Читать книгу The Story of a Working Man's Life - Francis Mason - Страница 6

Table of Contents

SO far as my consciousness testifies, my first out-look on the world was through a window, with a bar across it, into the corner of a gentleman's garden, in the middle of winter; and the first sounds I can recollect were the twitterings of a robin, that was hopping about on the leafless shrubs before me.

My thoughts, however, were turned to the bar in the window. I viewed it with no more complacency than Adam did the flaming sword that shut him out of Eden. In some way or other, I had obtained the idea that there was a race above me, who had shut me out of their society, and that the bar in the window indicated a great and impassable gulf between us.

I turned from the window to my mother, in whom all my affections concentrated, and hid my head on her bosom. I felt happy in the love of my mother, and in that all my happiness consisted, and not in my possessions. The ideas connected with mine and thine, had no place in my thoughts. There was not a ripple to disturb the calm of perfect happiness in my soul, but the bar in the window. Had there been a tempter, I should have assuredly tried to get out of the window, because I did not wish to be controlled.

Some writers describe sin as selfishness, making self, instead of God, a centre, and acting only from that. My earliest consciousness leads me to define it, as man making his own will supreme,—an indisposition to obey. This is confirmed by the oft-heard complaints of mothers, that their children "won't mind."

The first prayer, then, to teach children is, not such things as, "Now I lay me down to sleep," in which the child is passive, but our Lord's prayer of, "Not my will, but Thine, be done," where the child both prays and is taught the most important of practical duties—that of controlling his own will.

If "All the world is a stage," then this was my first scene in life; seen when I was between two and three, or between three and four years of age, I am uncertain which.

My father cultivated a few flowers and vegetables in a small garden, into which the door of our house opened; and early in the spring, my attention was arrested by a row of crocuses cropping up out of the snow. It was a mystery to me by what power they lived and pushed themselves up through the snow. They were the daily objects of my thought and admiration. I endeavored to make inquiries of my parents, but got no satisfaction.

Mansel says: "Man learns to pray before he learns to reason; he feels within him the consciousness of a Supreme Being and the instinct of worship, before he can argue from effects to causes." Descartes said the same thing before him, but it is all poetry. He states what ought to be, not what is, and it is diametrically opposed to my experience.

When I saw the crocuses peeping out of the snow, I looked for a cause, and asked, "How can these things be?" There I argued from effects to causes, but I was utterly destitute of any idea of a Supreme Being.

My first consciousness recognized a superior authority. I instinctively obeyed my mother, and believed implicitly everything she said. Here, then, if man has no innate knowledge of God, and I certainly had not, is the appropriate source whence a child should obtain its first ideas of God.

Among the slides to a magic lantern that a society in London furnished for the use of the Karens, is one representing Christ blessing little children; and of all the pictures exhibited, there is no one that has a tithe of the interest with the Karens that this has. Zoological slides, and astronomical slides, and all other slides, fade into nothingness in comparison with this. The old people look on it as something not of this world, the younger ones clap their hands with delight, and the blessing seems to descend upon them while they gaze.

It was interesting to notice a company of red Karens, the wildest of the Karen tribes, who were present at a recent exhibition. They spread themselves down on the floor in front of the assembly, and gazed on the picture as if fascinated.

How often have I regretted that my mother did not exhibit to me that incident in our Saviour's life. Had she explained to me my need of a Saviour, His love and sacrifice for my salvation, I should have leaped off my feet with joy. I should have felt like the little girl who, returning from Sabbath services, exclaimed: "Mother, mother! I'm so happy! The minister preached the child's gospel." It appeared that the preacher had repeated the words of Jesus: "Suffer little children to come unto me," and that was all she had retained of the sermon; but that was enough.

Had my mother preached Christ to me, young as I was, I have not the slightest doubt but, with the blessing of God, I should have been converted as really as I was a quarter of a century afterwards. At that age there was undoubtedly a depraved tendency in the heart to be turned in conversion, but little more. The works of the flesh had not been developed.

How much easier, then, while in the habitual exercise of simple, implicit confidence in our parents, to turn that confidence to God, than after mature age, when our simplicity has been destroyed by contact with the world, and we have ceased to place implicit confidence in any one?

Yet to our original mental position of little children, we must fall back in order to enter into the kingdom of God. How unwise, then, to quietly allow evil passions to be developed and bad habits acquired, when we have the means at hand to prevent their existence altogether!

The example of Count Zinzendorf is decisive proof that it is practicable for very young children to be converted, and become lifelong, devoted Christians.

"While he was still very young, perhaps in his third or fourth year," it is said, "he had a most delightful, abiding sense of the love of Jesus, and felt he could tell Him all his wants in prayer, and speak to Him as freely as he could to any earthly relation."

He himself wrote: "When I was very young, I was told that my Creator had become man from love to me, and it made a deep impression on me. I thought with myself, If my compassionate Lord should have no other person to love Him, at least I will cleave to Him, and live and die with him. Many an hour have I spent in conversing with him, as one speaks to a dear and honored friend. But still at that time I did not know the amount of what I owed Him. Alas! I did not know the merits of a bleeding, dying Saviour, who had made an offering for my sins, till on a certain day, when the whole truth of what my Creator had borne on my account flashed vividly before my mind. At first I burst into tears, and could not contain myself, it was so wondrous good of Him; and then I made a solemn covenant with Him to live to Him, and love Him more than I had ever done. I have now spent upwards of fifty years in daily intercourse with my Saviour, and I feel myself every day happier."

If Zinzendorf could thus hold communion with Christ at three or four years of age, then any other child may; and if any other child may, then it is the duty of the church to labor and pray that every other child shall.

