfortune, and not our fault, if we are not quite perfectly
poised by nature; it is our good fortune, not our foresight, if we have
genius instead of mediocrity. The gifts that come to us through
inheritance are ours without blame or credit to us but they bring with
them the responsibility of their use. We are responsible for maintaining
or increasing our dower of health by obedience to physical laws;
responsible for the cultivation of our intellects, for the development
of inherited virtues, and the annihilation of inherited vices.
If you study your characteristics and talents you find that they repeat
those of your ancestry. Your eyes, hair, mouth, chin, your stature,
figure, complexion, your talents, capabilities, tendencies, your likes
and dislikes, your faults as well as your virtues are repetitions of
those who preceded you in this living network of existence of which you
form a part. If you are not like father or mother you may be like
grandfather or great-grandmother. If you do not find yourself repeating
the characteristics or personality of any one ancestor, you may find
yourself a composite photograph of several. And even if you cannot trace
in yourself a likeness to any family representative, you may still be
assured that from some of them your traits have come to you. You have
only to recall the complexity of your sources of inheritance and then
remember how many words can be spelled from the twenty-six letters of
the alphabet to see that you can hardly measure the peculiar forces of
mind and body that may come to you though that power of transmission
which we call heredity.
It may occur to you to ask why, if we are not responsible for our
inheritances, is it needful to give them any particular thought? There
are two reasons why we should consider the good and bad characteristics
which may be ours through inheritance. In the first place, heredity is
not fatality, and we are not absolutely obliged to follow the paths
which our ancestors marked out for us, and in the second place, we can,
by understanding our own characters, mark out better paths for our
posterity. We are not only receivers of life, but we may be also givers
of life, and this is the gift that comes to you at the entrance to the
Land of the Teens. Can you imagine a more important period in the life
of an individual than that point where is intrusted to him the physical
powers which make him the arbiter of the destiny of those who come after
him?
The gift of possible life for others is even more marvelous than that of
actual life for one's self and brings with it greater responsibility. It
is accompanied with marked physical changes. You have observed them in
yourself, though you perhaps have not understood them. Up to this time
you have been but a child, and all your physical forces have been
occupied in keeping you alive and growing. But you are now to become a
man, with powers that will unite you to the race; powers that will give
you the ability to form a new link in the living chain that now ends
with you. You have noticed the rapid unfolding of your bodily powers;
you have become conscious of new and strange emotions; you have, it may
be, found yourself becoming irritable and have felt bewildered with the
new aspects of life and have wondered what it all means. It may be you
have felt as did one boy who said to his mother, to whom he confided all
his problems of life: "Mamma, I want to kick and cry, and I don't know
why." The mother knew. She understood the strange unfolding that was
going on in his physical organism, and she kindly explained it to him,
telling him that he must have patience with himself, and govern himself
by his judgment and not allow himself to be carried away by impulse,
assuring him that God would hold him as responsible for purity of
character as He would the dear sister of whom they all felt so careful.
He should reverence his manhood, even as he expected her to reverence
her womanhood. This is necessary, not only for the good of each
individual, but also for the eternal interest of future generations.
This entrance into the Land of the Teens is a serious, even a dangerous
period, for if you have not had right instruction you may be led, or
fall into habits of wrong doing or thinking. If you are rightly taught
you will begin to have an added reverence for yourselves in that God is
dignifying you with new powers that will bring you more nearly into
co-partnership with himself. These powers, the most sacred of all that
have come to you, need years for development, and should be guarded by
pure thoughts and kept for their holy office of promoting the earthly
usefulness and eternal blessedness of those who hereafter will owe both
earthly and immortal life to you.
I have said that we are not responsible for the dower of virtues or of
vices which are ours by inheritance, but we are responsible for the
inheritances of our children, and this is a most solemn thought. Do you
not begin to see that we cannot value ourselves too highly if we have
the right idea of what our real worth is? We can scarcely overestimate
the results of our own deeds. We may think it does not matter if we do
not always tell the exact truth; if at some times we equivocate and at
others exaggerate, but when we remember that truth is the foundation of
character, and realize that by our little equivocations or exaggerations
we may be weakening the foundations of many who are from us to receive
their talents and tendencies, we begin to see that the matter is a very
serious one. I am sometimes told that young people will not be
influenced by a consideration for the welfare of unborn generations
whose existence is very problematical in their thought; but my
observation is that young folks are much more sensible than we give them
credit for being. More than one young man has said to me: "I was never
taught that my conduct and thought would impress themselves upon my
children, but now that I see that such is the case, I am sure that I
will hereafter be more careful of my life than I ever have been."
This field of investigation is a broad one, and even if you never have
an opportunity to study the subject scientifically you can still be of
incalculable benefit to humanity by ever remembering that you are living
for an earthly, as well as for a heavenly immortality. The young people
who to-day are in the Land of the Teens are they who are determining the
characteristics of the men and women of the Twentieth Century, creating
the standards of thought and action, the methods of business, the level
of morals, in fact the whole status of society in the world of a hundred
years to come.
