EDUCATION AND MOTHERHOOD.
By Ada M. Mellville
EDUCATION is the solution now being offered for many of our national problems, and we are rapidly awaking to the fact that in the great question of social impurity, ignorance is an enormous factor, which must be eliminated if we would cleanse our land of the dread pestilence. One blessed feature of the civilization of the nineteenth century is that ignorance on the part of parents does not necessitate or in any way predetermine ignorance for the children. When the law of the State does not compel them to attend school, there is a law which says, "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat," and machinery has so taken the place of manual labor that a man or woman without some head learning must need struggle hard for a bare existence, and not infrequently goes under in the fight. Thus the children by the very demand of the case are being forced through the open doors of our public schools. For what are we educating these boys and girls? What part are they going to play in the destiny of the world? Here is a room of forty or fifty individuals, no two alike in looks, capabilities, or ambition. One will paint and another will preach; this one will keep books, that one will be a commercial king; this one teach, that one wash and scrub. Their paths will diverge, but this one thing is certain, the greater number, if not all of them, will tread the common road of motherhood and fatherhood. How many of them will tread that path as if it were holy ground? We find charts on physiology and hygiene in infant rooms of our schools. Children in the first and second readers can tell you that alcohol is a poison, lurking in every glass of wine, beer, brandy, and cider. The charts and the instruction grow more complicated as the grade advances. Lessons in physiology and hygiene have been followed up by practical lessons about narcotics, courses in gymnastics, with occasional experimental instruction in the art of cooking according to the best methods. What shall follow these? What but regular courses of instruction regarding the laws that govern or in any wise affect the birth of man? The inflexible, inevitable law of heredity must be taught and studied, that it may be fulfilled according to its very highest possibilities. Nothing but education, line upon line and precept upon precept, will ever revolutionize the mode of woman's dress. Head and heart must be educated until our girls, who, in spite of their erring, have true hearts and high ideas, are brave enough to fling the gauntlet in fashion's face, and their corsets, waistbands, and high-heeled shoes at her feet. If we would have a people strong enough to hold in perfect control the demon of lust, who is to-day driving them to destruction, we must have a people whose bodies are normally healthy. It is the body which lusts, and the body must be cleansed, strengthened, and purified. What we eat makes considerable difference as to what we are. Some foods and drinks nourish the animal in us, until it becomes strong enough to counteract the voice of the spirit. Here, then, is another branch for educators to consider. Let the young people be taught to select a bill of fare as they would choose a course of reading, refusing that which is useless, hurtful, or not of the best for building up the finest structure for the soul's dwelling place. But there are other means of education aside from the halls of learning. What is the press doing for our young people? It is a treat to go into our bookstores to-day and see their shelves and counters filled with beautiful, pure, bright literature, for the child of six and for the sage of sixty, the best within the means of all. Side by side with the free press is the free platform. Many who cannot be reached by the schools can be reached through the medium of the public speaker, and here is surely a call from God to any who love God's pure cause. Yes, we must educate. There are a thousand phases of the subject, each one requiring individual attention. Education and Christian aggression must work hand in hand. Men will not always cease from sinning because they are told they are in sin, neither will they put the cup of pleasure from their lips though they know there is poison in it. Every Christian man and woman should study to be an intelligent teacher and counselor on this subject, and every teacher in school or college should work with the Bible in one hand and the textbook in the other. It is a mighty work God's people have undertaken, that of purifying the world for him, and at first contemplation well-nigh hopeless. But— "Right is right, since God is God
And right the day must win;
To doubt would be disloyalty,
To falter would be sin."
—Ada M. Mellville.