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PERSPECTIVE

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 15, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 15.

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PERSPECTIVE

By Elizabeth P. Allan

Such grave and earnest tones of remonstrance reached my ear, as I approached my friend's room, that I hesitated about intruding. I found her winsome young daughter with her, and the mother had evidently been rebuking her, for the girl's face was flushed, and there were tears in her eyes.
“Come in,” said my friend. “I have finished what I was saying to Jenny, and I hope she will remember my wishes.”
“Ah, these children, these children!” thought I to myself. “How wayward they are, even gentle things like Jenny, and how tremendous are a parent's responsibilities!”
“I have just been telling her,” continued my friend, “that she must not wear her evening gloves when she goes shopping in the morning. In the first place, it is not genteel; and, in the second place, it is extravagant.”
Her evening gloves! And yet, I assure you, her tone and expression, and the impression made on the child, would have befitted a serious wrong-doing,—one that had issues in time and eternity.
And now that she had used up these resources of superior wisdom, parental authority, solemn warning, and affectionate influence, on the evening gloves, what—O, what would she do if she found her young daughter making mistakes that involved risks infinitely greater? Could she do more than repeat this scene? And would not the young judgment instantly set it down as about as grave a matter as wearing evening gloves in the morning?
Perhaps the sharp pang that I felt, and that kept the little incident from seeming ridiculous, came from its likeness to my own ways. Perhaps it may give you the same twinge.
Do we not reprove our children for annoying faults with a vehemence out of all proportion to their relative importance?
If we show instant vexation at rude noises from our boys, and at careless treatment of clothes by our girls, and then are slow to watch for or correct their failures in higher duties, what effect does it have on these young lives given us to make and mold?—Simply this: It drags the unimportant and material things of life into the foreground; it relegates to the dim background the soul things, the precious loftiness and spiritual realities of life. It ruins the perspective.
Shall we not guard ourselves each morning, before we leave our rooms, against this careless handling of our children? For the temptations to it meet us on the threshold of each new day.
I said, guard ourselves; but alas for us, and alas for our children, if we have no higher security against mistakes than that! nay, here is our hope:—
“Being perplexed, I say, Lord, make it right; Night is as day to Thee, darkness as light. I am afraid to touch Things that involve so much, My trembling hand may shake; My skilless hand may break; Thine can make no mistake.”
—Elizabeth P. Allan, in Sunday School Times.