The account of the Flight to Egypt, so illustrated by the old masters, brings three images before us, all in themselves interesting, and expressive of lasting realities. Central, is the figure of a young child, speaking at once of childhood and the God who blesses it. On either side what contrast in the associated forms! On one hand stands Mary, watching with unwearied vigils over her precious charge. In the distance, in his stately palace, the dark form of the tyrant king rises before us; his hands stained with the blood of a noble wife and three sons, his conscience torn by remorse, his wrath the more inflamed from the consciousness of deserving vengeance, his despotic will brooking no thought of rivalry, and dooming to death the infant innocents of a whole town to make sure of destroying the predicted Messiah.
Here is an emblem of what is over in the world. 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.
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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.
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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--
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;"
"Our young feet," they say, "are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary--
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!"
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,--
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!
Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm,--
"Our Father," looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words, except "Our Father,"
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand which is strong.
"Our Father!" If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
"Come and rest with me, my child!"
And well may the children weep before you;
They are weary, ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun:
They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom;
Are bitter with despairing, but not calm--
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom--
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,--
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep;
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
Let them weep! let them weep!
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For you think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity.
An ode such as this was not without effect upon the heart of England; nor is the humanity which it imbodies rare in our land. The spirit of trade among us is not wilfully cruel, but it is too devoted to gain--negligent of the claims of youth, when not unkind. Neglected ones in our own streets have too frequent cause to reproach us--neglected ones who are strangers to the blessings of our civilization, and who learn our laws first from their penalties, and become acquainted with the lessons of the prison, not of church or school. They, alas, who might be an honor to their sex, are made to recruit the ranks of shame, and what is the spirit of Herod compared with the world's heart to fallen woman, alike in the wickedness that tempts and the scorn that awaits the fall.
And not solely among the neglected of the earth does the spirit of the world lie in wait for childhood and youth. We might speak of the indulgence that pampers and vainly ruins the soul--of the kindness that kills those whom it aims to bless--of the neglect of health, natural and spiritual laws, which luxury introduces into modes of home education--of the want of a firm discipline that is kindest when firmest--of a practical infidelity that robs childhood of its sacred birthright, by robbing it of trust in God and the eternal life. Herod rages truly in the passions and the policy of the world.
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But not unchecked! Christianity with its great maternal heart is true to her watch, and calling helpers to her side. Let us acknowledge it. The great work of Christians now, is with the young. The work is two-fold, one of growth and of conquest, one that would rear up the offspring of faith within the divine kingdom, and one which would visit the neglected and reclaim them from the enemies' power.
The work must begin, indeed, in the hearts of the mature, fostered there by communion with God and Christ, fostered by sacred thought and earnest resolution. Beginning there, it is to be carried out into the great spheres of life, in which childhood receives its direction. Vain for us to attempt to imbue the young mind with truths, which we receive only in name--vain the attempt to feed yearning souls with empty words, or breathe into them a higher life, with appeals so faithless and loveless as to bear falsity in their very tone, and fall dead upon the ear. As the bee watched by Solomon alighted upon the living rose, and shunned the pretended one, so childhood knows well the tone of sincerity, and craves reality for its mental food. Let it find the reality.
Let it find it in the home. Home, blessed word always, thrice blessed, this day, that speaks to us of Jesus, who has secured to the household so much of its purity and affection, and that brings to mind the loved ones beneath our own roofs, who have hardly slept the night from anxious waiting for the morning dawn. Home--what an engine of power, alike to harm and to bless! Let it be Christian in form and in spirit. There let God be acknowledged in praise and prayer. There let the eternal world be unveiled, and every blessing bring it near in gratitude, and every trial draw down its consolation. There let the young breathe in the spirit of the gospel. There let Mary keep her watch of love, and Herod waits in vain to destroy.
