TO PARENTS ON THE TRAINING OF CHILDREN.
By Henry Ward Beecher
I do not believe in bringing up the young to know life, as it is said. I should just as soon think of bringing up a child by cutting some of the cords of his body and lacerating his nerves and scarring and tattooing him and making an Indian of him outright as an element of beauty, as I should think of developing his manhood by bringing him up to see life—to see its abominable lusts, to see its hideous incarnations of wit, to see its infernal wickedness, to see its extravagant and degrading scenes, to see its miserable carnalities, to see its imaginations set on fire of hell, to see all those temptations and delusions which lead to perdition. Nobody gets over the sight of these things. They who see them always carry scars. They are burned. And though they live, they live as men who have been burned. The scar remains. And to let the young go out where the gazing courtesan appears, to let them go where the lustful frequenter of dens of iniquity can come within their reach, to let them go where the young gather together to cheer with bad wit, to let them go where they will be exposed to such temptations—why, a parent is insane that will do it. To say "a child must be hardened, he has got to get tough somehow, and you may as well put him in the vat and let him tan"—is that family education? is that Christian nurture? is that bringing a child up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord? I thank God for two things—yes, for a thousand; but for two among many: First, that I was born and bred in the country, of parents that gave me a sound constitution and a noble example. I never can pay back what I got from my parents. If I were to raise a monument of gold higher than heaven, it would be no expression of the debt of gratitude which I owe to them for that which they unceasingly gave, by the heritage of their bodies and the heritage of their souls, to me. And next to that I am thankful that I was brought up in circumstances where I never became acquainted with wickedness. I know a great deal about it; for if I hear a man say A, I know the whole alphabet of that man's life, by which I can imagine all the rest. If I see a single limb, I have the physiologist's talent by which I know the whole structure. But I never became acquainted with wickedness when I was young by coming in contact with it. I never was sullied in act, nor in thought, nor in feeling, when I was young. I grew up as pure as a woman. And I cannot express to God the thanks which I owe to my mother, and to my father, and to the great household of sisters and brothers among whom I lived. And the secondary knowledge of these wicked things, which I have gained in later life in a professional way, I gained under such guards that it was not harmful to me. To all husbands and wives whom these written words may reach, I say, If you have children, bring them up purely. Bring them up with sensitive delicacy. Bring them up so that they shall not know the wickedness that is known, unfortunately, by the greater number of men. And if there are children that are sometimes impatient of parental restraint, let me say to them, You do not know what temptation you are under, and if, held back by your mother, if, held back by your father, you shall escape the knowledge of the wickedness that is in the world, you will have occasion by and by to thank God for that, more than for silver or for gold or for houses or for lands. Keep your children at home at night. There is many a sod that lies over the child whose downfall began by vagrancy at night, and there is many a child whose heart-breaking parents would give the world if the sod did lie over it. What a state is that for children to come to in which the father and the mother dread their life unspeakably more than their death! What a horrible state of things that is where parents feel a sense of relief in the dying of their children! Then, I say, take care of your children at night.—Beecher.