It is a very wonderful fact that God has so created us that the result
of our deeds is not limited to our own lives, but makes its impress upon
those who are to come after us. We are not separate units, but are links
in a living chain of endless transmission. This fact makes our lives of
far greater consequence than if, in their results, they were limited to
ourselves. If we are anxious concerning the future of our country, we
may take to heart the thought that it will be what we ourselves have
made it. The Bible expresses the same idea in many ways. "Whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap," does not mean merely that his own
future will be influenced by his conduct, but that his future in his
children will be a record which he himself has made.
Men often make their wills and bequeath to their children their gold or
houses and lands, but sometimes against their wills they bequeath to
their children a bodily dwelling of inferior material, and so poor in
construction that it very soon falls into decay through disease, or in
very early life becomes a tottering ruin. It would seem rather amusing
to us if one should sit down and write his will and say: "I bequeath to
my daughter Mary my yellow, blotched and pimpled complexion, resulting
from my own bad habits of life. I bequeath to my son John, the effects
of my habits of dissipation in my youth, with a like love for alcoholic
liquors and tobacco. I bequeath to my son Harry my petulant, irritable
disposition, and the rheumatic gout which I have brought upon myself by
disobedience to physical law; and to my daughter Elizabeth, my trembling
nerves and weak moral nature." But this is, in truth, what many parents
do, and the children find it a sad, instead of an amusing fact.
On the other hand, if one has led a life of uprightness and morality,
and has obeyed physical law, his children will inherit his physical
vigor, and his moral stamina. It becomes of exceeding great importance
that these facts should be known to the young, in order that they may
endeavor to overcome their own weaknesses, and strengthen their own good
qualities for the sake of future generations.
This heredity, the transmission of the qualities of the parent to the
child, is found among plants and animals as well as in the human race.
The seed of a plant produces another plant of the same kind, and the
farmer knows when he sows wheat, that his harvest will be wheat, and he
should know just as certainly that if he "sows wild oats" in his youth
he may expect "wild oats" in his children. The character of the food we
eat, the air we breathe, the occupations we follow, the habits we
create, are the forces which shape not only our own destiny, but create
the tendencies of our children.
With these thoughts in mind, the question of the use of narcotics
becomes one of great importance. There are few, if any, tobacco users
who are anxious that their boys should early begin the use of the weed.
But they do not realize the fact that in their own use of it they may
have diminished the vital force of these boys, transmitting a tendency
to disease, or perhaps an appetite for the tobacco itself, and not only
will the boys feel the effects, but the girls as well. As the thought of
men is turned in this direction, proofs are accumulating of the evil
results to the children of tobacco-using parents. A prominent physician
says: "I have never known an habitual tobacco user whose children did
not have deranged nerves, and sometimes weak minds. Shattered nervous
systems, for generations to come, may be the result of this indulgence.
The children of tobacco-using parents frequently die with infantile
paralysis. I have known two cases in which the crying of the baby could
not be stopped until the tobacco-pipe was placed between its lips." Dr.
Pidduck asserts that in no instance is the sin of the father more
strikingly visited upon his children than the sin of tobacco using. "The
enervation, the hypochondriasis, the hysteria, the insanity, the
dwarfish deformities, the consumption, the suffering lives, and early
deaths of the children of inveterate smokers bear ample testimony to the
feebleness and unsoundness of the constitution transmitted by this
pernicious habit."
The effect of alcohol upon the child is equally marked, and from all
sides comes the testimony that the degenerations do not stop with the
individual, but pass on to succeeding generations. Sometimes the
influence is seen in the stunting of the growth, both mentally and
physically. Dr. Langden Downe reports several cases of this sort where
the children had lived to be twenty-two years old and still remained
infants, symmetrical in form, just able to stand beside a chair, utter a
few monosyllabic sounds, and to be amused with toys. Dr. F. R. Lees,
referring to the injury inflicted upon the liver by alcohol, says: "And
recollect, whatever injury you inflict upon this organ, to your
posterity the curse descends, and as is the father, so are the
children." Dr. Kerr asserts that the effects of injury to the mind and
body may not always show themselves in the drinker himself, yet it is
doubtful if his children ever entirely escape the effects in one form or
another. These effects may be manifest in insanity, or in a tendency to
diseases of the stomach, liver, bowels, lungs, or other organs; or with
a like love for alcoholic stimulants. Not only may the child be weak in
body but also in intellect. It is the statement of a score of observant
physicians that the children of intemperate parents are apt to be
feeble in body and weak in mind.
Another very striking thought in this connection is that while the
physical effects may not show in the individual himself, nor in his
children, they may be manifest in the deterioration of his grandchildren
and great-grandchildren. A prominent temperance advocate who was laid up
with rheumatic gout, which is apt to be the result of alcoholic
indulgence, replied to a friend who wondered that he, a drinker of cold
water, should suffer with this disease, "Yes, my ancestors drank the
liquor and I foot the bills." In 1834 the Parliament of the British
House of Commons made a report of intemperance in which they stated that
the evils of alcoholism "are cumulative in the amount of injury they
inflict, as intemperate parents, according to high medical testimony,
give a taint to their offspring before birth, and the poisonous stream
of spirits is conveyed through the milk of the mother to the infant at
the breast; so that the fountain of life, through which nature supplies
that pure and healthy nutriment of infancy, is poisoned at its very
source, and a diseased and vitiated appetite is thus created, which
grows with its growth, and strengthens with its increasing weakness and
decay."
A tendency to commit suicide seems to be a marked bequest of an
inebriate parent to his children, and it is well to state that in the
opinion of medical men who are dealing with all forms of inebriety, the
evils resulting to the children may be transmitted by parents who have
never been noted for drunkenness. Continual moderate drinking keeps the
body so constantly under the influence of alcohol that a crowd of
nervous difficulties and disorders may be transmitted even more surely
than from the parent who has occasional sprees with long intervals of
sobriety between. It is not only through the drinking father that injury
is done to the children, but the mother may have a vitiated inheritance
from her father and transmit it to her children.
When we recall the fact that one hundred thousand men fall into
drunkard's graves every year, we are appalled at the thought of that
vast army marching on to death and destruction. As we listen, we can, in
fancy, almost hear the tramp, tramp of that "mighty host advancing,
Satan leading on." In the front rank comes the one hundred thousand men
who shall fall into drunkard's graves this year, and behind them the one
hundred thousand men who are to fall next year. They come with sound of
revelry and song, and close beside them press a crowd of weeping wives
and mothers and little children, starved, crippled, and murdered, who
are to be fellow victims with the drunkard. Not very far back from the
front row come one hundred thousand young men in the very prime of
young, vigorous life, just beginning to drink their first glass of wine
or beer, with no intention of ever standing in that front row, yet
having started on the way. Back of them, one hundred little school boys
who think it manly to ape the follies of their predecessors. Back of
them, one hundred thousand little toddlers whose feet stagger in their
innocent helplessness. Back of them, one hundred thousand mothers with
babies in their arms. Oh, how sweetly those baby eyes look up into the
loving eyes that are brooding over them. Is it possible those baby brows
will ever lie low in the gutter, those sweet lips be stained by oath or
glass; those crumpled rose-leaf fingers ever strike the murderous blow
incited by alcohol? It must be, if that front rank of one hundred
thousand drunkards is to be recruited, for the drunkards of the future
are to-day babies in their mother's arms. Do you who read these words
intend to join this vast army of prospective drunkards, or will you
belong to the cold-water army that is marching on accompanied by health,
vigor, industry, prosperity, success and long life?
We must not be so interested in the inheritance of evil qualities as to
forget the transmission of good. We read in Exodus, twentieth chapter,
that the sins of the fathers are to be visited upon the children unto
the third and fourth generations of them that hate the Lord, but mercy
will be shown to _thousands of generations_ of them that love Him and
keep his commandments. As we have seen the sins of the fathers are
visited upon the children in transmission of diseased bodies, perverted
moral natures and weakened wills, and realize that the promise is being
fulfilled in the visitation of the sins of the fathers upon the
children, let us see if the other promise is being fulfilled also, in
the mercy shown to thousands of them that love the Lord and keep His
commandments.
An English specialist in children's diseases has carefully noted the
difference between twelve families of drinkers and twelve families of
sober parents during a period of twelve years.
INTEMPERATE. | TEMPERATE.
|
Produced 57 children; 25 died in | Produced 61 children; 6 died
the first week of life. These | in first week, of weakness.
deaths due to convulsions, or | 4 had curable diseases. 2
oedema of brain and membranes. | showed inherited nervous defects.
2 were idiots. 5 dwarfs. 5 | This leaves 50 who were in
epileptics. 1 had chorea. 5 were | every way normal, sound in body
deformed. 2 became drunkards. | and mind.
This leaves only 10 who showed |
during the whole of life a |
normal disposition and development |
of body and mind. |
If it were not a fact that health, purity, integrity, intellect and
virtue were being transmitted to a far greater extent than sin and vice,
there would be little good in the world, but the transmission of these
good qualities is so extended, so like the air and the sunshine and the
water, a common thing, that we almost forget to recognize it. When we
turn our thoughts to the investigation of this phase of the subject, we
find that vigorous parents have healthful children, that powers of
intellect are transmitted, and that honesty and uprightness in the
father warrants us in expecting the same in the son. We recognize the
transmission of powers of intellect in the fact that where the parents
have a peculiar talent, we very generally find the same talent in their
children. We are acquainted with musical families, mathematical
families, artistic families, and in the study of renowned people of the
world we find evidences of this transmission of intellect. We also learn
that the effects of education are transmissible, and if the parents are
educated along a certain line the children receive education along that
line much more readily. This fact becomes a wonderful incentive to us to
build up all that is best in our own natures in order that through us
the world may receive an impetus towards higher and better things.
Sometimes when your faults and defects press upon you with tremendous
force and you find it so very hard to overcome them, you may be tempted
to lay the blame on your ancestry who gave you such a dower, who by
their lives handicapped you in your life-struggle. You may feel inclined
to say with some writer, to me unknown, who says: