HOW TO STUDY THE CHILD.—NO. 1.

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

(Compilers note: In paragraphs 1-4 the author gives an explanation of her work and the reason for these articles.)

IN the preceding articles I have tried to lay bare principles that must underlie the peaceful home. In those which are to follow I shall aim to show how these principles, conscientiously applied, will make of the home a school of Christ, a garden of the Lord, in which the child may be developed and educated according to the law which is written in his members as well as in the Book. Until this is done, there can be no peace. I shall have occasion from time to time to refer to the principles which have already been written.

Trouble in home government, or government anywhere, begins in controversy with God; and unless this controversy is settled right, the attempt to govern will end in revolt and ruin, But no disaster can accrue when his control is recognized, and his will accepted. Difficulties must of necessity arise, but nothing which cannot be remedied. The time to settle controversy with God is before it begins. Our study must necessarily have to do with beginnings. We cannot afford to pass by the day of small things. The important hour with the student is not when he receives his diploma, but when it is decided what school he shall enter, who shall be his teachers, and what he shall study. The morning of matriculation, instead of graduation, is of chiefest importance to his career.

I am aware that to those whose children are already well along in the process of growing up, much which I shall have to say will seem like a repetition of a primary lesson, to a board of learned professors, or like the prescription of the doctor after the patient is dead. More than once, as I have closed a lecture on some of these topics, aged fathers and mothers have said,  “If I could only have known these things long ago!” or, “I learned some of these things after bitter experiences, when it was too late.”  I take pleasure in thinking of the few young home-makers who may read these papers, more than of the many old people. I have come to the things which I teach, through channels direct from the Fountain of all knowledge; through instructions by my father in the word of God,' whence he drew his own methods with his children; and later from experiences in my own home, and observation in the homes where I have been entertained. I am not giving to the readers of the REVIEW green fruit, but that which has ripened by a lifetime of closest study and conscientious research.

Questions have been coming to me, sometimes with the request that I reply by personal letter, from both fathers and mothers, which have stirred my heart, and inspired me to a more earnest search after the wisdom which is of God. In the future of these studies I shall endeavor to touch upon all these questions, and will, if possible, find the answers, and spread them on these pages. I deeply realize the importance of this mission to the REVIEW family, and am again impelled to request each reader to ask God to throw the light of his Spirit upon every article as it is read, as well as to inspire its production.

The study of the young child will be the logical point at which to commence the application of the principles which have been laid down. This study should begin with his first hour of life, and must have to do first with the physical being, inside and out.

I suppose there are few mothers who have not listened eagerly for any sound or word which would indicate that the new-born child was “all right,”—not misshapen or lacking in parts. To be assured that it is "a fair and proper child," is to be able to forget her pain, and rest. If there are defects, how anxiously heart and brain labor through the hours of convalescence with the question as to how such defects can be remedied, deformities reduced, and whether or not science is equal to meet these emergencies! This is instinctive with every mother. Then how reasonable that she should seek to understand the little human body, its anatomy, and the laws of its development! One of the most important preparations for the coming of the child is a careful study of the physical structure, what must be done and what avoided to secure strength and beauty.

The effect of drugs, atmospheres, the mother's food, of its own clothing, to the little new life should be thoroughly understood. The practice of stuffing the delicate stomach with made foods, with which the  “drop of alcohol” has been mixed “to take off the wind,”  has been the cause of untold evil, not only to the stomach itself, but from thence reaching out into the moral and spiritual life, has brought disaster to the entire nature.

It is not only through the stomach that evil tendencies may enter which will make government and self-government difficult, but through the inspiratory organs. To inhale the fumes of tobacco, the smoke of frying grease which accompanies the breakfast of griddle-cakes, the steam of coffee, and in fact, the usual kitchen atmosphere, is for the child to be poisoned.

Take the ordinary farmer's dinner in course of preparation on a winter's day, when the outer air is carefully excluded, with the baby in the midst, — the cabbage, potatoes, onions, meat, and coffee, which contribute their quota to the odors which permeate the house, and which, the child must inhale. The strong housekeeper, moving rapidly about, will find her head growing heavy, and come to dinner without an appetite; and yet every one will wonder what has happened to the baby to make him so fretful.

In cooking even the most healthful foods, the steam and odors should be carried into the flue. A convenient method is to shut your dinner into the oven, and let it simmer in secret. It will take longer, but all results will be more satisfactory. There should always be some inlet of fresh air. Drafts must, of course, be avoided   but a steady current of pure air is absolutely necessary for the child. Do not keep him in the kitchen if you can avoid it. Do not accustom him to a heated   atmosphere. A low temperature, with plenty of warm clothing, is a quiet, well-ventilated room, will help to make a good baby. The constant stir and change which fill the workroom of a home; the continual whirl of faces about the child's cradle; the touchings and cooings, however caressing, are more than the delicate eyes, ears, and nerves of the little one can endure. He becomes excited, tired, and fretful. Fretfulness becomes habitual, and soon many ugly tempers begin to develop, which have simply been thrust upon him from the things that, by a little knowledge and carefulness, could have been entirely prevented.

The sweetness of babyhood is often quickly blighted. The eyes grow weak and watery, the mouth and nose become habitually wet, the face pale, perhaps pimply, and the scalp scabby.  “ Teething,” says one. Yes; but he should not lose his beauty and loveliness simply because he is performing a function so natural as cutting his teeth; and if he is thoroughly understood, his needs accommodated, and he is surrounded by right conditions, he may keep his win someness through all the necessary changes of his little life.~

( To be continued.)

ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH  HERALD

Mar. 23, 1897  Vol. 74, No 12

(Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

THE GENERATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS #3

BY MRS. S.M. I. HENRY

AFTER all that has been said of heredity and environment, and in harmony with it, is the fact that in child culture as well as in horticulture at least as much depends on the seed as on cultivation. The gardener can afford to experiment in the seeds of plant and tree; but to experiment in human beginnings may involve eternal loss, in spite of all that can be done later on.

Manhood means fatherhood, womanhood means motherhood; and the teaching by which the child is to be given a fair start in life should begin in the youth of its parents. That holy and blessed seed of which mention is made in Ps. 37:25, 26, 28; Isa. 6:13; 44:3; 61:7-9; Rom. 4:14-16, cannot be matured in a defiled temple,  amid impure practises of thought and habit. The reading of sensational literature; the society of evil companions; the degeneration of brain, blood, muscle, and bone, through unhygienic food; the use of tobacco and alcoholic drinks,— anything in the life of body or soul which Christ himself would not have indulged, which he, as our Creator, has not appointed or approved for us, will so nearly spoil the life principle from which the child is to spring that he shall, at best, have a long and bitter fight for his own soul, and only be saved at last by the hardest. It is no easy thing for the child of Adam's blemished seed to learn the lessons of faith in God, on which everything of salvation depends. The conditions under which he comes into the world are evil enough when father and mother have from their own youth kept themselves as holy vessels unto the Lord, lived honestly in all things, obedient to the teachings which he has given in his word (Lev. 21:16-24; Ezra 9:2; Neh. 9:2; Mal. 2:15; Ephesians 5; Col. 3:17; 1 Cor. 10:31), and so have preserved the life fountain from actual defilement in their own generation: but when to all the past is added a father tainted with narcotics, a family table spread with indigestible and exciting compounds, a mother who is almost cut in two with strings and belts, and whose every physical organ is crowded out of place; when the selfishness of Lot, the disobedience of his wife, the deception of Jacob, and the unchastity of David have been copied, without their repentance and instead of their virtues, then childhood becomes pitiful indeed. But thanks be to our God, it is not even then hopeless, since Christ lives.

Any guest who takes the family by surprise is at a disadvantage; how much more the coming child! He should never be a surprise nor a regret. He should be sent for,— personally invited to home and heart,—expected, prepared for as an honored guest.  His earliest habitation should be guarded from anything that could mar the perfectness of the budding existence. Nothing should be permitted to crowd him out of his rightful elbow-room. Nothing tainted should touch the fountain of his life. The Spirit of God himself should be allowed to control all the conditions by which he is surrounded. A  blight like mildew has fallen on many a child before birth because his was an unwilling mother; because the heart from which he was nourished was not pure enough to see God in her motherhood, and to think about her child, and how he came to be, God's own thoughts, by which both she and the child should have been sanctified, not shamed.

One of the devices of Satan for the ruin of the race has been to train the mind to think with shame of God's creative work in and through us; and one of the necessary reformations, if we would have peace in our homes, must be that by which we shall cease to feel, as well as to believe, that he has been obliged to employ degrading methods for the accomplishment of any of his purposes. “The commandment of the Lord is pure.” Ps. 19:8.

The wish that her child might never have been; that something might yet prevent him from becoming an actual care; that his pre-natal existence is not life, and so has not the claim of the living; that it would not be a very great crime to prevent it from becoming such,— any of these poisoned drops distilled from the mother's heart into that of the little one whom she is carrying under her own, will make all of after life bitter for both, unless, through true repentance and crucifixion (and that crucifixion will be as terrible for the human as was His for the divine), through the blood and cross of Christ, that bitterness is sweetened at last.

The cleansing of the temple, “which temple ye are,” is the first step toward a  peaceful government in a houseful of children.~

(To be continued.)

ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH  HERALD

Mar. 16, 1897   Vol. 74 No. 11

(Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

THE GENERATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS # 2

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

As it is true that “God is in the generation of the righteous” (Ps. 14:5), so it is true that he is not in the generation of the unrighteous; and where he is not, there is neither safety nor honor. This is equally true and momentous whatever shade of interpretation we give to the word “generation,”-—whether we use it as verb or noun,— and in this fact lies all the force of heredity as well as of environment. God, in his beneficence has so determined, in Christ, that if he is forgotten or even repudiated at one point in life, and we are consequently overtaken by evil, yet, by true repentance and seeking unto him, We may be able to find him and his help, when we shall earnestly seek him. Jer. 29:12, 13. And we can trust him to go back along the path that we had traveled without him to our loss, and gather up all that is worth recovering of our mistaken past, and use it to the glory of his truth. Sometimes it is by the remembrance of sins and failures repented of that a man is made capable of being a soul-winner, even in his own home.

Herein we behold a part of the mystery of the , love of God—that .although he may not have been recognized in the act of generation, he may be later sought and found, so that somewhere, sometime, when the poor delinquents will, his merciful love may be; brought to bear, and the life that came into the world loaded with the results of parental folly may be saved and ennobled; for the promise is to us and our  “children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call” (Acts 2:39), and his call is to “whosoever will.”

But this work of recovery cannot be done easily; it will not do itself. It is harder to win back a lost touch of purity and truth than to build up a fortune when one is old. And since God has been so universally left out of the generation of our race, it becomes the great question how his purity may be recovered; or rather, how the children may escape the consequences of that blind rashness which brought them into being without him.

