Teaching the Child Patriotism Part 7

The printed answers to these questions do not always commend themselves to the judgment of the judicious; but, on the whole, they are satisfactory, especially when we consider that opinions of just what const.i.tutes a lady or a gentleman have differed even among the best authorities.

Thus, the old English social doctrine was that a gentleman is born, not made, and that no amount of training could graft the gentleman on one of humble lineage.

Our own Admiral Sampson used to say that "certain specific advantages of training and education were needed to make a gentleman,"--implying that gentlemanliness is an acquired art; and so the famous, but profoundly immoral Chesterfield, would have defined it, though he considered good blood essential also.

Steele, in the "Tatler," observed that the appellation of "gentleman" is never to be affixed to a man's circ.u.mstances, but to his behavior in them. Old Chaucer puts the matter thus: "He is gentil that doth gentil dedes."

The outside likeness to a gentleman or lady amounts to little, unless there is a kind heart behind it, for affectation and insincerity are in themselves bad manners. Huxley expressed it well when he said: "Thoughtfulness for others, generosity, modesty and self-respect are the qualities which make a real gentleman or lady, as distinguished from the veneered article which commonly goes by that name."

Thackeray gives the best definition of all, though his own manners were harshly criticized by some of his contemporaries. It was, "to be a gentleman is to be brave, to be honest, to be gentle, to be generous, to be wise, and, possessing all these qualities, to exercise them in the most graceful manner."

There are laws which forbid us to teach in our schools any particular religion, but there are no laws, as has already been said in this book, against the teaching of morals. Let us quote again Horace Mann's strong words: "Morals should be systematically taught in our schools, and not left for merely casual and occasional mention."

Few text-books in morals are as yet supplied in our public schools, and little time is provided in the daily schedules for lectures upon them; but one great avenue to their understanding and attainment is still open. In many schools there is a story-telling hour at intervals, and, as Miss McCracken and her co-laborers have proved, patriotism and every other virtue can be deeply impressed upon the youthful mind by stories.

For instance, one of the most necessary qualities for the development of a strong and n.o.ble personality is courage. Now courage is not merely not being afraid, as Miss McCracken shows, and as many of the anecdotes of the present war prove. It is going ahead and doing your duty, even when you are afraid,--as almost every human being is, when exposed to danger. Every one must have noticed, in reading the innumerable war-stories in our books and periodicals, how many times the soldier confesses, "My whole frame trembled and my heart was like water, but I kept right on,"--and in several such cases we are told that some deed of extraordinary bravery was done by the faltering but determined man, which earned for him some medal or cross of merit.

To go forward, no matter how the body may rebel, is the great test of courage. This advice is especially needed by our girls. Upon women and girls have fallen many of the men's tasks in these days, and great moral and physical courage is needed to meet them. Among the other inspiring words of Robert Gair are some to fit these new circ.u.mstances.

"Most of you have more quality than you know," he said. "Do not fear to put your ability to the test."

Governor Whitman of New York, in a recent address at Mount Holyoke College, quoted these beautiful words of Phillips Brooks, "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."

Our great task is to preserve this nation and its splendid ideals, so sacredly handed down to us by martyr-heroes. Our children must be taught that the task is great, whether peace or war befall us, but that G.o.d can impart the wisdom and courage to perform it, and hand it down unimpaired to their descendants.

Frederick the Great was brought up to be courageous, but his was chiefly the courage of battle.

"Frederick the Great," said Mr. James W. Gerard, our late Amba.s.sador to Germany, in a recent address, "is the hero and model of Germany. His example, coupled with the teaching of Germany's leading philosophers, has built up that ideal of force and dominion which has been the undoing of that great nation. This ideal must be entirely demolished before they can ever resume that place in the brotherhood of nations, to which their gifts and attainments ent.i.tle them."

As a model, Frederick the Great is repugnant to the soul of America.

We may not all be Christians, but the claim that we are a Christian nation is justified by the fact that our ideals are the ideals of Christianity,--of justice toward all, of the love of mercy, of equality of opportunity for all, and of fraternity among men, of all races and creeds. Peace is one of the grandest things on earth; but, as Dean Howard Robbins reminds us, it is only a means to an end,--namely, this end: the coming of the kingdom of G.o.d. If war is required for this end, then we must for a time sacrifice peace.

CHAPTER IX

THE PATRIOT'S RELIGION AND IDEALS

Who seeks and loves the company of great Ideals, and moves among them, soon or late Will learn their ways and language, unaware Take on their likeness.

--PRESIDENT SAMUEL V. COLE.

THE Venerable Bede wrote of a king of Northumberland and his counselors as debating whether the emissaries of Pope Gregory should be allowed to present to their people the Christian faith. A gray-haired Chief told of a little bird, which on a stormy night flew into his warm, bright dining-hall. It was a sweet moment for the bird, but his surroundings were unnatural. He was frightened, and presently out he flew into the storm again.

"He came out of the dark, and into the dark he returned," said the old Chief. "Thus it is with human life. We come we know not whence. We depart we know not whither. If anybody can tell us anything about it, in G.o.d's name, let us hear him."

And thus came the missionaries into Britain and made it a so-called religious nation.

Our religious journals have discussed from many standpoints the possibility of making our own a religious nation. A formally "established" religion is especially forbidden us. We all admit this to be wise, and that Church and State should be separate. Yet there are few thoughtful people who do not realize that each individual has his spiritual part, which must be fed and nourished, and that this cannot be done by culture alone. When a series of s.e.x-films was on display in New York, and good people were wondering whether more of good than bad would result to the young who flocked to see them, one distinguished man said to another, "Knowledge alone will never make men virtuous,"--and no truer word was ever spoken, as the spectacle of highly educated Germany amply proves.