To the question, then, of "What to do with the baby?" I reply, "CONVERT IT." "Suffer little children to come unto me," is a motto for every nursery, an inscription for every cradle, a watchword for every mother.

But the editor of the New York Examiner and Chronicle well remarks: "Christian parents cannot reasonably expect the conversion of their children if this is not their hearts' great desire, nor will their efforts be likely to succeed, if all which makes up family life is not brought into harmony with Christian principles and precepts. The conversion of children is undoubtedly by the special grace of God, but his grace manifests itself in harmony with permanent laws, and the children whose conversion may be most confidently anticipated, are those who live in a perpetual and pervading atmosphere of Christian piety."

A writer in the Christian Review for July, 1857, says: "The simple evidence on which the divine existence rests is this: The human mind, the mysterious mechanism of our bodies, the world which we inhabit, and all the works of creation, reveal unmistakable marks of design, and must have had a great designer superior to themselves. That designer we call God."

This was exactly the view adopted by my parents, and they argued very correctly from the premises, that it was too complicated for a child to understand; and, therefore, taught me nothing on the subject till I was of comparatively mature age, when they made "Paley's Natural Theology" a text-book for my instruction. By that time I had picked up some crude notions of a Divine Being, but when the first idea of God loomed up in my mind I have no recollection. Certainly not in my earliest years.

One evening in the summer following, as I was playing alone in the garden by moonlight, the moon arrested my attention, as the scud galloped over it. My father had gone out, and I thought to myself, "Can father, where he has gone, see the moon as I see it?" This thought recurred to me every time I looked, as I frequently did, for the moon seemed to fascinate me.

The question in my mind was, "Is the moon so placed that it can be seen everywhere, or is it confined to a single locality?" I could at that time have understood a simple lecture on astronomy as readily as I could twenty years afterwards; and one with figures and apparatus would have been more welcome to me than my daily food.

God's works made a stronger impression on my mind than man's. Before I can recollect anything of streets and buildings, I well recollect walking alongside of my father on the banks of the river Ouse, and the delight I felt at looking on the lights and shadows of the green grass, with its daisies and buttercups, and the mirror of the river beyond, and the spring where we stopped to drink, and the crystal pebbles over which it trickled. My heart was first my mother's, and next nature's. The love of nature has been to me like a natural affection. It glowed in me when I was young, and has not abated in old age.

We read of the wrongs of the poor, the wrongs of sailors, the wrongs of women, and of many other wrongs, but the wrongs of young children have not yet been brought on the platform; though their wrongs are second to none, for they are not taught, even by those who love them, from the mistaken impression that they cannot understand.

Before I had the conception of the existence of God, or any notion of religion whatever, a bar in the window of my nursery had been the means of my obtaining the very distinct idea that there were two classes of men in the world, a powerful class and a weak class; and that the powerful class had driven the weak class, to which I belonged, from their presence; and that idea has clung to me throughout life.

A child is more observant than an adult, and asks, as well as it is able, for information concerning everything that attracts its notice; but its inquiries are pooh-poohed as childish, or it meets some such ill-tempered rebuff as, "Hold your tongue," or, "Be still." Whereas everything should be patiently and correctly explained to it; keeping in mind that a child's ideas are much more complete and coherent than he can command language to express. I can distinctly recollect that throughout all my early years, when I went to my parents to ask questions, I could not fully express my thoughts, and often found it difficult to make myself understood.

Children by being left uninstructed do not remain in blank ignorance. They obtain ideas of one kind or another, often erroneous ones, and often, when true, giving distorted prominence to thoughts that ought to have been received in connection with others that would have placed them in a more correct light.

These wrongs of children are shared by the children of the rich quite as much, and often more, than the children of the poor; because they are confided to nursery-maids, who have not the interest in the children that the mothers have. Their object is simply to keep the children quiet, and to do this they draw their attention from thinking to eating, by giving them sweetmeats, or to making a noise by plays and toys. If they are cornered by the children for an answer to some intelligent question, the chances are ten to one against the answer being a correct one. Their teachings are, very generally, the teachings of error and superstition. The condition of a child of poor, but ordinarily intelligent parents, is vastly superior in this respect to the children of the rich. My father and mother neglected to teach me many things they might have done, but they taught me neither errors nor superstition.

If there be nothing else innate, there is an innate desire for knowledge; and if a boy ever needs to be whipped to his lessons, it shows that his education, between infancy and the school, has been neglected. The desire for knowledge in very young children is so repressed instead of being cultivated, that the mental faculties often become callous and unsusceptible to mental impressions from disuse; as we see in old people who have been brought up in ignorance.

The wrongs of very young children in being treated as incapable of learning are generic, being shared in by all classes, but when they grow older and are supposed to be able to acquire knowledge, then the specific wrongs of young children begin. The children of the rich are taught, but the children of the poor are left to vegetate in their ignorance.

The first time that the feeling of envy was aroused in my heart, was in watching a little boy of my own age, who went to a genteel school, showing his admiring parents how the hours were marked by the shadow of a gnomon he had set up before their house. I thought myself his equal in mental capacity, and I was his equal in knowledge when very young; but I had grown up, like a weed, untaught, while he, like a carefully cultivated plant, had been instructed in the select school, from which I was excluded by the bar in the window. I envied him his position, not on account of his food, or clothes, or social standing, but because he had the means to acquire what seemed to me marvelous knowledge.

"All men are born equal," but I was born in the rut of poverty, and cradled in a room barred out from more congenial influences. This boy, I felt, was born on the other side of the bar, and when the time for educating commenced, he went forward because he was taught, and therefore became my mental superior, because I was untaught and stationary. Thus men grow up unequal, and that because of the bar in the window. "The destruction of the poor is their poverty."