There is no question but that multitudes of children have been born who never would have been born but for sin;  and that somewhere along the line, every family has its share of them. Some have gone so far as to say of such a child that he was predoomed to eternal death. Some parents who knew in themselves that a certain one of their family was especially a child of sin have carried always a terrible fear that no efforts for its salvation would avail; and so have been given over to a sorrow for which there seemed to be no remedy, even in God. But this is because they have failed to understand the loving will of the Heavenly Father. 1 Peter 3:9. I fully believe that the word of God teaches that since all were conceived in sin, since all have died in Adam, so all may be born anew to life in Christ; and even the most unfortunate product of sin, the most hardened child of marital cruelty, may be led into the way of eternal life.

True, many “go astray as soon as they are born” (Ps. 58:3), even in apparently Christian homes, and never are found going right. Such children have become the most perplexing problems to those who are acquainted with the word of God and the expectations of those who believe it. Many an unbeliever is looking curiously on at the strange incongruity of a home of prayer, and its profligate children, and saying in his heart, “Aha! aha! where is now thy God?” Many a man and woman whom I have found in my work have, like Job and Jeremiah, cursed the hour in which they were begotten and the day in which they were born (Job 3:3; Jer. 20:14), because of the sinning to which they were apparently doomed from the first. And some of these, because they have seen the light in homes of prayer, under the shadow of the church, have been very hard to lead to Christ. But this has been done; and so it has been demonstrated that even such can be made glad and strong in him who came to save the utterly lost. It is not with small comfort that I come to these studies, because of the revelations which years of work for the most degraded have brought of the plan of God for man ; and I have a large hope of helping my readers to the solution of this home problem.

May I not ask every father and mother to whom these articles come to pray most earnestly that, from this time especially, the pen that writes may be guided by His own Spirit as we come to the heart of the subject which we have been approaching in these weekly studies.

( To be continued. )

ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH HERALD

Mar. 9, 1897 Vol. 74  No. 10

(Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

THE GENERATION OF THE RIGHTEOUS # 1

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

GOD never intended that generation should be to death, but to eternal Life. Wherever it has become inevitable that “sin should abound,” he has planned that grace should “much more abound.” Rom. 5:20. In this forethought of God for us is the only possible hope of overcoming our inheritance of sin.

To one looking backward over the experiences of a lifetime, the opportunities afforded during the early periods of child life seem so momentous that one cannot but tremble to see them slipping by, unimproved, out of the hand of those who should appreciate them. Alas, to be twenty years too late in making the effort to understand one's child! And yet we who are grandparents must not forget, that it requires this same backward look, this same lifelong experience, to reveal the importance of the passing days. The best that we can hope for is that we may be able to throw a little kindly light down from the steeps to which experience has led us, by which those who follow after may be able to see some things that were hidden from our eyes.

In the child who is growing up there is being laid the foundation upon which all he is ever to know or to be must rest. As he runs and leaps, chatters, shouts, and romps, or drones and sulks, works and loiters, there is being formed, on the plastic substance of body and soul, that which shall endure as long as life; and these enduring qualities and characteristics are being formed out of that which the home-keepers are, in themselves, and that which they bring into this inner circle of environment, more than by anything besides. Everything which impresses the child, sooner or later hardens into character; and character is destiny. At first all impressions are purely physical, sentient, and as such are recorded on the tablet of consciousness; and the nature of these impressions determines whether the thoughts of the young mind shall lead to purity or impurity of habit and life.

The child knows nothing about his body, and what its sensations and functions mean. He is operated by nature as any bit of mechanism might be by some unseen power to which it had been geared. Some are so bold as to call this nature God, and claim that it is almighty to work out the completed life in itself. But while it is true that nature is of God,—an expression of him,— yet it is also true that when it touches the being of man, it meets another force which may entirely change its God-given course, and pervert, divert, prostitute it, so that all trace of the divine will be utterly wiped out of it. 

It is for father and mother to determine the direction which shall be given to this natural force which is the child's first “stock in trade;”  and, practically, this decision is made, this direction is given, while as yet the “substance”  of the new life is being  “curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth,”  by Him from whom it can be at no time hidden; whose eyes see it, “yet being imperfect;” and in whose “book all its members are written ;”  as well as “in what days they shall be fashioned, when as yet there are none of them”  (Ps. 139:15, 16, margin); and who also knows and records the influence of the secret thought of both father and mother on the strangely sensitive organism of the unborn child.

It is during the period of his hidden life that the decision is made beforehand by his parents as to where he shall be especially susceptible to the power of God or of Satan, especially strong to resist either good or evil. The plan of his life-battle is marked out for him by these prenatal influences, not only on that which he is to find in the blood, nerve, bone, and tissue which he inherits, not only on that which enters into his mental constitution, but by the impulses of the moment; by his father's treatment of his mother; the tones in which he speaks; the tempers which he arouses in her; the manner in which she receives all these; the battle which she is compelled to fight, the victories which she gains, and the defeats which she suffers; the faith or unbelief which controls her, the loves and hates, each of which is as an indelible pencil, making its lasting impression on the embryo human being, tracing out the line of his coming battle against sin or against God.~

( To be continued. )

ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH  HERALD

March 2, 1897  Vol. 74, No. 9

(Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

HEREDITY is a mighty force, but it has its limitations. It works both ways; so that, while we cannot afford to ignore it, we need not be terrorized by it. One mother said to me: “I am afraid of heredity. Just to think of the awfulness of eating sour -grapes, and getting your children's teeth on edge! I refuse to look into it. I cannot help what my children have inherited, and I believe it would drive me  insane if the evil things which must result to them should get to running about in my brain.”  But it is only the most selfish life that can shut itself up to its own generation, saying, as did Louis XV of France, “Things must go on as well as possible while I live ; after that they must go as they will — after me, the deluge.”

