The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities. Samuel Osgood

Here is childhood, its guardian angel, and its evil genius. May not the scene suggest some thoughts upon Christianity as the guardian of childhood against the spirit of the world, which is its foe?

      The mother and child fled to Egypt, there to languish or be forgotten? Herod sat in his palace hall, there to rule and prosper? No. Ere the year closed, he died; before death came, already a mass of putrefaction. He died, signing with his fainting hands his will and the death-warrant of his oldest son; thus dispensing death and empire in his last act. He died, and the magnificence of his funeral mocked the wretchedness of his decease. The body was borne aloft on a bier, which was adorned with gems; the winding-sheet was of purple; his whole army, native and foreign, marched in war array to his grave. As the gorgeous procession by slow stages passed to the stately mausoleum, twenty-five miles distant at the Herodium, word went to the fugitives in Egypt, that the tyrant was dead. Who at that time, in the excitement of the funeral, or the festivities of the succession—who cared for the obscure family, that stole on its way quietly to Nazareth? The mother and child lived! They founded a kingdom that dies never.

      Richly that Christ-child repaid his mother’s watching, alike to her and to her sex. The religion of Christ has been the strength and comfort of parents, and the hope of their children. Its power in the nurture of the young mind has been illustrated in every age, and connects itself now momentously with the most important topics of our time. What topic more congenial with this Christmas season, so consecrated to associations with childhood and youth, leading us back to the cradle of the infant Redeemer, and opening a festival in which young hearts all over the world rejoice? The child ever needs protection; Herod ever in some form rages; Christianity like a mighty maternal heart needs ever to keep its watch.

      Look upon the past history of Christendom from this point of view, and how novel and interesting is the result! We have been taught to associate the progress of Christianity with the account of theological controversies, bitter disputes, bloody persecutions, proud hierarchies; and thus we too often read the annals of the Church with shame or contempt. But take a fairer and more intimate view: think of Christianity in connection with childhood and youth, trace its influence upon the home, the school, the Church, in this aspect. Do this, and we shall find ourselves moved by the annals of every age to tenderness and gratitude; for in every age Christianity has been the guardian of childhood against the spirit of the world, its foe. When the Saviour took young children in his arms and blessed them, he performed an act which has not been without significance in all subsequent time.

      In the primitive time the Christian confessors showed how fondly they had been taught to regard their offspring, to care for their souls in life and in death, to commend them with deathless love to Him who had opened the gates of everlasting life. In the Roman catacombs, far beneath the city, the places of early Christian worship and burial, the inscriptions on the tombstones well express the parental feelings of that time. An uncommonly large portion of the epitaphs given in the description belong to children, and they express the tenderest affection. “Virginius remained but a short time with us.” “Sweet Faustina, may you live in God.” “Laurence to his sweetest son, Severus, borne away by angels on the seventh Ides of January.” How different the spirit breathed in such inscriptions from that inspired by the idolatry, that formed a god of the war-spirit that makes childhood desolate and orphaned, or bows down before Moloch and casts children into the fire at his feet!

      Turn even to those ages that are called by eminence dark—the time of monkish austerity and priestly sway. There is much in their annals to move indignation and sometimes horror. But interpret them fairly, and we find much to move our admiration and love. Consider that embodiment of the middle ages, the Gothic cathedral, wonderful alike for the vastness of its proportions and the delicacy of its details. There may be austerity in the priests that attend its altars, fanaticism in the monks who chant its litanies, cruelty in the mailed men who kneel at its chancel. But how tender is the expression of the whole in reference to childhood! The Holy Mother and her Divine child beam upon the worshipper from illuminated missals and painted windows. Conspicuous at the vestibule or by the altar, stands the baptismal font. Thither the child of the poorest peasant is brought, and by the baptismal water the child is recognized as belonging to the kingdom not of this world, a lamb of the good Shepherd. Not for the few rich, noble or mighty, but even for him, the least of the earth, this temple was erected, and by that rite the church, imperial in its stately palace, promises to watch over the child, care for his soul in sorrow, sickness and death. What would childhood have been in the dark ages without the Church? What other power could have stood between innocence and its tempter and destroyer? Who would have withstood Herod, if the mother heart of Christianity had withheld its guardianship?

      The Protestant Reformation consider, and through all its conflicts and persecutions, what tenderness is shown on both sides towards childhood! To secure the young heart to Christ and the Church, the rival parties labored with indefatigable zeal. In the zeal and policy of Loyola we may see how tenderly the old Church sought to keep or regain her hold upon the young by measures suited to the time. Would we know Luther’s mind, look upon him as he sits with lute in hand at his fireside, enjoying the gladness of his children at the Christmas tree;—look at him, as with pen in hand and the veins of his forehead dilated with the excitement, he writes the immortal appeal to the powers of Germany in behalf of free schools, which has joined his name with Milton’s as champion of popular education. Think too of the Pilgrim Fathers, so tender and thoughtful in their stern self-denial, in their wilderness home erecting church and school-house side by side, both sacred to God and his people.

      But it is time to look round upon the world as it now is. The most important question is: What is to be done for the young? This question comprises every other, for the generation that is growing up will soon have the destinies of the race in its charge. Surely Christianity needs to be watchful, for Herod is still abroad. His spirit is still the spirit of the world—of the world’s passions and its policy—breathing now in the oppression that neglects or overburdens the young, and now in the capricious indulgence that betrays with a kiss and kills in the name of love.

      The world’s passions conspire against childhood and youth. The lust and intemperance, which degrade the parent, press heavily upon the child, and because of them, thousands of young hearts find themselves in a world that for them has few smiles. All the temptations that inflame the senses, prompt to vice, and kindle hatred, conspire against the young, alike by corrupting those who should be their protectors, and sowing prematurely the seeds of wickedness in youth itself. Every haunt of dissipation, every resort of revelry, whether the drunkard’s den or the fashionist’s brilliant saloon of corruption, is a conspiracy against youth, and coins its gold from the life-blood of young hearts. The massacre of the Innocents still goes on. The spirit of Herod yet lives, and acts in a manner more insidious than an open death-warrant. It lives in the passions of a world ready to sacrifice all to its lusts.

      And the world’s policy is not kind to childhood. What murderers are those its chief idols, Mars and Mammon! How cruel the game of war and the lust of gold! Who rules over the strife that robs children of parents who go to die in foreign lands? What genius, Herod or Christ, presides over the scene, when death-dealing batteries are planted before peopled cities, and the blood and brains of women and children are dashed out at every volley? Ye Christian chivalry, ye battle-loving parents, answer that question as for yourselves and your children!

      The lust of gold, that moves the world’s habitual policy, is less savage but not much more merciful. The spirit of trade demands gain, and claims childhood too much as an instrument of gain. In the Old World, what myriads whom school or church never blesses or knows, are, almost from infancy, trained to the mine or loom, shut out from free air and play, cramped in body, as in mind. The conscience of Christians is waking up to the subject, I know, still what a world of wretchedness remains unalleviated! No poem in the language contains more terrific truth, than that noted ode, called “The Cry of the Children,” blending, as it does, the tragic depth of Æschylus with the tender pathos of Cowper.

      They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

       And their looks are sad to see,

       For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses

       Down the cheek of infancy—