The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-09-15

| 1t is saying that the child shall be pro-
tected and nurtured in respect to every
thing except its religion. 1t shall be
cultivated and trained in everything
except its spiritual nature. People
give their children a certain kind of
home training and intellectual cultiva-
tion-both of which are very valuable
but neglect the religious side of the
child's life. Then, when their children
become of age these parents wonder
why they are not different and better
men and women, and fail to understand
why they are not more interested in
the things Of the deeper and God-like
life.
Human beings are so made that
everything else seems to grow from the
religious or spiritual nature. This
needs to be guarded and protected, like
the sapling, that when the winds of
temptation, the storms of evil and the
fierce torrents of sin shall beat upon it,
the soul will maintain its symmetry,
and in its growth become stronger in
truth and right Nousness. The human
soul has many branches of activity. A
man may be well fitted in some par
ticulars for home life, may have an un-
usual intellectual grasp of literature
and art, all the upper and lighter
growth may be such as men admire,
but when you look into and examine
the inner life you find weakness.
When you study the motives that rule
in action, when you find out his appre-
hension of what life is and of what re-
lations he holds to other men and to
God; in short. when you examine the
spiritual life of person who may be
fairly well developed in other respects,
you oftimes find his spiritual insight to
be very limited and that he is cursed
with spiritual short-sightedness.
This spiritual nature must be oper-
ated upon by spiritual forces. The
children need attention in this very
direction. Their spiritual wants are
too often forgotten and their spiritual
desires too often neglected. Parents
have duty to these younger ones in
this matter, and that duty is as en-
phatic as any other which they are
called upon to perform.
Why, because the fathers and moth
ers of some of us may have been puri-
tanic and have carried their ideas to an
extreme why, ask, do the people of
this day go just as much too far III the
opposite extyeme; why beeagsSa. .,Esn some |,
parents may nave said, SUNDAY shall
be altogether day of soberness and
quiet" must their children go to the
other extreme and make it day of
hilarity? Why, because children were
once obliged to read nothing except the
Bible on Sunday, do people now say that
children need not read the Bible at
all? Why, because the generation
that has past gave large amount
of conscientious attention to the spirit
ual interests of the children, should
we give no amount of any kind of at
tention to the spiritual interests of the
generation following us?
This is the lack of our time. AsI
have said, this is where the children
are neglected; this is where they are
forgotten and forsaken. Let them go
until they are of age and until their
souls are twisted and crooked and made
unshapely,-or else dwarfed by sin and
evil-and then, "when they are old
enough" they will take care of their
spiritual nature themselves.
o, would have every father and
mother remember the old saying, "As
the twig is bent, so the tree inclines."
l would have inscribed as a motto in
every home the words, Remember
now, thy Creator, in the days of thy
youth" would have ringing in the
ears Of men and women everywhere the
words of j ssus, "Inasmuch as ye have
done it unto one of the least of these
little ones, ye have done it unto me-"
Oar children should be brought up in
the reverence and love of the Lord.