What is That in Thine Hand? by Mrs. I. H. E.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 9, 1916

What is That in Thine Hand?

By Mrs. I. H. E.

“How can I?” “What shall I say?”

“I do not know how,”—these are world-old excuses, in the face of admonitions to duty. Even Moses used them, in the real humility of spirit that came to him from forty years of desert dwelling with the flocks of Midian. But Moses was not excused. “What is that in thine hand?” asked the Lord; and, touched with heavenly power, his shepherd’s staff became a force that smote Egypt with plague and destruction, divided the waters of

No, it isn’t enough. Mrs. Chase’s experiment proves that, if it needed demonstration. We do not supply our children with books on geography and history and arithmetic, and then expect them to become so absorbed in the pursuit of knowledge that they will master the contents of these volumes unaided. Lessons are assigned, questions are asked and answered, authorities are consulted, quizzes are held, all under the direction of one who knows these subjects and how to teach them. Should mothers and fathers do less with this vital subject of temperance? If the paper is simply placed in the children’s hands and their reading is undirected, or if nothing but the stories and anecdotes are read, good as they are, the real object of the Temperance Annual—to make it an educator of our children—is lost. It should not only be read but studied, and its vital truths, its convincing arguments, so clearly and plainly fixed in the mind that they will be as a wall and a hedge about the young men and women of tomorrow, who are the children of today.

The tobacco question is one that is perhaps nearer to most mothers, even Seventh-day Adventist mothers, than the liquor menace. “My little boy has never even touched a cigarette,” a fond and trusting mother once said to a worker for boys. “Madam,” was the reply, “remember this: You do not know what your son is doing when he is out of your sight.” This is true; but of one thing we may be fairly certain,—the boy who goes out from the shelter of home untaught and unwarned, is a shining mark for the fowler of souls and the destroyer of human bodies.

The Instructor for March 7 is an Anti-Tobacco number. Mothers, will you use this weapon of defense for your children that is now placed in your hands? Will you study it, read it with the children, encourage them to write questions on the different articles for you to answer, and then ask the same or other questions of them? It is not enough to tell your boys that it is “wicked,” your girls, alas! that it is “unladylike,” to smoke cigarettes. Make your instruction definite. Tell them why the cigarette is a menace to their physical development, to their scholarship, to their purity of life, to their usefulness in manhood and womanhood. Show them the cost of forming this habit, not only in money, but in time and health and efficiency, and often in life itself. Show how it weakens the will, raises the pulse, and wears out the heart. Call their attention to the fact that such men as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Dr. Wiley, Luther Burbank, and many other leaders in the world’s notable achievements, are in the forefront of the great battle that is being waged against the cigarette.

There are teachers in public schools who have read some of the Temperance Annuals from cover to cover with their pupils. Will you do less for your little home flock, with this Anti-Tobacco Instructor? Rather, will you not do much more? MRS. I. H. E.