p. 40Example of Parents

Parents are taught a terrible lesson in reference to the example they ought to give their children, by certain words of our divine Lord, spoken on one occasion, when His disciples came to Him asking: “who is the greater in the kingdom of heaven?” And Jesus, calling a little child to Him, took him in His arms and set him in the midst of them, saying among other things: “He that shall scandalize one of these little ones, it were better for him that a mill-stone should be hanged about his neck and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”—(Matt. xviii. 1-6. Mark ix. 35.) “A little child, held in the arms by Jesus, embraced by Him,” as St. Mark writes, and set in the midst of the twelve Apostles! What tenderness for childhood this divine act displays! but what an appalling threat is conveyed in the words! How anxiously He would shield the young, innocent soul from the poisoning influence of bad example! “The person,” He would say, “that tampers with the innocence, or truth, or purity of a child, if he knew the divine displeasure he provokes, and the terrible everlasting punishment he incurs, would, rather than do so, very gladly prefer to be drowned with a mill-stone round his neck in the depth of the sea.”

Now you may easily see, dear reader, the special application of this threat to parents. They have imposed on them by God Himself, the vitally important obligation of training their children in the knowledge, and love, and practice, of Christian virtue and duty. They have two means of doing this, by word and by example. Well; if, instead of using these means as they ought to use them, parents habitually or even occasionally turn them both to the moral corruption of their children; if they lie, and swear, and speak foul words, and run down religion in their presence; and if they give them the example of stealing, or of any other species of dishonesty, the example too of drunkenness, brawling, etc.; if they are never seen to say a prayer, night or morning, if they never go to Mass, or Confession, or Holy Communion:—oh! what a special enormity of guilt there is in such conduct; what a special displeasure it must cause to the Heavenly Father and Protector of those little ones who are being thus handed over to Satan by their own parents; and, in fine, what must be the punishment in store for such unhappy parents, if even a stranger scandalizing a little child, only by a single act, is threatened by Jesus Christ with the severe rigours of divine justice! There seems indeed to be a double punishment inflicted by the just anger of God on parents who scandalize their children; or rather it might be more correct to say, the eternal punishment due to this unnatural crime, projects its shadow upon their earthly life, darkening it with sorrow, and misery, and remorse. How many a mother, hastening to her grave with a broken heart for her daughter’s shame, has been herself the moral cause of that shame! How many a father, crawling about the wards and courts of our parish workhouses, have sons spending weekly in drink double or treble what would support him at home in comfort! Why do they not do it? The reason is: he set them the example of drunkenness, and they have followed it: he cultivated no home affection in their souls, and they have none: he never troubled himself to teach them their duty to their God, to their parents, or to society; and they now live with their hand raised against all three, and the ban of all three upon their heads. It certainly is a terrible, although just, dispensation of divine Providence that punishes the parent’s sin against his child by the hand of the child itself. And oh, how frequently is it to be seen? But I trust I need not say more on this painful subject. If parents who read these pages do not tremble at the words of Jesus Christ against the scandal-giver of children, no words of mine will have any influence with them, and they will run their course blindly and recklessly, until the time of the earthly avengement comes. Then indeed, whether they live in castles or in cabins, they will be equally powerless to shut out the sorrow and anguish of heart, and the remorse, and perhaps the disgrace and shame, that will come and stay by them, like black mocking phantoms, and that will fill their solitary homes with a refrain that will be re-echoed in their inmost hearts: your children should be to you a crown of joy in your helpless old age, but your bad example has made them a crown of sorrow for ever!

But you must not think, dear reader, that no parent gives scandal to his child who does not commit some grievous crime, or speak some detestable word, or habitually neglect some important moral or religious duty in its presence. On the contrary, I am convinced that many parents who lead what we call respectable lives very often by their example give a moral warp to their children’s habits and dispositions, from which, in many instances, they never recover. That lady, for example, who tells her young daughter not to associate with the children of such a neighbour, as they are much below her, and their mother is vulgar, and their father only a shop-keeper; or that other lady who never speaks a kind word of any one, and who in presence of her family is ever detracting or slandering her friends and acquaintances; that respectable father too whose whole life, as well as his words, is constantly dinning into the ears of his children, the omnipotence of money, the disgrace of poverty, the grandeur of rank, the divinity of power, the worship of success: each of these parents is in his or her own way teaching worldliness and unchristian habits, and sowing the germs of vice in the soul of the child, as surely as he who commits gross sin by word or act in the presence of his family. In truth, the child’s earliest school of morality is home, and very often it is its only school. There the parent’s actions are the child’s lessons, and very carefully and assiduously are they conned and committed to practice. Never in after life will it give the same rapt attention to teacher or professor, never will it read books as eagerly, never will it listen to sermons or instructions with the same docility and will, never in a word, will it be influenced by the formal teaching of books, or schools, or masters, as it is influenced in its early childhood by the daily lives of its parents. Oh, that parents would understand this absolute power of good or evil, that they have over their children! I pray God to grant that my words may bring a true sense of it home to them, and that the consciousness of it may always abide with them, making them prudent and circumspect in every word spoken, and every action performed before their children.

