A Friendly Talk with Parents.
By Theo. L. Cuyler
“His mother made him a little coat.” The good mother that made the little mantle was Hannah, honored among women. The lad who wore it was Samuel, who grew from a beautiful childhood to a holy prophet and the honest judge. Hannah consecrated him to God from infancy, and placed him in the temple. Every year she “made him a little coat,” and took it up to Shiloh when she went to offer her annual sacrifice. I will answer for it, that the garment which this sensible mother wove for her darling boy was a sober and becoming one. She did not make the child a doll, to be overloaded with finery. Samuel was too sacred a being for such profanation, and so are all our children. I know of thousands of parents who have received from God a child, and then they turn the precious gift into a dressmaker’s doll! As if God had not made the little creature beautiful enough, they must overload it with upholsterings of silk and laces, and then torture its graceful freedoms into the tongs and screws of arbitrary fashion. On a certain Sabbath these parents “brought their children” to church, and formally devoted them to the “Lord in baptism.” But all the rest of the time they are “consecrating their offspring to that other trinity”—fashion, finery, and folly! I tell you that this over-dressing of the body strikes through into the heart. It poisons the mind with affectations and most childlike greed of admiration and vain-glory. How can a stop ever be put to the crop of fops and fashionists, if children are to be trained into foppery and coxcombery from their cradles? How can our children be taught self-denial, frugality, humility, and spiritual-mindedness, while their graceful forms are smothered under the artificial trappings of pride and extravagance? I am quite sure that when the sensible Hebrew mother “made a little coat” for her little boy, she remembered that he was “lent unto the Lord,” and not to the “lust of the eye and the pride of life.” But there is another meaning which I wish to give to this “little coat.” In the Bible, dress is an emblem of character. Christianity is spoken of as a raiment; we are exhorted to “put on Christ,” to be “clothed with humility,” and to keep our garments unspotted from the world. Nor is it a mere pun—a playing with sacred words—to remind you that habit both signifies dress and signifies the disposition of the mind and its tendency to good or evil. The habit of doing right is the essence of godliness. Now we parents not only clothe our little ones; we also provide, in no small degree, the habits of their souls. We help to clothe them in garments of light and loveliness, or else of sin and sorrow and shame. We make for them coats which no moth can consume—coats which they shall be wearing after we have moldered into dust! Our children put on the example we set, and wear it. Not only what we say, but what we do, will be repeated in their opinions and conduct. Our character streams into our children. It enters through their eyes and through their ears every moment. How quick they are to copy us! No photographic plate is more sensitive to the images which lodge there. Our irritations irritate them. Our dissimulations make them tricky and deceitful. If a boy is handled harshly, and jerked into obedience, he will likely turn out a sulky, obstinate creature; he will be just what our impatient rudeness makes him. If malicious tattlers sour our conversation at the table, our children’s “teeth will be set on edge.” If we talk only “money, money, money,” they will be greedy for sharp bargains. If we talk “horses,” and “base-ball,” and race-courses, etc., they will be on fire with a rage for sporting. If we give our boys a dollar for the toy-shop or the place of amusement, and only a dime for the contribution-box, we shall teach them that self-indulgence is of ten times more importance than charity. If we live for the world, they will die of the world, and be lost forever! The mind-garments which we weave they will wear. Long after we are dead, our children will be clothed in the habits we helped to fashion. Mr. A—— has always thought it genteel and fashionable to offer wine at his table. His sons have learned to love it. They take something stronger, and quite too much of it! How does the father like the coat which he made for his boys? Bro. B—— has insisted that the theater is “not so bad a place as the minister would make out.” So he went occasionally, and took his sons and daughters. They grew fond of it, and of the seductive nudities which disgrace the American stage. His boys have been “set on fire of hell;” they have been led by the theater to the saloon, and to the fashionable brothel! How does Bro. B—— like the coat his boys are wearing? Mrs. C—— claims that the ball-room is a good place to learn graceful manners. So she sent her daughters. They have learned everything the modern ball-room teaches—everything (not excepting the indecent “round dances”). Her daughters waltz and dress superbly. But, as she looks at them from her dying-bed, how will she approve the moral apparel in which she has clothed them? I rather think that “the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit” will look better than all the costly paraphernalia of the ball-room. My fellow parents, we are weaving our children’s habits every hour. We do it as clothes are made, stitch by stitch. We do it by little things, and through unconscious influences. We are making the “little coats” which shall be worn not only in this world, but in the world to come! Oh, how much depends on us whether they shall “walk in white” among the glorified in Heaven! The property we can leave our children may be small indeed. We may not afford them an excellent education. But day by day we can be prayerfully, patiently weaving for them that garment which shall grow brighter and brighter, until they put on the shining raiment like unto those before the throne!—Rev. Theo. L. Cuyler.