We are told that there are other forces than the love of G.o.d and the desire to serve Him, which may elevate and redeem mankind. That old Gospel, we are told, is outgrown. By other means, character, the banishment of injustice and crime and the establishment of universal brotherhood can be just as well secured.

First, Science was to do it. "From Huxley's 'Lay Sermons' of 1870," says the _Christian Work_, "to the latest fulmination of Professor Haeckel, we have been hearing that Science was the true Messiah, the eliminator of all evil." Science was to be taught to our children in the place of the outworn fables of the Bible.

Then came the prophets of Education. Herbert Spencer and his followers informed us that education was the panacea for all ills. Educate the people as to what is best and they will choose the best.

The prophets of Culture came next. All that was necessary to bring in the millennium was the diffusion of art, literature, music, philosophy.

The mastery of the world by supermen was to be the religion that should create a strong and virtuous nation. Not meek men, not suffering Christs, but giant men, by force summoning perfect character and perfect efficiency out of erring humanity.

Economic Reform was the idol of the next decade or two. If we could get an eight-hour day, one day's rest in seven, a good wage, plenty to eat and model tenements, then religion, as the Church views it, would be superfluous.

During the last forty or fifty years, all of these gospels have been given a fair trial. "Science," says Dr. Frederick Lynch, "has driven the cla.s.sics out of our colleges, and has almost become the text-book of our Sunday Schools,"--and yet it has worked little improvement in our national morals, and is just now devoted chiefly to the inventing of machines and chemicals for the slaughter of mankind. Even airships have apparently been used mostly for dropping bombs on playgrounds and nurseries. Education was never more general. Education has stood next to the army in the consideration of Germany. Many of our princ.i.p.al cheap politicians and grafters are educated men.

Culture, too, is almost universal. Every town has its library and its women's clubs; and Chautauquas in summer and courses of lectures and concerts in winter, are provided in our smallest villages. Germany has boasted of her culture, and we are proud of ours,--but it seems to have done little more than "to veneer the barbarian" in them and in us.

All of the high-sounding promises of Economic Reform have failed as utterly. Germany's fine insurance plans, England's old-age pensions, the higher wages, shorter hours and better homes of the working people, have proven but vanity. "Be happy and you will be good" is not the great slogan of redemption, after all.

Sects are vanishing, and that is well. But the great ideals of the Bible, the great Pattern of the life of Jesus Christ, these are and ever must be the inspiration of the pa.s.sion for righteousness which we long to instill into our children. Science, Education, Culture, Economic Reform--these are good and necessary things,--but they are, each and all, only parts of the greater Gospel, and that is what we must teach our children, if we are to make them good citizens; for, as a community without a church goes to pieces, so does character without religion.

Familiarity with the Bible is one of the essentials to this teaching.

Besides its ethical and spiritual power, its stories, its poetry and its great essays furnish so much literary culture that a man thoroughly conversant with them is essentially a cultured being.

One of our distinguished statesmen wandered into a backwoods church, where he heard a well-expressed, logical and highly spiritual discourse from a man who bore every mark in his outward appearance of having always lived in the locality. Upon inquiring where this remarkable preacher gained his knowledge, he found that he had always lived in an obscure hamlet and that his library consisted simply of his Bible and his hymn-book.

Abraham Lincoln obtained his wonderful literary style largely from his study of the King James Bible. Webster recommended it as a model of condensed, dignified and vivid expression. Thousands of our best writers and orators are indebted to it for the high quality of their style, and many have so testified.

The work of these writers, such as Shakespeare, Browning, Mrs.

Browning, Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, Lowell, Longfellow, Bryant, Whittier, Sidney Lanier, are full of allusions and figures which cannot be understood by our young people unless they are familiar with the Bible. All of our greatest modern literature is permeated with its language and its spirit. Every child should know its stories, should be made to learn some of its grand poetry, and should have its ethics and its spiritual lessons deeply graven upon their hearts. We can truly say of it:

"Thou art the Voice to kingly boys To lift them through the fight."

"The child," says President Butler of Columbia University, "is ent.i.tled to his religious as well as to his scientific, literary and aesthetic inheritance. Without any one of them he cannot become a truly cultivated man. . . . If it is true that reason and spirit rule the universe, then the highest and most enduring knowledge is of the things of the spirit. That subtle sense of the beautiful and sublime which accompanies spiritual insight and is a part of it,--this is the highest achievement of which humanity is capable. It is typified in the verse of Dante, in the prose of Thomas a Kempis, in the Sistine Madonna of Raphael and in Mozart's Requiem. To develop this sense in education is the task of art and literature; to interpret it is the work of philosophy; to nourish it is the function of religion. It is man's highest possession, and those studies which most directly appeal to it are beyond compare most valuable."

Theodore Roosevelt has recently given us a fair definition of religion.

The New York Bible Society asked him to write a special message to be printed in the copies of the New Testament designed for soldiers and sailors. He sent the following:

"The teachings of the New Testament are foreshadowed in Micah's verse: 'What more doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy G.o.d?'

"Do justice: and therefore fight valiantly against the armies of Germany and Turkey, for these nations in this crisis stand for the reign of Moloch and Beelzebub upon this earth.

"Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the wounded; treat every woman as if she were your sister; care for little children; be tender with the old and helpless.

"Walk humbly; you will do so if you study the life and teachings of the Savior.

"May the G.o.d of Justice and mercy have you in His keeping!"

Mr. Roosevelt had evidently in mind the great prayer of George Washington for America, well-known to most Episcopalians, but not so familiar to members of other sects. In fact, it is rather shameful that so few know it. Here it is: