Untitled article by H. C. Miller

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 14, 1868

ORDER.

By H. C. Miller

“And the elder shall serve the younger.” Gen. xxv, 23.

These words plainly teach us an exception to an established order which ruled in the family. We have not quoted them for the purpose of entering into a consideration of any question of election, but for the purpose of making them the foundation for a few remarks upon an evil which we think is constantly increasing in our time. We allude to the custom of making a pet of the youngest child in the family and causing all the rest of the children to do obeisance to him, to yield to all his desires and to obey his slightest wish. Go where you will, and you almost always see this. Is the attention of visitors called to any member in particular, it is to the youngest. He is praised, he is petted, his traits are extolled, his smart sayings are repeated. Do the children desire to all enjoy a plaything at the same time, or a privilege, it is to him all the rest must yield, instead of all yielding to the elder, and then he be taught to show love and kindness to the younger.

We might enlarge on these points, but the effect is that to which we wish especially to call attention. We believe that from the first God designed that the first-born be entitled to peculiar advantages and special privileges which belong to no other member of the family, Gen. iv, 7, one object being to cultivate in children reverence for age as well as establishing order. And what more beautiful sight than is presented by that family where the younger children yield submission to the elder second only to that yielded to their parents, and where the elder acts with kindness and self-denial. And is it going too far to conclude that the disrespect to age, and disregard of the rights of older persons, so common in these last days with the young, is due in a great degree to this perversion of God's established order?

I have seen parents who were always all smiles and kind words to the youngest, and harsh and stern to the elder, and compelling him to always yield to the younger, and I have marked, as a result of this, the loss of the manly feeling in the elder children, and a feeling of inferiority and cringing in the presence of inferiors, the consciousness of manhood lost; while I have seen the youngest grow up disrespectful, selfish, tyrannical, to the sorrow of the poor parents, and the loss of the love, esteem, and respect of all about them, with their own happiness marred by the rough knocks they receive in consequence of this misfortune, this defect in their early training. H. C. MILLER.