In this light, then, we can understand, brethren, the place of the
Christian family, as always the first of social institutions. Such
is the view I wish to urge, because I believe that, far more than we
suppose, this law of the family enters into the most real questions of
our time as to popular education or social reform. We live in a day
of theories; and in such a day we are most apt to forget the simple
truths, which, in Coleridge’s words, “are so true, that they lie
bed-ridden by the side of the most exploded errors.” I speak no mere
sentiment; I address myself to the plain sense and Christian experience
of all. It is the problem that presses on us to-day more than ever,
when we look at the mingled good and evil of our modern world; when
we enter one of our great cities, where wealth glitters as if there
were no suffering, yet a step apart there lurks a world of beggary and
crime, which our Christianity has hardly pierced, although it has sent
a Livingston into the heart of Africa;—what is the hope of Christian
more than pagan progress, of a Paris or New York more than a Rome?
I give the answer, which I think all history as well as the Gospel
gives. The purity of the household is the salt of our civilization. I
know no other answer. Need I then, state the ground on which such a
truth rests? The only lasting influence which can preserve or heal the
social body is one that works from the root. We can not, with dreamers
like Rousseau, believe the savage better than the civilized state.
Art and science bring manifold vices with the good, yet we can never
grapple with the sins of our day by vague railing against luxury. In
the decaying age of the Roman world a Jerome retired into his cave
at Bethlehem; but his idle despair did not cure the evil. We often
indulge the same false humor. We speak of a London or a New York as the
swollen ulcer of society, but we forget that we may as well talk of a
body without its brain; that it is in mutual circulation, the country
feeding the city with fresh blood, the city pouring it back enriched in
its double circuit, the life is maintained; and thus while we see the
vices, we should see also the enlarged activities, the myriad callings
for the poor, the treasures of art and culture for all, the uncounted
charities walking in every haunt of sorrow or sin. But this growth of
civilization has in it no self-preserving might. A refined culture is
no safeguard against our moral diseases. We repeat often that this
American people is abler to keep its freedom and virtue, because of the
education of all: yet it is one of those surface truths that may cover
a fallacy. I believe heartily in popular education. But there is a more
knowing vice as well as virtue. The mob of Paris is more intelligent
than the country boor; but it is a witty and polished animal. Such
training, without a deeper root, only quickens the weeds in the rank
field of our time, and chokes the public conscience.
Whatever, then, the form of our civilization, it must depend on the
tone of our household life for its healthy growth, because this
precedes all else in its shaping power. All the germs of personal
character, truth, purity, honesty, reverence of law, must be implanted
in this soil. The state rests on it. The church rests on it, and its
teaching is barren, unless it begin with home nurture. We may make
what laws we will for the suppression of vice, what plans we will of
education, what better methods of industry; but what are they without
the education of the character? What is our most perfect theory of
government, unless there be a self-governed people? What are commercial
rules, if there be no conscience of integrity and honor? Study this
truth in its widest bearings. Our time is marked by its noble efforts
for reform. We hail each healthy improvement in the condition of the
poor, the opening of new channels of labor, the breaking down of false
monopolies.
It is thus, my friends, we are to learn the bearing of such a truth
on our own land and time. We can not study the growth of society,
especially in our great cities, without observing that there are
many influences, such as I have already described in the old Pagan
civilization, which tend to impair the purity of home. The family
habits decay in the larger world of sensual splendor. It is becoming
a hard thing for our young men of fashion to afford the luxury of
marriage; and our young women learn that the aim of life is a rich
husband, who can supply the gold for the wardrobe and the glitter of
an establishment. We have imported from abroad within these few years
many of the loose ideas of modern Epicurism. But there are, besides,
influences peculiar to our American society, which are developing a
type of precocious youth not pleasant to look upon. I know not whether
it be the abuse of our free institutions, that begets our style of
manners: but we are too fast losing the habits of home authority and
filial reverence. It has been truly said of us, that we have as much
family government as ever, but the young govern the parents. We have
no children now-a-days. Our infants leap from the nursery into the
drawing-room; and while abroad a son or a daughter has hardly left
the retreat of home, here they are already veterans in the ways of
fashion, and society is quite surrendered to them. Many of our foreign
visitors have repeated the remark of De Tocqueville, that an American
girl has more of self-poised ease, but is wanting in the fresh charm
seen so often in the young maidens of England or France. I doubt not
there is a better side to this. I would not keep them, as is too often
done abroad, shut in nursery or convent without the education of the
character. I love the intelligence, the generous freedom of youth, but
I wish we might not lose with these the modest heart, the simple tastes
of past years. It maybe the passing excess of our national childhood,
but it is not to be flattered as it is too often. I know that I am very
old-fashioned in my ideas, yet it may be well if we soberly reflect on
these things. We may grow in wealth and all the arts of social culture,
but let these fast habits of the time, this whirl of our modern life
eat into the heart of our home piety, and the whole body must die of
its own gangrenes.
In that conviction I urge on you, my friends, your personal obligation.
Who of us can enough appreciate its meaning? Who of us, if he could
keep afresh the feeling of awe and tenderness with which he looked on
the face of his first-born infant, and felt what an undiscovered world
was opened to him, who would ever need to learn his duty? What a work
it is, how ceaseless, how growing at each step, how delicate in all its
adaptations, how asking all our love, our thoughtfulness, our patience!
I offer you no system of education. I repeat only the principle, which
I thank God is the root of all wholesome teaching, that a Christian
godliness is the growth of the whole character; and therefore it begins
with the recognition of the child as a new-born member of the family
of Christ; and plants its simplest truths in the moral affections,
and blends them with the real duties of life. This is sound sense and
piety. This, in Wordsworth’s happy line, is
Pure religion breathing household laws.
Give your offspring this training of the character; teach them to be
frank and open-hearted, to hate a lie or a mean action, to be kind to
the poor, to protect the weaker, to respect gray hairs, to reverence
your authority from love not fear, to cherish the natural pleasures
and employments of home, a book or a ramble more than the finery of
modish children young or old; above all to be always constant in their
Christian habits, with no affectations of a premature piety, with a
child’s faults, but a child’s sweet faith; give them, I say, this
training, if you will have them men and women indeed.
[_April 15._]