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Page 30
"And from my heaven-touched life may downward flow
Prophetic promise of a grace to be;
And flower, and bird, and beast, may upward grow,
And find their highest linked to God in me."
Possibly you will say at once, "Oh, my boy has no taste for natural
history, and he would take no interest in this kind of thing." All the
better his finding it a bit dry--it will rid the subject of some of its
dangerous attraction. I have yet to find the boy for whom the Latin
Grammar has the least interest; but we do not excuse him on that ground
from grinding at it. Whether he takes an interest in it or not, you have
to teach him that he has got to know about these things before going to
school, to guard him from the danger of having all sorts of false, and
often foul, notions palmed off on him. I do not say that pure knowledge
will necessarily save, but I do say that the pitcher which is full of
clear spring-water has no room for foul. I do say that you have gained a
great step, if in answer to the offer of enlightenment which he is
certain to receive, you have enabled your boy to acquit himself of the
rough objurgation--forgive me for putting it in schoolboy language: "Oh,
hold your jaw! I know all about that, and I don't want any of your rot."
I do say that early associations are most terribly strong, and if you
will secure that those early associations with regard to life and birth
shall be bound up with all the sanctities of life--with home, with his
mother, with family, with all that is best and highest in life; then his
whole attitude in life will be different. But if these early
associations are linked with all that is false and foul, some subtle
odor of the sewer will still cling about the heart of the shrine, a
nameless sense of something impure in the whole subject; an undefinable
something in his way of looking at it, which has often made the purity
of men--blameless in their outer life--- sadden and perplex me almost as
much as the actions and words of confessedly impure men.
IV
But, whatever is the importance I attach to pure teaching, I return to
my old position, that purity is an attitude of soul, or, perhaps I ought
to say, the "snowy bloom" of the soul's perfect health, rather than
anything you can embody in moral maxims or pure knowledge--that perfect
bloom of spiritual health which may be as much the result of a mother's
watchful care and training as the physical health of the body. It is for
you to train your boy in that knightly attitude of soul, that reverence
for womanhood, which is to men as "fountains of sweet water" in the
bitter sea of life; that chivalrous respect for the weak and the
unprotected which, next to faith in God, will be the best guard to all
the finer issues of his character. Truth of truth are the golden words
of Ruskin to young men:
"Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever else you injure,
whomsoever else you leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor
injure, nor leave unaided according to your power any woman
whatever, of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue of the highest
phase of manly character begins and ends in this, in truth and
modesty before the face of all maidens, in truth and reverence or
truth and pity to all womanhood."
Can we doubt or question this, we who worship Him who came to reveal the
true man quite as much as to reveal the only true God--the real manhood
beneath the false, perishable man with which it is so often overlaid by
the influence of society and the world? Look at His attitude towards
women, ay, even Eastern women, who had not been ennobled by centuries of
Christian freedom and recognized equality of the sexes, but who, on the
contrary, belonged to a nation tainted to some degree with that Eastern
contempt for women which made a Hindu answer the question of the
Englishman, perplexed by the multiplied of Indian gods and sects, "Is
there _no_ point of belief in which you all unite?" "Oh, yes," the
Pundit replied, "we all believe in the sanctity of cows and the
depravity of women!"
These Eastern women, therefore, had much to enslave and lower them; but
see how instantly they rose to the touch of the true Man, just as they
will rise, the women of to-day, to the touch of the true manhood of your
sons, if you will train them to be to us such men as Jesus Christ was.
See how He made women His friends, and deigned to accept their ministry
to His human needs. Many severe rebukes are recorded from His lips to
men, but not one to a woman. It was a woman, ay, even a degraded woman,
who by her kisses and her tears smote the Rock of Ages and the water of
life flowed forth for the world, who won for the world the words: "He
who hath been forgiven much loveth much," and the burden of guilt is
changed into the burden of Love. It was to a woman He first gave the
revelation of life, that He first revealed Himself as the Water of Life,
and first uttered the words, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." It
was women who remained faithful when all forsook Him and fled. It was a
woman who was the last to whom He spoke on the cross, to a woman that
the first words were spoken of His risen life. It was a woman He made
His first messenger of the risen life to the world. Nothing in the life
of the true Man on earth stands out in more marked features than, if I
may venture to use the words, His faith in women, as if to stamp it
forever as an attribute of all true manhood, that without which a man
cannot be a man.
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