The Sabbath School

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 25, 1880

The Sabbath School.

NOT MAKING BUT SHAPING.

NATIVE qualities of mind and character are something, but they are by no means everything, in settling what a man is to be and to do in the world. There are differences of original stock among men which are not to be ignored, and which cannot be obliterated; but with all this a great deal depends on the surroundings and the training of a person of any stock. Where a child is, and what is done for him, has much to do with deciding what he finally is in himself, and what he does in the long run for others. A person's life and character cannot be made by others, nor yet by his surroundings, but they can be shaped by influences and means of training. This is an important truth for parents and teachers to have in mind in all their dealings with the young.

Like every other truth, this finds its illustration in the analogies of inanimate nature. Each tree, for example, is after its own kind, whose seed is in itself. The elm can never become an oak, nor an oak a pine. But trees of the same kind are not all alike. The live oak of Florida would never show its massive richness of form and foliage in the scanty soil of northern New England. On the contrary, the pines of the far north would fail to find in the luxuriance of a tropical climate the supplies they gather for their life and growth from among the rocks and out of the bracing atmosphere of their native region. It would be as impossible to have the elm in its fullest gracefulness of form, and beauty of verdure, away from the meadows and village streets of the Connecticut river valley, as to secure the magnificence of the redwood forests elsewhere than on the slopes of the Pacific coast. If the substance of these trees severally were analyzed scientifically, it would be found that each tree had in its growth taken to itself that which was its peculiar need; and that the excess or the lack of certain elements of its composition, in the soil or the atmosphere of its surroundings, had determined and shaped its distinctive characteristics—within the limitation of its germinal nature.

Moreover, in the growth of a tree, incidental circumstances and external pressure have no small degree of shaping and determining power. A sunken ledge of rock on one side, and a rich open soil on the other, may decide the unequal stretch of the roots below, and correspondingly of the branches above. The encircling sweep of other trees, or of buildings, in all directions but one, may send the branches struggling toward the light just there with eccentric outreach. A persistent nipping of the buds and clipping or twisting of the shoots may change the whole tree into a grotesque and unnatural shape. A sharp blow or a severe wrench given to a tree while yet a sapling, or its smiting in mature life by the lightning's scathing flash, may tell on its form and growth, and have a part in its distinctive development, from that time forward. It is obvious that the elements and agencies, the facts and forces, which go to complete the structure and shape the appearance of a single tree, are many and diverse. How much more is this a fact concerning the character of every human being!

It is not of the man's heart that we are now speaking, not of his character in the sight of God, but of his characteristics and qualities of mind—those peculiarities of disposition and taste and preference which decide his efficiency, and in large measure his standing and happiness in life. Spiritually, a man may be re-made, born again, given a new heart by the power of the Holy Ghost; but this regeneration does not of itself change the man's distinctive qualities of mind and disposition. These are of his original nature, and their shaping, but not their making, is mainly dependent on the man's surroundings, his instructors, and his associates, in the formative period of his life. It is in view of this truth that we say that much, very much, depends on the home life, and the neighborhood life, and the business life, and the school life, and the church life, in which our children are reared and trained; that much also depends on our understanding of the characteristics and peculiar needs of our children.

It is important for us to know, to begin with, what our children are; and this is not the easiest thing in the world to learn. Many a parent fails to know the most marked peculiarity, or the greatest danger, of his or her own child. If a parent should candidly ask the question of a fair and plain-speaking friend, familiar with that parent's children, and competent to judge them, What do you think is the chief fault—or the most objectionable characteristic—of my son or daughter? the frank answer to that question would in very many cases be an utter surprise to the parent, the fault or characteristic named not having been suspected by the parent. A child may be so much like the parent just here, that the parent's blindness to his or her own chief faults or lack may forbid the seeing of the child's similar deformity. Or, that child may be so totally unlike the parent that the parent will be unable to appreciate or even to apprehend that peculiarity of the child which is apparent to every outside intelligent observer. God has given the responsibility of the training of that child to the parent; but he has also laid on that parent the duty of learning, by the aid of all proper means, what are that child's requirements, and how to meet them. A child may be permanently dwarfed or distorted in mental and moral characteristics through his parent's neglect of this duty.

A neighborhood ought to be prized or shunned according to its probable influence over the children of our charge. So ought a school, or a college, or a church. The whole bent of the child's character, and all his prospects of efficiency and usefulness, may be shaped—even though he cannot be made, or re-made—by his playmates, or his school-fellows, or his teachers, or his pastor. And our words and actions, our counsels and constraints, may practically settle the question of what that child is and of what he does in the world. How this increases and deepens the responsibility upon us for the training of the children committed to our charge! How it ought to weigh with us in our own lives and actions, and in our choices and provisions for those whom we are thus shaping for all time, while we are quite unable to make them anew!—Sunday School Times.