To become acquainted with the laws by the ignorant violation of which we have brought evil into the lives of our children, is one of the greatest of obligations ; and to find the remedy for the evil in the operation of these same laws, is not only an obligation to coming generations, but a wonderful opportunity. That we may be able to make the same laws by which evil is transmitted operate for the palliation of the consequences of our sins and mistakes in generations that are to follow, reveals to us the benevolent forethought of God. He has made it possible for every generation to turn the tide of its evil heredity back upon itself, while that which is good and pure may be sent on its blessed way into the future. This possibility, however, is not in man; it is in God alone, through the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; and only for those who will honestly consecrate their powers to him, and patiently work together with him for the subjection of the entire being to his truth.

Heredity finds its limitations in environment, and the powers which use it as a  medium of influence. It is through the things by which the child is surrounded that good or evil comes to him, and develops in him. It does not require large evil to  ruin an almost perfect environment. Eden was perfect in all save the serpent which, found his way into its sacred enclosure. With him forever shut out, it would have been the same old Eden still; and out of it would have gone a race of innocent but untried beings to people the world. This, however, would not have been an unmixed good; for the possibilities to temptation would have remained. Sin and ruin might still have been in the future; for as long as sin is possible anywhere, it must be possible to any who have never, learned how to use that power of resistance by which it is overcome.

It is the work of the home, armed with the powers of the gospel, to create an environment that shall develop the ability, not only to resist the devil, where Adam yielded, but also to overcome the evil heredity which resulted from that yielding. This environment is to be constructed of material things, in themselves, perhaps, as insignificant as the dust of the earth. But it is to be the organic body through which the Spirit of God will work his work of salvation, or through which the same old serpent will work his work of destruction.

The house in which the child lives; the people he lives with; the faces, the voices, which, like the chisel and the hammer of the sculptor, are always hacking away at him ; the clothing he wears; the furniture he uses; the food, the books, the pictures; those who come and go; the work and the leisure, the conversation or silence, together with the atmosphere which he breathes, — all go to make up this wonderful medium through which his life is to be made better or worse than that which went before him.

The influence upon the child of- even the walls by which he is surrounded when the doors must be shut, and all made snug, cannot be computed. Are they in harmony with the influence of our Father's beautiful house,— of  “all outdoors,” which has been the little one's delight during the open season? or are they in cold, repellent contrast ? Are they warm, embracing walls, which mellow all sound into music? or are they bare and hard, catching every tone as some rocky cavern might do, and throwing it back in spiteful echoes? Will they draw and hold, or will they repel the memory of the boy as he goes out into the world ? Will he long to be a poet, that he may sing of them? or will he, if a poet, sing of any other than his own father's house ? Will his home stand to him as the type of the “many mansions” ?  or will it be remembered simply as a lodging place of doubtful comforts on the way to death?

Costly material is not requisite to an environment through which God can do his best work for the children. God's poor, rich in faith and love, can make of the most humble room, with meager furnishing, that charmed enclosure which shall shut in a beauty of life that time can never dim, and a sweetness of harmony that shall strike the key to love's grandest song. The old kitchen, with its cook-stove and the commonest utensils, has been like a temple of God in the memory of not a few men who have risen to greatness, simply because love and truth sanctified it, and made of it an environment through which God could shine.

Of course we must not forget that the whole wide world contributes to this wonderful combination which we call environment. It surrounds our children in concentric circles, each with its own atmosphere and corresponding influence. The outer world, the neighborhood, the school, the church ; but the home is intended to be the inner compartment to them all,—the insulated chamber, cut off and protected from all that is outside, so that only helpful currents, communicated along Heaven-appointed conductors, can penetrate it, and touch the spring of characters that are being formed within,—characters which, once formed, can be trusted to overcome even the power of an evil heredity, instead of being overcome by it.~

ADVENT REVIEW AND SABBATH  HERALD

Feb. 23, 1897   Vol. 74,  No. 8

(Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

“NONE OF THESE THINGS MOVE ME.”

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

CRITICISM, or judgment, will be the portion of man until his mortal shall have put on immortality. By men and God he must be called to account for every word and deed. Judgment can never be gentle or kindly in its operation; it is not built on that plan. Love may be behind it, but it is love which recognizes something in us which must be suppressed for love's sake. The Christian worker must become independent of judgment, or suffer untold miseries. Next to the lesson of abstaining from it, the hardest thing to learn is how to take it when it is thrown at us by others. While God has prohibited his fellow laborers from using this instrument, which is especially his own, until the time  appointed by him, when the work of his saints shall require it, yet he well knows that they will always suffer from it, and so has included even its most cruel and unjust forms among the “all things” that shall “work together for good to them that love God, who are the called according to his purpose.”

No one can fight sin in his own heart or in the world without exposing himself to be compared, to his own disparagement, with the most perfect standard. As soon as he begins to teach the necessity of blameless speech and life, those who hear are sure to say: “Well, but you do this, or say that, which I do not think is the right thing.”

