W By Chancellor John H. Vincent HILE we sit in silent thoughtfulness among the gathering shadows of this Vesper hour let us for a time reflect on the significance, the brevity and the higher values of life, especially in the light of its relation to the life to come. And as necessary to the true appreciation of this we must primarily ponder carefully and feel profoundly the fact and the extent of present personal obligation. Tenderness and tearfulness are not enough. Sentiment may soothe and thrill, but our pressing need is to face the fact of duty-our own immediate duty in all the relations of life. And our present Vesper opportunity cannot be more wisely employed than in canvassing one aspect of life-obligation the question of our duty to the childhood of our immediate vicinage the nearer the better for the just appreciation of our personal responsibility. Let us think of the children at home and the neighbors' children who are influencing our children quite as much as we ourselves may be doing. This is an age of freedom-this Twentieth Century now in its dawn. And what mature age in men and women is clamoring for, we are thoughtlessly thrusting upon young life which because of the universal spirit of freedom now prevailing needs more restraint and careful guarding than ever before in the history of the race. We are in this age neglecting children. To be sure we give more attention than ever to their education at school, to their games and sports, their dress and parlor manners, to the importance of grace of deportment before strangers and the like. But we do not emphasize sufficiently the quiet self-forgetting and modest bearing of childhood. We rather encourage and even insist upon conformity to the proprieties of fashionable *The Vesper Hour, contributed to THE CHAUTAUQUAN each month by Chancellor Vincent continues the ministries of Chautauqua's Vesper service throughout the year. The paper of this month is a continuation of that printed in the March CHAUTAUQUAN. life. Just when a young girl needs self-forgetting simplicity, naturalness of manner and speech, we begin to insist upon attention to the program of conventionalities that are supposed to prepare our young maidens for what is called "society." At the very time when self-restraint, the recognition of parental authority and the habit of obedience are most necessary to a true personal development and a preparation for the realities of life, we are likely to relax authority, eschew law and laugh at the independence, laxities and impertinences of what we call "Young America." We even boast to our guests and in our children's presence laugh at, the independence and self-assertion and even the rudenesses of unrepressed and irrepressible young American life. In many homes children never learn the reality either of law or penalty; and the terminology of a saving theology, which it is the first mission of home to explain and illustrate by a sound practical domestic administration, is as an unknown tongue to the children God has given us to train for his glory, for social usefulness and with a view to their personal salvation. A fundamental of social and political life is reverence for authority, the recognition of law and a prompt personal surrender to its requirements. The habit of unquestioning obedience must be acquired in the formative years. The object of home and of the parental relation is to establish in the earliest period of life an object-lesson-school, a kindergarten of theology and of social order, that children may know by personal experience the significance of the great ideas and principles on which all society is founded and especially the great ideas which are at the base of political and religious obligation. This insistence does not require even a modicum of tyranny. It does not increase the sorrows of a child or limit in any way his personal freedom or his enjoyment of life. The widening sphere of woman is a feature of the age. But it is easily possible to make a serious mistake here. It may be a "wider sphere" that opens before the woman who reads three American and two foreign magazines every month, who keeps up with the Congressional proceedings at Washington, goes to the bottom of local political discussions, belongs to three or four local clubs and has an entrée into the most select homes of her town or city, and who, in following this complicated and crowded program must of necessity commit the training and care of her children to servants, governesses and the public school or academybut is it a nobler sphere? As for religious education-when that question is proposed we at once hear the questions, "Do not our children go to Sunday School?" "Do you think we are immoral as a family?" "Do we not know that the civilization of which we are a part is the noblest and loveliest that the world has ever known?" These responses are pleasant to hear but they render it necessary for one who would really reform society to go a great deal farther than this paper has done. We must insist that the ambitious and aspiring Mrs. Foremost shall give her time and talents primarily and personally to the training of her own children; that she care a thousand times more for them than for "society" because by training them aright she will do society more good in a day than Mrs. Foremost's presence at clubs, teas and reunions can do in a decade. We must insist that in training her children Mrs. Foremost should accustom them to the type of politeness that is just the same as to deportment and spirit at the breakfast when nobody but Mr. Foremost, herself and her children are present, as at the elaborate breakfast given in honor of the Honorable Mr. This or the distinguished Lord That. We must also insist that in training her children she make sure that they commit to memory before they are ten years old, and so commit as never to forget, the essential formulas of the Christian faith and choice selections from the holy scriptures and from the hymns of the church; that before they are fifteen years of age her children shall know "unforgetably" the Ten Commandments, the second chapter of Matthew, the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5, 6 and 7, and also the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew, the first and the fourteenth of John, the first and fifth chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, at least ten of the Psalms, the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and the last chapter of the Revelation. There is another religious duty which Mrs. Foremost must not omit-the training of her children regularly to attend on Sabbath days both the public service and the Sunday school, that they may grow to revere the church, to honor the Sabbath and to place the highest estimate upon the Holy Scriptures as able to make wise unto salvation. And the best thing that Mrs. Foremost does in carrying out this régime is the impression her personality makes upon her own children, they growing up to understand that she really believes in the Bible, honors the Sabbath, reverences the church, and out of a pure heart worships God; that she accounts it the chief end of her mission to illustrate to her children the possibility of a true and pure life— a life of unselfish service at home and of sympathy for all missionary work the world over. These are important reflections for our Vesper hour. In the sacred silence of the occasion may we find opportunity for a new covenant with God in the interest of our own children! I know a place-a little place; With honeysuckle pink and white, To make a tired heart sing. Tired hearts I know-so many hearts Yet can these never reach my bower Ah, could I right the wrong! -Emily Niles Huyck. Cornish Wind There is a wind in Cornwall that I know Tastes the ripe earth and the unvintaged sea. Not in the tunnelled streets where scarce men breathe Blossom in foam, wherever merchant bees Volubly traffic upon any heath: If I forget, shame me! or if I find A wind in England like my Cornish wind. -Arthur Symons, The Saturday Review. |