And yet, there are such deeply rooted, mistaken notions in the minds of parents about their children’s education, that I fear much for the success of my words. Even a good, pious mother generally measures the religious education of her child by the number of prayers it can lisp, and the questions of the Catechism it can answer, never thinking that all she has succeeded in doing is simply to develop its memory by stamping on it, perhaps to the pain and disgust of her little one, a long list of words that as yet are without sense or meaning to it. I admit, of course, that the words, remembered afterwards, will be of use, and I admit the principle that the sooner a child’s religious education is taken in hands the better; but then the first lessons ought to be simple and intelligible, and conveyed in actions rather than in words. The child is a keen observer of the little world around it. Its first instinct is to take part in it, and to do what it sees others doing, particularly those it loves. Let the mother, then, and the father, too, give it the first lesson of prayer, by going on their knees night and morning, and saying their own prayers with uniform regularity. Let them give it lessons in patience, charity, truthfulness, purity; not by definitions or homilies, but by practising these virtues faithfully and avoiding with scrupulous care everything opposed to them. Let them at the same time keep from it every influence that would counteract or neutralize the good effect of their own example; and let them, above all, use extreme caution in the selection of those to whom they entrust it, either as nurses or servants. If parents have no experience themselves of the moral injury done by such persons to the young, they should be guided by those who have; and they should consider it a most sacred duty to inquire into the moral and religious character of every domestic who will in any way come into contact with their children.

And yet, the necessity of this inquiry is almost entirely overlooked by parents. They require indeed a character for honesty and sobriety in servants. If they are not honest they will pilfer; and if they are not sober they will not attend to their master’s or mistress’s business; and so master and mistress rest content in having a guarantee that their property is secure in their servants’ hands. But what guarantee have they that the characters, the habits, the future life, and the eternal salvation of their children are equally secure? None whatsoever; nor do they seem to care; for they do not look for any, nor do they indeed generally expect it. Now I think this carelessness of parents shows rather clearly the relative value they set on the preservation of their property, and the preservation of their children’s innocence. And yet I put it to your experience, dear reader, to say, if it is not the usual course of those who employ servants to act so. I know it may be urged with much show of truth, that it is nearly impossible to get a servant perfect in every respect, and that servants are not employed to edify children, but to do their work honestly and conscientiously. Although both these statements be admitted, the substantial charge of neglecting to save children from the danger of corruption by servants is not removed from parents. For all they know, the person they employ may be very demure and proper before them, whereas if they took the trouble of investigating as closely as they ought her previous character, they might find many reasons for not entrusting their children to her.

I would then recommend parents, first, to employ no one in their family, as nurse or governess, whose moral and religious character is not thoroughly good. I would recommend them, in the second place, to be cautious in allowing their children to mix unnecessarily with servants. Of course they must at the same time guard against an opposite danger to which young people are naturally exposed: I mean that of hauteur and superciliousness towards those whom they may be led to consider their inferiors. The vice of pride in a child is not only odious in God’s sight, but it is destructive of that simplicity and unselfishness that make childhood so beautiful and interesting. This danger, however, may not be apprehended, if parents themselves be kind and gentle, and considerate in their dealings with those under them: for the child is sure to follow in this as in other respects the example given it.

But, perhaps, some reader may be inclined to think that I exaggerate the importance of safeguarding children from the influences of bad example. Children, they may say, not being intended to lead the lives of monks and nuns, ought not to be reared up in isolation from the world around them. From the first, they ought to be thrown into the midst of those influences in which they will have to live afterwards. Caution them by all means against sin, and secure them if you will against its unnecessary occasions; but if a mother always keeps her sons and daughters by her, without giving them liberty to run about the house and speak to whom they please, they will grow up unfit for taking their place in society or in business; they will have no training in self-restraint; for they will have no external temptation from which to restrain themselves; and the ultimate consequence will be, that they will either be moved aside by the world when they enter it, or they will be borne backwards into sinful excess by the strong reaction that is sure to set in from their previous life of seclusion.

I have known some well-meaning Catholic parents who were guided by these principles in bringing up their families; and I have seen the result. It was in some few cases successful, in the others injurious—successful, where the servants had been carefully chosen, and carefully looked after; unsuccessful, where only the stereotyped requirement of honesty and sobriety was sought for in their appointment. Thus the recommendations I have already made seem to be confirmed by the issue of this mode of treatment. But, it must not be thought that, in keeping children from mixing indiscriminately, and unnecessarily with servants, I would have them put under any painful restraint. If you would have them to grow up morally healthful, you must let them run about and play and enjoy themselves to their heart’s content. It would be advisable even that you yourself, their father or their mother, should show your sympathy with your children in their sports and amusements; and if I were sure of being acquitted of levity in making the recommendation, I would go so far as to say that you might now and again unbend your dignity of parenthood with advantage, and join in their sports. But, as to the idea of deliberately allowing children to go into the occasions of sin, with the purpose of training them to avoid it—this idea seems to me so preposterous, that if I had not heard it defended by parents themselves, I could scarcely think it possible that any one with a Christian conscience could entertain it. It simply comes to this, in effect though not in intent, that the world and the devil must have fair play in their fight with Jesus Christ for the soul of the child. No one side must have the start of the other: both must begin from the beginning. What is taught in the parlour must have a chance of being untaught in the nursery, or the kitchen, or the stables. Or put the idea in another form. A gardener will lose his situation if he neglect to shelter young plants, and flower-seedlings, and budding rose-trees from the nipping frost, and the harsh, biting wind; but a parent is only promoting the future moral growth of his child by exposing it, in all its tender helplessness, in all its unsuspecting, unguarded innocence, to every sinful or dangerous influence with which chance may bring it into contact. Oh no, dear parents; the fight will be an unequal one; for the child’s own nature inclines it towards the world and sin. Give Jesus Christ a chance: let the good example of your own lives have an opportunity of taking root and springing into active growth, before the devil can sow his tares in the virgin soil, entrusted to you for cultivation. Believe me, experience will come soon enough to your child: so it need not be forestalled, but rather its inevitable coming should be feared, and every preparation should be made, and every precaution taken, that when it does come it may at least meet with no predisposition in its favour.