And this is right. While, as the representatives of Christ, commissioned to a work of reconciliation, we are not allowed to judge any, the world, lost and hopeless, has a perfect right to set us on a pinnacle, throw its strongest light upon us, and compare us, as it sees us, with all that we profess to be. It has a right to put the grace of God within us to the proof, to see if it will stand the test. For otherwise how could it believe that salvation saves, and so be left without excuse? The testimony of God is left with us, for the benefit of the world, and we must be ready to account for it at any time.

The right of the unsaved man over every professor of the name of Christ, is the same as that of an accused criminal over every witness summoned by the prosecution. He has full liberty .to cross-question and break down these witnesses if possible. He is not required to have mercy on any. If the witness is not strong enough to stand the test of the cross- examination, he is not true, and must take the consequences. He has no right to be a witness unless he is able to stand questioning. This does not at all mean that he must compel men to accept him or his testimony, but that he should know in his own  consciousness that he has not lifted the spear against truth by word or act, and therefore has the witness of the Spirit that he is approved of God. The criminal, knowing his own guilt, will not believe any man who swears that he is innocent. He will fawn upon him with all pretense of friendship, but will know that the evidence which convicts him is alone worthy of respect; and for that reason he will hate the witness as he does the truth, and slay both if he can.

Much of the criticism of Christians by “the world is in the same spirit as that which the chemist brings to his laboratory; i. e. , for the purpose of finding the constituents of the substance under analysis. The average man has more interest to-day in knowing what the gospel contains that can really help the individual, than in any other subject; and until he is ready, for himself, to prove its power in his own life, he seizes upon every professing Christian, and puts him into the crucible to see if there is really purity and strength, a residuum of Christ, to be found in him.

The experience of one whom I know, will illustrate the point. He had been a leader of a large circle of dissolute companions, but was suddenly converted, and left the old haunts, to begin to live and work for Christ. Several weeks afterward, he met one of the old crowd, and in their talk  together, an engagement was made for him to dine with his friend the next Sunday, after which both were to come to the gospel meeting. He kept his engagement; and while sitting in his friend's room before dinner, one after another the old crowd came in, the last one taking his station at the closed door, and tilting his chair against it. In the midst of the conversation this doorkeeper, as he proved to be, took a flask of whisky from his pocket, drank, and passed it to his neighbor; and it began its circuit of investigation. “Investigation?” you say, “to investigate what?”  It was seeking a proof of the keeping power of God. It was well known that although this young man had “sworn off” many times, he had never been able to stand the test of an open whisky bottle. Was he any stronger to-day? Was there power in this Christ to take him, sober, out of this ordeal which had been “cooked up” for him? This was a momentous question to that circle of “fellows”— upon it hung destiny. They were terribly in earnest, and no one knows what they might have done; but as soon as their guest realized that he was in a trap, he sprang to his feet, seized the doorkeeper, flung him to the floor, and escaped into the passage. Cries of, “Come back! Come

back! We will put it up!” rang after him, and his friend hastened out to try to persuade him to return; but he resolutely said, “No ! You have done that which makes it impossible. I came in good faith, but I must go now.” He walked rapidly away, beyond the city, into the fields, where he could take the sorrow and burden of his soul to God, under the open heaven. He would never have believed these friends capable of such a trick, and could not be comforted until later developments revealed the fact that he had that day simply been put to what the conspirators considered the supreme test as to the reality of his faith; and that they had been compelled to agree that his testimony was true; for he had been strong where heretofore he had always been weak.

Criticism, in this case, ended with the test. “Let him alone; he is true blue,” was the word which they passed about among the crowd, and many of them afterward confessed that they would have considered it a personal misfortune if he had failed. From that day each man knew for himself that if he would seek the same source of strength, it would told him up ; and this was to them a thing worth knowing.

The spirit of investigation has no mercy; and woe to the one who fails! His standing ever afterward will be that of a witness who has been “rattled” by the opposing counsel. If he stands true, he may be hated with that hatred which is meted out to Christ; but he will be known as “true blue.” Of course a true man may, according to the world's opinion, fail to stand the test, and so come under its condemnation, while his heart is still single and true in its love toward God, and he be approved in His sight; for man judges according to the outer imperfections, while God judges from the motives of the heart.

An atmosphere laden with criticism tends to produce moral weakness, so if one would be strong, he must learn self-protection. This consists, first, in knowing that all is right between him and God; then in carefully following the leading of his word and Spirit, and ignoring the world's gossip. His life must be hidden in Christ, his work conscientiously done in His name; and then he must refuse to know, and school himself not to care, what is said about him, either good or bad. He must allow no “dog to drop a bone” at his feet; he must absolutely close his ears and eyes to all the “they say's,” and go quietly along in his Heaven-appointed way. He can never be hurt or hindered by anything outside of himself; if he does not know that he is criticized, it is just the same to

him as though he were praised instead.

But sometimes the word of cruel judgment is forced upon us so that we cannot ignore it. Some one comes and takes us severely to task when we have been unconscious of lack or wrong.  This is a time for the sort of thanksgiving that Paul tells us about. Rom. 5:3-5. The Christian worker has then an opportunity of seeing himself as others see him, and learning a, lesson which no one can afford to lose. Remember how King David, when he was cursed by Shimei (2 Sam. 16:11), said: “Let him alone, and let him curse;” and how, later on, this same Shimei came to sue for pardon, and found it, at the hands of the Lord's anointed whom he had cursed, and who might  have punished him with death. 2 Sam. 19 :18-23.

