MRS. S. N. HASKELL by Mrs. S. N. Haskell

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 31, 1914

MRS. S. N. HASKELL

By Mrs. S. N. Haskell

Self-Reliance

MRS. S. N. HASKELL

SELF-RELIANCE is not independence of God. In the first chapter of James we have an example of the opposite of a self-reliant person. He is “double-minded” and “unstable in all his ways.” The self-reliant person is one who places his dependence upon God, trusting to his leading to enable him to do what is right under all circumstances. That is what our children surely should be. I do not believe that one person can tell another how to train his children. The methods that will succeed with one child may fail with another, but the principles laid down in the Word permit of general application.

In Prov. 16:32 we read, “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” I understand that is the keynote of self-reliance. Then it is a greater deed to rule the spirit than it is to take a city. That, it seems to me, is the underlying principle in self-reliance—to be able to rule oneself. How can the parent teach his children self-control, to control their spirits, if he does not control his own? So in teaching children to be self-reliant, it is really necessary for the parents to learn the lesson before they can teach the children. “He that ruleth his spirit,” the Master says,—that is, he that is not frustrated nor upset by everything that is a little out of the ordinary; the one who is master of the situation; who is able to control his spirit,—is better than the mighty and greater than he that taketh a city.

The best time to teach a child to control the spirit is when it is a baby. If a child is trained in the right way from the very cradle, “when he is old, he will not depart from it.” But if children have not been taught self-control in babyhood, then they should learn when they are older, because it is a necessary qualification for a successful life. If one would be strong and firm in temptation, he must know—be taught—what it is to trust God and stand calm in the storm, knowing that the Lord will work for him and do the thing that is best. The Saviour is our example in all things. In his childhood he was an example, and his training is an example of the training that should be given our children.

Let us notice another verse: “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.” To train a child not to touch things within his reach which are not for him, strengthens character—teaches him self-reliance, or self-control. How many times everything is removed from the child—put beyond his reach—by the mother. He is not taught to control his wants. How many times at my own table has a mother said, “Will you please put the jelly up out of the way, because Mary [or Willie or Johnny, as the case might be] will never eat anything else as long as that is here.” But if children are taught self-reliance, they will eat what is given them and what is best for them, and let other things on the table alone. They will know how to control themselves, and this will aid in the development of a strong character. The child that is taught self-reliance when a little babe, and is trained to control itself, will be able to go through life without falling into snares and temptations.

I was once in a home in Africa when the daughter, who is now one of our church-school teachers in the West, was a toddling babe. She was just learning to walk, and one day as her mother and I were out in the kitchen she came to us with her hands full of photographs. I sprang to take them from her, saying, “O, she will spoil the pictures!” but her mother said, “No; do not touch them. Do not take them.” Then she said to the baby: “Go and put them back beneath the table where you found them, and do not touch them again. Go and put them back where you found them.” And the baby put them back, and they were never taken from their place nor touched again while I was there.

In how many homes everything breakable or eatable is put up out of reach of the children. Now what is the trouble? Why, the mother has not self-reliance; she cannot rule her own spirit; she does not have the moral stamina to enable her to stand firm, and how can she teach her children what she does not possess? The only way which occurs to me is for her by the help of God to set about acquiring this attribute of character. He can help her, and he can help her to train her children in it.

About thirty years ago I spent some time in a home where there were two boys five and seven years of age. One evening some candy was brought in, and after the little boys had eaten as much as they should have at one time, the mother told them to put the candy up on the shelf and leave it until tomorrow. “You will have to do something more than that,” I thought to myself, “if there is any candy tomorrow,” and I was quite anxious to see how it would work. But they put it up on the shelf, within reach, and did not offer to touch it again until the next day. Then they came and asked their mother if they could have some candy, and she gave them permission. These children were taught to leave things within their reach and not touch them.

The principle of self-reliance learned in childhood fits children to resist temptation. But the child that is never taught to leave alone that which is within reach, and whose parents place temptation just out of its reach, does not learn self-reliance. When such a child goes out into the world and sees the gilded entrance to the moving picture shows and the theater, he has not sufficient moral stamina to enable him to keep away from something within his grasp,—no self-control, no self-reliance, to help him in resistance,—and so he goes wrong. The child must be taught to be master of himself. “He that hath no rule over his own spirit is like a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

Dear parents, how are you sending your children out into the world? Are

you teaching them to have such control over themselves that they can go out and stand alone, with the help of God—that self-reliance that will be like a wall about them? Or are you sending them out without any control only as you have withheld temptation from them or placed things harmful out of their way? If so, you will send them out “as a city that is broken down, and without walls.”

South Lancaster, Mass.