Let the world's bad spirit be withstood, too, in the schools. The cry is now rising in every part of Christendom--from the backwoodsmen of the Rocky Mountains to the cities of the Old World, of late, stirred by a mighty want--Education, Universal Education! In no section, certainly, of our land, is this spirit comparatively more earnest than with us--for, beyond question, this State has been recently passing through an intellectual revival altogether unexampled in the annals of our Free Schools. Christians should rejoice in the movement, and should rescue popular education from the blighting touch of avarice and superstition. Let it go on in its work of growth and conquest--nurturing the children of the privileged, reclaiming the offspring of the neglected, carrying out a mode of education based upon the laws of God and the soul of man, mindful of every faculty, grace, affection, that God has hallowed and human wisdom unfolds. Let nothing that has been done lead us to be unmindful of what is to be done, alike in the extension and elevation of the schools. We wonder at the system of training pursued of old, which led youth to regard the school as a prison. Higher yet the idea must rise, as better views are entertained of the capacities of the child, and the intellectual helps and moral associations that bring them out. We need the idea of the Christ-child in the school. Let that haunt the minds of parents and teachers, and that sacred ideal of childhood will not be without loving disciples, whose voices shall make the songs of the schoolroom as sacred and acceptable as temple chants or choral litanies. A better spirit, and one that demands the co-operation of all Christian people, has shown itself in our city of late, in the new efforts to seek out neglected children, and open to them the blessings of education, and industry and religion. The establishment of the Mission at the Five Points, of the Children's Aid Society, of the Asylum for Friendless Boys, have made an era in the Christian annals of New-York, which all right-minded persons should bless, alike in their word and their work. Add to these efforts for the poor and neglected, the new institutions, such as the Free College and the Cooper Institute, which offer such unwonted privileges to worthy boys of the humblest means, and we have no reason to despair of the future of this great city, or to distrust the school as a noble ally of the church.
The Christian church! Here the spirit of the guardian mother ought eminently to prevail. The church should be the mother of the young. Oh, how cold and dreary is the idea, deemed by many the essential of Protestant truth, the idea that the young, or at least, little children, can have no vital connection with the Church; but must wait for some preternatural visitation in maturer years to call them to the arms of the great spiritual mother, and make them feel themselves hers. How unsatisfactory the doctrine, that children are to grow up, as if outside of the church, with the prospect of one day being taken in. Be ours the cheering view, sanctioned, surely, by the analogies of revelation, the faith of centuries, and by the love of parents, that the child should be regarded as by birth and baptism admitted into the Christian kingdom, and to be nurtured from the very first in the principles and affections congenial with the government of God. Let this idea be accepted, and power and blessing would come in its train. Higher consecration would crown the home, better wisdom would guide the strength of father, and holier love fill the soul of mother, from their communion with the kingdom that claims parent and child for its own. The Christ-child should be remembered in the Christian Church. When remembered truly, he will save childhood from Herod's hands.
This season is a time of anticipation and hope. It needs no very vivid imagination to bring before us the myriads of homes over Christendom, that ring with young mirth, and look cheerfully upon the opening age. Yet the grave question cannot but press itself upon us, What is in store for the generation, that is soon to stand in our places, and bear the burdens of life in our stead? Interesting, engrossing indeed are the fields of science, art, enterprise, enjoyment, now dawning upon us and promising a bright meridian to the new generation. Yet fearfully many dark spots in the horizon rise in the distance, and portend ill to many whose experience of the world is yet to come. The great want is of an earnest purpose, looking to an eternal aim, and enforced by a true plan of social life. The young host is ready, but needs better guidance. Muratori, the Italian historian, tells us, that in the twelfth century, in the contagion of the crusades, children caught the spirit, and an army of 30,000 was gathered from village and city, and marshalled by a child, started for the Holy Land and the Tomb of Christ. They marched on till they came to Marseilles, and the great sea stopped their fond dream. They wandered about distracted, and thousands miserably perished. Perhaps too romantic story for sober truth! But what a parallel to it in our age! A mighty host of youths starts on its way to a land of imagined holiness and peace. Vague aspirations, selfish passions, spiritual yearnings for the good and true, move their hearts. A child will lead them; the child who is to be the strong man of the age, and who is not yet known. Sadly, sadly, will they be disappointed, unless the leader is himself divinely led, and the heart of the Christ-child lives in him, and thus in the hearts of this generation, the Messiah is born anew.
Every true purpose, all genuine faith speeds the day of his new coming, and hastens the downfall of Herod and his host.
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Friends, Readers, let your hearts apply the lesson of this day, and let your hearts be cheered and solemnized by its associations. Think of your homes and the loved ones there. Think too of the loved ones departed, and deem them not lost, but gone before! Love your children, and love them the more by looking on them in the gospel light, by loving them as in God and Christ!
Think too of our own early days. How vividly they at times come back, so that we almost forget maturity and its cares, and are children once more. Let them come back now, and with them all their tender associations--with them thoughts of early home; brothers, sisters, father, and more than all of her, who stood to us in Mary's place, and blessed us with a Christian Mother's love!
But can the association rest there? No! Upward to Him, so holy in childhood, so glorious in maturity--to Him, Friend and Saviour, Messiah, from whom our best blessings flow, let our gratitude rise, and to God, through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin Mother, no Ora pro Nobis for the beatified Madonna. Simple faith is better than romantic tradition. To us heaven is fairer for possessing that Mother and that Child.
Christmas Day. [The end]
Samuel Osgood's essay: Hope Of Childhood