No blessing ever comes to the one who takes on himself the office of judge; but this shall not hinder the full measure of good that God can wring out of it into your own cup, if so be he finds you teachable. Judgment can never embitter what God's approval has sweetened, and he knows how to cleanse any water of Marah that may cross our path. The criticism of our day is made of the same metal as Paul's bonds ; and if we follow Christ carefully, as he did, we shall have to wear them as he did; but we shall be able to say, with him, “None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.” Acts 20: 24.

ADVENT REVIEW & SABBATH HERALD

Feb. 9, 1897   Vol. 74 No. 6

(Written from the Sanitarium Battle Creek, MI)

GOVERNMENT IN THE HOME.

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

GOVERNMENT is of God; he only knows how safely to administer it. He only can teach any man how to exercise authority so as to escape

those  tangles which culminate in injustice, despotism, or anarchy. The father who, like Paul, will not   “dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrought”  by him, to make the children  “obedient, by word and deed;”  “who accepts God's model of government, and adopts his method, in which no coercion is to be found, but absolute liberty, together with sympathetic teaching and patience with failures, will escape those domestic wars which have so often made the heart of childhood like a battlefield, strewn with the corpses of Faith, Love, and Hope, while every evil passion fed upon them, as unclean birds of prey on carrion.

Let us look into God's method for a moment, remembering that we, at our largest, are only as little children toward him who is the Father of all (we shall never be  “grown up”  until we shall have put on immortality; perhaps not then, very soon); and also remembering that child and parent sustain precisely the same relation to God, each to be taught by the same word, amenable to the same law, saved by the same gospel;  that the tall father and the little child must come with the same daily confession of sin to the same Christ, and obtain the same pardon, in the same way, or be alike lost to hope and heaven.

God's method, which is given for our example, is never to forget the weakness of the weak, never to lose sight of environment and its influence, and to demand nothing that cannot be given. According to the measure of the need which our sinning, ignorance, and stubbornness have created, is the outlay of God's love and patience toward us. He asks of his children only the best that they can do, with all that he can supply for their help out of the richness of his grace. He never stops to measure this grace by our worthiness to receive, or ability to appreciate. Such is the attitude of the great Father toward  his 

children; and this is to be the model according to which the earthly father must plan his government, if he  would preserve it from ruin.

God should be the recognized head of the home, and his word the one law by which its affairs are administered. There is in most men that which causes a desire to govern in his own right; and the little child in the home, or anything weaker than himself, is apt to feel the heavy hand of that despotism into which government is sure to degenerate as soon as man's word is made to supplant that of God's One would suppose that any Christian father among his earliest lessons would have learned that God must have the first place in the mind of his child; but the deplorable fact is that some never learn it. The child hears, day after day:  “I tell you.”   “Do you not hear me ?”  “Why don't you do as I say?”  “My word is law in my house!”  “I’ll teach you better than to say,'Why?' 

 to  me!”  with all of which he is made to feel the weight of the human hand so

heavily  that he is in terror of the divine power which it is supposed to represent; and finally, by and by, in sheer desperation flees from the one  and ignores and disbelieves the other, rushing out into the world to take his place in its affairs, filled with the principles of coercion which have  been practiced on him, and which, like active disease germs, he throws off upon society, to the injury of everything in life which he touches.

The child should be made to know, from his earliest moments, that he is responsible to no one but God for the manner in which he deals by father, mother, dog, cat, himself, and everything to which he is related. He should also know that father and mother consider themselves alike responsible to God for the manner in which they deal by him; that God's word is the only law to which he is ever to answer; that at any point where the word of any man, including his own father, should come in conflict with God's word, he must stand by the word of God; that, in so far as he and his parents keep God's word together, they are on the same level. I do not expect any but Christians to understand this, but I  sincerely  hope all such who read this will see the truth which I have written.

No father will suffer, but, rather, largely gain, by refusing to take on the petty dignity of that little, brief, selfish authority which his son must rapidly outgrow as he rises to man's estate; but, instead, will cover himself with that fatherliness which is from the indwelling Spirit of love, and which will command veneration, more and more, as his son comes on to age, and takes upon himself the same office and responsibilities.~

ADVENT REVIEW & SABBATH HERALD

  Feb. 2, 1897   Vol.  74, No 5

(Written from the Sanitarium Battle Creek MI)

THE FATHER'S OFFICE

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY

THE changes have been rung on the “love of the mother” and the “beauty of her ministry,” until it seems that nothing new can be said in song or story; while the father's office has been almost ignored. It is a fact, however, that nowhere is the beauty of the divine arrangement more perfectly revealed than in the relation between a true father and his boys and girls. No love of woman can surpass that which is truly fatherly. The  sweet spontaneity of the mother finds its fitting support in the deep-hearted, though often silent, love of the good father for his children; and often, when most silent, that love is most to be trusted.

It is a pity that the influence of business life should so often produce those habits of repression that make many a great heart, filled with unspoken longings and outreachings, seem cold and stern to wife and children ; and that by these externals he should be judged, instead of  by the real loving nature within. Many a man, with the pathetic story of a lifelong struggle, such as only love could have made possible, written in many crossing lines on cheek and forehead, sits silent in his home, his presence a shadow and restraint, his thoughts undreamed of, himself misunderstood, simply because he has never learned the art of sympathetic speech. The more deeply his heart is stirred, the more gruff and forbidding may be his tone and glance. Under the pressure of some family crisis, such as the leave-taking of a son who is stepping out into the world, when the mother, practiced  in caresses, knows just how to say unforgettable things, appropriate and sweet,, the father, awkward under the awfulness of realization which experience forces upon him, may be because of the swift rush of feelings which he does not know how to express, and too sick of heart to make even a sign, turns away, to be again misunderstood.

