NEED OF WORK FOR THE CHILDREN.
One important part of the work to be done by “Elijah the prophet,” just before the coming of the day of the Lord, as set forth in the concluding portion of the prophecy of Malachi, is the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers. Mal. 4:6. This points to a work to be done for the children in the closing days of time; and we can readily understand that if a special work needs to be done at this time for adult people,—if a special message from God must be sent to parents to save them from the destruction that is coming through the follies and iniquities of the age,—certainly a special work must be done for those whom parents have in their charge. And truly the characteristics of the age are seen in the children to-day, and to show this we have only to quote from the observations of others who, though they are not standing in the light of the knowledge that the end is at hand, nevertheless are moved to comment upon the unusual degree to which youthful folly and depravity are asserting their evil power at this time. As an illustration we quote some observations made by the editor of Saturday Night, published in Toronto, Ontario:— “A fifteen-year-old girl poisoned herself in this city the other day because she was lovesick. She had had a quarrel with her lover, who was evidently older than she, as he is spoken of as having a position as a bookkeeper in a down-town business house. A young fellow about twenty shot himself and fell into the water because a girl failed to meet him at a time and place where no girl should meet a young man. It is said that he had begged her to elope with him, and that he had seventeen dollars with which to do the eloping and begin married life. These are recent and local instances, but the newspapers are daily recording similar performances in all parts of the United States and Canada. Probably, like other crimes, self-destruction is suggested by the chronicles continually furnished by the daily newspapers, but no one with a good training or a reasonably well-balanced mind should be influenced by such examples. There must be something radically wrong with the bringing up of children who commit suicide before they have properly arrived at manhood or womanhood. While governments are seeking to suppress anarchy, and philosophers are endeavoring to discover the cause of it, it might be well for the modern parent to devote a little more attention to the impulses which drive apparently sane but really unbalanced youngsters to self-destruction. “In the two instances quoted, home life seems to have been lacking; and loneliness, a desire for sympathy, and the craving for love, which is stronger in youth than in age, made these despondent ones victims of the thought that all could be ended by poison or a pistol. A girl of fifteen should never think of having a lover; indeed, she should be so carefully guarded that such an amour as this poor young thing drifted into should be impossible. She thought she had a broken heart, as she said in her farewell note, but at fifteen a girl should not know that she has such a thing as a capacity for falling in love with a man. The boy who shot himself was simply suffering from ‘calf’ love, from which he would have recovered as easily as a child gets over the measles. Yet how did either of them get an idea that their whole future was to be dull and gray because some one had been ‘jilted’? . . . Is there no one in church or school, or in the families into which strangers go as servants or boarders, who has a word to say to these unformed and foolish youths who are at the impressionable age when they have neither wings nor pin-feathers? . . . “It is almost a hopeless task attempting to guide those young people who have had no foundation of common sense laid in their earlier up-bringing. Many children are let run wild in the evenings; and when they are approaching manhood or womanhood, they insist still, though the dangers to be encountered are increased a hundredfold, that they be unhindered in their evening rambles and the picking up of strange companions. “Unfortunately it is true that in nearly every family either the father or the mother is inclined to let the children do as they please. If it be the mother who is thus easily wheedled, the youngsters find many opportunities during the daytime, and often in the evening, of gadding about in a way which can do them no good, and is liable to end in harm. If it is the father who is easy, he feels well rewarded by the unusual but temporary affection of his children if he conspires to let them have a fling whenever the mother’s back is turned. In marriage the two extremes generally meet, but frequently in the government of children they are not harmonious, and there is not a settled rule of conduct upon which both parents insist. The irregularities which follow permit of a bad class of reading being brought into the house, a poor selection of companions being made, late hours being kept, going out without permission, and returning without being rebuked. “The modern idea seems to be to let children bring up themselves, and frequently attempt to bring up the parents. A boy once confided to me on board ship that during a tour in Europe he had had a great deal of difficulty training his mother to let him do as he liked; but at the rate at which he was going, I think he had had more than usual success. In olden times perhaps children were too strictly handled, and were taught to believe that they should accept in marriage those their parents selected. Nowadays we seem to have gone to the other limit, and ‘love’ of a very mushy and unstable sort, and as applying not to parents, but to some youthful person of the opposite sex, is supposed to outweigh every sense of duty, filial obedience, and even rudimentary reason. If this goes on much further, children will hardly be out of the cradle before they will form some unfortunate and fatal attachment, and will prefer carbolic acid to milk.”