The Morals of the Family
By Kate Lindsay
WHEN Lot chose the fertile plains in the Jordan valleys, and left to Abraham the more barren hills and mountains, he no doubt thought that he made a very wise choice, for this world at least. A few years later we find him fleeing from the doomed city of Sodom, bereft of his wife and half his children, and without any of the great riches he had acquired during his stay in that wicked city. Decay of morals means decay of physical stamina and depreciation of health. It is true now, as it was in the days of the psalmist, that the wicked do “not live out half their days.” Children’s mental powers will either be developed in the ways of righteousness, or they will run into the paths of evil. From the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat, as well as the sunshine and humidity of the atmosphere about them, the growing bodies must be built and repaired. A structure is either good or bad, perfect or defective, in construction, according to the material of which it is made. Living in a city tenement, amid the squalor and dirt of these congested centers of civilization, either kills the tender human plants in the first months or years of their existence, or produces weak and puny children, and makes weak, sickly, and helpless men and women, or worse still, criminals, paupers, drunkards, and mental defectives, who are at war with all that is good and true in the world, and from whom come every species of criminal. They are what they have been made by heredity and early education. Even in the country and in the most healthful climate, a home may be selected, which, by its location, will blight the future of all the children born into it. All are acquainted with the reputation of Switzerland as a health resort. Every year thousands flock to its sunny mountain sides to enjoy the bright sunshine, and the fresh air wafted from its frozen rivers, glaciers, and snow-capped mountains. Yet thousands of the Swiss people live in dark valleys, where the sunlight never comes, and where the air is damp and heavy. Because of these unhealthful surroundings, this hardy mountain race is rapidly degenerating, both physically and mentally. When one selects a home where he is to spend perhaps a lifetime, and where children are to be born and raised, he should remember that the soil, the air, the sunshine, the dryness or dampness of the atmosphere where the home is located, also the amount of unrestricted out-of-door life the little ones can get, are to enter into the mind- and body-forming influence of the coming man or woman. It were vain to expect to raise fine stock, and not intelligently look after all the details of the care of these domestic animals when young. The fancy-stock raiser will tell you that he can never make a prize cow of a badly raised, stunted calf. Badly fed, stabled, and pastured the first year, it will always be inferior to the animal that has a good start. Even when the home is a rented one, the hygiene of the house and its location should be well looked to. If the house is built where surface water runs toward it, not from it, and the basement is damp and moldy, and especially if the sunlight is shut out by other buildings, or by too many shade trees, it is a dangerous place to live in. In an epidemic of smallpox which I met with in New York City, more than three fourths of the cases were on the shady side of the street. Next in importance is the water supply. If that is doubtful, as is the case with so many cities at the present time, all the water used for drinking and about the food, should at least be boiled. We read that Lot’s righteous soul was vexed every day with the wicked words and acts of the people of Sodom; but he did not seem to understand that his children, born amid such surroundings, would become like those they daily came in contact with, would think their thoughts, speak the words they were used to hearing daily from their babyhood up, and act like the comrades they daily associated with. Lot loved riches and the good things of this life, and while his education with Abraham on the mountains and plains, living in tents and breathing the pure, fresh air, had educated his conscience, and given to him a standard by which to measure right and wrong, his children were so morally depraved by their education and acquaintance with vice that they married into the families of the city, and ceased to listen to the counsels of their father. His two married daughters evidently did not believe their father when he told them that the city was doomed. They chose to remain with their mocking husbands, and perished with all the other ungodly people, no doubt causing their mother to be lost also; for she must needs think of and long for her children. Science has shed much light on the causes, not only of physical disease, but also of mental decay and crime. All our large cities have their moral plague spots, where criminals are born, and where paupers grow up to tax the generosity of the philanthropist, as well as to be plague spots from which deadly infectious diseases spread even to more favored localities. Perhaps the well-born, well-raised man or woman may, like Lot, be able to live in such surroundings without losing the power to discern between right and wrong, but it is well-nigh impossible to rear a child there from babyhood and not have it a reflection of the evils of its surroundings. In such soil the germs of physical disease grow rank and vigorous, and threaten to cut short the life of the little one, even in early infancy. The soil also yields a crop of vice-producing microbes, which as surely threaten the moral and spiritual life with extinction.