To be able to reveal itself, the heart in the breast of the average father—himself a development of the unknown and unappreciated boy — must be lifted, on the swift, strong tide of some great emergency, out of itself entirely, or be so nearly crushed under some great weight of feeling that it must cry out or break. The father,  silent except when command or reproof demand speech, growing rapidly old in the midst of his family, is one of the most pathetic sights ever seen in social life. Pitiful in the extreme is the shy restraint of his children in his presence, the awkward shamefacedness which so soon takes the place of the happy freedom of infancy in their intercourse, accompanied, as is sometimes the case, with a look of stiffled appeal in the father's eyes, which few are able to interpret or answer.

It is not so much in his heart that he is different from the mother, but in the power of giving and calling forth those little forms of expression that mean so much to the comfortable and safe home. The influence of a tender, fatherly presence cannot be estimated.  It clothes life with a dignity and strength that can come from no other source. He may be unlettered, weather-beaten, without anything that could pass as culture; he may wear his best suit very poorly, and look more unkempt in his satin necktie on Sabbath than with his unbuttoned shirt-band in the harvest-field; but if he has learned from the indwelling Heavenly Father the secret of living outwardly the inner love, he can never be less than the “dearest, old dear”  to his daughters, and the “grandest old hero of them all” to his sons.

The father's office is especially sacred, is the representative of God, vested with authority to govern the little world of his home. He stands as chief of his tribe, answerable, in a large degree, for all that transpires in its affairs. His influence to make or mar is equal to that of any other ruler, in proportion to the extent of his kingdom. He has the opportunity, on the one hand, of being an absolute despot; and, on the other, the most revered friend and companion. Love can make the dignity of such a ruler the most gracious thing in the world.

In his office the true father can so lead his children to love the name which he bears, that, as applied to God, it shall command their reverence forever. Clothed with the gentleness of God, he may restore enough of Eden to this sad earth, in his own home, to make it a safe anchorage against any storm that may sweep by on life's sea. Not even the memory of the sweet mother, is so strong to hold a man to purity as that of a tender father.

But there is a shoal of rocks to be shunned, a danger-point to be safely passed. Paul saw it, and left it marked on his chart so that it would not be mistaken by any who should follow him in any sort of Christian service. It is found in his Roman letter (15:18), in these remarkable words: “For I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath, not wrought by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed.” The whole dark history of persecution by church and state and by mismanaged homes has resulted from recklessly going in the way which Paul did not dare take; i. e., putting the words and authority of man in the place of power which belongs alone to God, doing things which Christ would never have done, speaking words which could never have fallen from his lips. All failure in “bringing up a family” is from this cause, to say nothing of those of the church and the nations. ~

ADVENT REVIEW & SABBATH HERALD

Jan. 26, 1897 Vol. 74, No. 4

 (Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek, MI)

THE MOTHER'S OFFICE

BY MRS. S. M. I. HENRY.

      

THE best result which I can wish to obtain from this article would be to bring to the discouraged mother, who has no heart in her work, such an understanding of the dignity of her office that she shall take on enthusiasm, as the old apple-trees take on bloom in May, and breathe out rejoicing like a sweet odor.

“What is motherhood that I should be glad in it?”  sighs some woman. “It has brought me endless care and worry.”

 Let us see, then, what it is; for worry is no necessary part of it, and should be wholly escaped. Motherhood is not simply the result of having borne a child; one may have borne many, and yet not have known one throb of genuine motherhood. One may have drained the bitterness of the curse to the dregs, and have missed entirely the sweetness of the blessing, because she has not taken her work from God, and done it in his name.

There can be no real motherhood without a practical Christian experience. It is by far more spiritual than physical. It is a Christian grace. It is the rich storehouse where the fruits of the Spirit are garnered for practical daily use. Motherhood is, in a broader sense than anything else, co-partnership with God. It is that link in character by which God takes hold of humanity,—the one element of human nature which has passed the ordeal of the fall, and retained somewhat of its likeness to the original thought of God. It has made many a virgin aunt the sweetest mother of the whole family, and a few men have worn this rare blossom in their own hearts, and so proved themselves to hold a peculiar kinship to Christ.

Motherhood is God's chosen instrument for his best work in the world; without it he could do nothing with men as they are, but with it he can do almost anything.

For a woman to have within her that which brings the memory of his mother to any man, is to hold one of the rarest gifts by which souls are won from sin ; for the thought of his mother is invariably the purest and truest in the memory of a profligate man, and nearest to his thoughts of God. It may be mixed with much that is neither true nor pure; but as it reaches back to his own innocent days, it holds the sweetest that he can know, and is the fertile soil in which God would plant the seeds of truth. There would be little hope of reformation for him if he had no reverence for this memory. In all the years of work among the very sinful, I have never found a man who would not respond to a judicious reference to his early days with his mother. The hardest thing I ever heard from any man about his mother was this: “I don't s'pose my mother mounted to much; she ran off and left me when I was a little shaver, and I have been lonesome allus.” The most pathetic was from a hardened criminal, whose mother was herself a criminal. He had come to appreciate how much this had to do with the “hard luck” of his life, but said: “I am sure we should both have been differ'nt if she could 'a had half a chance; but she didn't know nothin', and I ain't blamin' her.”

In the midst of every-day prosy duties, it is very difficult to appreciate how important is the office to which woman has been appointed, — its sacred character, its exalted dignity, as well as its corresponding responsibilities, which are so great that she could never bear them alone.

The third chapter of 1 Corinthians is especially the word of inspiration to mothers. The pronoun “we” in the ninth verse (“For we are laborers together with God”) means us. I would like to get a few drops of the honey of this consolation into the heart of the perplexed mother who reads this. It means something to be a laborer together with God. In the first place, God would never call us to this partnership, and then himself flinch from his share of responsibility. His share is to give strength for our need;  answer our calls for help; take anything which we have begun in his name, when we have done our best with it, and finish it. In this he will never fail us. To have done our part, to the best of our ability, means to have God finish the work for us.

“What is my share?  O, if I could but  know!” I hear some woman sob again, as one did years ago, while we talked together. Our share is summed up in one word, obedience, or willingness, which, in this case, means the same thing. Willingness to be taught of God, to take his word as it reads, to be controlled by it in all things, to be subject to the power of the Holy Spirit as he abides in that word, — willingness to acknowledge and correct an error in judgment or motive, before it passes into sin or bad example. Many a mother has failed at this point in dealing with her children. She has taken a position thoughtlessly, and found it wrong, while the children, if she has taught them well, knew that it was wrong as well as she did, but her pride rebelled against making confession to them, so it was allowed to stand,— a, wrong to herself, her children, and God. The result of her final decision in such a crisis is tremendous. Holding to the error, for the sake of “dignity,” she has lost the chance to lead her flock beside the still waters, when to have sacrificed self and said, “I am wrong, but will not stay wrong; we must all do right together, at all hazards,” would have been enthronement in the hearts of her children, and the planting of truth from which faith would have grown. Unbelief grows from enthroned error; from humbled truth, never.

Willingness means also ready trust in God. We must be willing to leave him to do his part, without jealous or fearful watching. One mother said to me, “I have no rest; I am growing ill; I lie awake nights, I am so burdened. I do not know what more I can do for my son. I am sure I have done the best I know, and yet he is going wrong.” When it is true of any mother that she has done the best she can, she can safely pass her work over to her divine Partner, and be free from any sense of burden.

Even if she has the bitter knowledge that she has not done her best, there is yet a way for her to lay the responsibility off onto God; and when God takes the responsibility, he knows where to lay it next. Confession of failure made frankly to her child, a clear setting forth of truth as seen in better light, a faithful testimony by obedience for the future, will relieve her of all necessary burden. To be conscious that one has done the best she knew, as she was going along, with a willingness to correct errors at sight, ought in itself, to be an assurance that God has his hands on the work, and will see it through; this should make peace for any mother.

“But,” says one, “how could I rest, even in God, and see my boy going wrong every day? How can I help sadness and worry!”  Ah, but one has not done her part yet, until she has dropped the whole case, with all the worry and anxiety, upon God.

A sad face is poor testimony to the power of salvation. To worry is to repudiate the promise, and brand it as worthless. And since it is by testimony given by what we are, and how we live, as well as by our words, that we are to honor God before our children as well as the world, so we cannot expect him to take our burdens upon himself until we have made that testimony complete. The complete testimony includes a peaceful face, well-kept person, a voice that breaks into song, and a sweet and winsome graciousness amid life's vexing cares, and is mighty in keeping at bay the snarling dogs of unbelief, that hound the steps of every boy and girl in this age of the world; while an untidy dress, unkempt hair, a woebegone expression, and a peevish tone, suggestive of heart-break, will never awaken in them the desire to follow Christ. They will rather flee the wearisome spell of such evident unrest, and disbelieve the practical helpfulness of the gospel. Joy, not sorrow, is the factor which the problem calls for, without which we can never get the promised result.  If we substitute sorrow for joy, the responsibility of failure is ours, not God's.

A mother gives her child a piece of work to do, with all neccessary instructions. The child follows instructions faithfully, but the work is a botch. Upon whom but the mother does the responsibility of failure fall? But if the child deviates in any degree from instructions, the mother is free, and the child must bear the responsibility.  So between us and our God in our mutual labor. Happy is that mother who so accepts her sacred office, so works the will of God in caring for body and soul, so perfectly trusts him, that she can say, with David, '' Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.” Ps. 119:49.

I have before me the vision of such a mother. Through many years of her only son's profligacy, she carried in her face the peace of God. She looked her faith in the promise, until her boy was compelled to acknowledge that she was sustained by an arm that must be strong enough to hold him up, if he would but trust it as she did. The God who could keep a drunkard's mother peaceful and quiet so long, could certainly save the drunkard, was the message which came to him at last. He was never afraid to send for her when trouble came through sin, for he knew her faith, and believed its testimony; and in his time of shame and disgrace, it was like a hiding place. One day he telegraphed, “I am coming to Christ, if I can find him.” She answered with a “live wire” and followed in person as fast as she could. Later on, she had the great joy of hearing that son preach the everlasting gospel, and at last, of seeing him fall asleep in peace, after years of blessed service. ~

ADVENT  REVIEW AND SABBATH HERALD. 

 JANUARY 19, 1897 Vol. 74. No. 3

Written from the Sanitarium in Battle Creek MI