The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1906-09-12
TILL; PUL6IT.
a BRILLIANT SUNDAY SERMON BY
THE REV. /. L. TAYLOR.
Subject: Children's Rights.

Brooklyn, N. Y.-Sunday evening,
in Puritan Congregational Church,
the pastor, the Rev. Livingston l..
Taylor, preached a sermon in antici-
patton of Anniversary Day, on Chill
dren's Rights" The text was from
Mark 1914: Suffer the little chill
dren to come un:o Me, and forbid
them not; for of such is the kingdom
OF God" Among other things, Mr..
Taylor said:
Here is the Magma Charta, the
great charter of children's rights.
The kingdom is their kingdom. The
Christ is their Christ. He recognizes
their right to be; their right to be
children; their right to a blessed
life as children. The kingdom can
not come except as children have
their rights. Could we save the chill
dren of but one generation, the king
dom would be here. God does not
work in Just that way; but the king
dom will never come unless we keep
our hearts with the children and our
faces toward the unborn. The world
must become better by being born
again. That is the way the kingdom
has been coming. The human race
makes progress by being better born
each time. The right to be well
born should be secured to every
child and from birth on all it's rights
as a child should be safe-guarded.
Christ's blessing rests upon every
plea for children's rights, upon every
law enacted for their protection from
inhumal parents, guardians and en-
ployers; upon every provision for
their welfare when orphaned, or de-
serted, or sick, or feeble minded, or
crippled, or in any way dependent,
defective or delinquent. But the
children who are thus afflicted, the
children who are beaten and sent
out to beg and steal, the children
who are compelled to work long
hours and under unwholesome con-
ditions, the children whose parents
are dead or unable to provide for
them, are not the only children who
need to have their rights examined.
In what we call the best homes GER
tain rights of the children are in
danger of being overlooked, are in
need Of being declared, championed
and secured.
First and foremost, would put
the right of children to be children.
They have as good a right to be
children as we have to be grown up
folks; better right, probably.
Childhood is as much a part of the
framework of this universe as earth
or sky or sea. The right to child
hood is inalienable. Your child has
Alright not only to live but to live as
child. We are not to infer that
Paul was ashamed of his childhood
because he said: when I became a
man l put away childish things"
We are not to think the less of
childhood because we were meant to
outgrow it. Such real men as Paul
was are generally discovered to have
had a real childhood. He certainly
had had a childhood sufficiently
marked to be we'll remembered.
Some men and women are not SO
fortunate. They seem to have for
gotten that they ever were or we're
meant to be children. But Paul
said when 1 was a child, spoke
as child, I understood as child,
l thought (or reasoned) as child. +"
And there seems to have been no
body to interfere with him. Child
hood and youth are vanity" said
the preacher. But perhaps he was
simply lamenting their brevity.
Make the most of childhood and
youth for they are soon gone" But
if we are to understand him as pro-
nouncing vain and profitless the
golden days of all our life, he is sadly
out of tune with all the rest of the
Bible. Vanity! Emptiness! The
fulness Of life's worth and meaning
is nowhere writ so large as in the
soul of youth. Is it just lie writ
large? Oh, no, for God wrote it
thus:
The men who retain childhood's s
sense Of the reality and eagerness of
life are the men who never grow
old and never get through learning.
There is no substitute" says the
bright woman from whose charming
book Of nursery logic have bor-
rowed the title of this discourse,
for genuine, free, serene, healthy,
bread-and-butter childhood A fine
manhood or womanhood can be built
or no other foundation. God says
the foundation shall be childhood.
Why, then, should we be impatient?
Why should we fear to trust what
He puts nethermost for all the rest
to stand upon? 1t Is we'll enough to
think of the manhood and the wo-
manhood we want our children to
attain and to give to the world. But
l am persuaded that we think less
than we should of the childhood
which it is our first duty to give
them.
The second right of childhood
which I shall mention is the right
to be governed. By real childhood
| do not mean an unrestrained child
hood. A child left to itself will not
have natural childhood. That
which is most distinctive and beauti-
ful in childhood is contributed to it,
or developed in it, by wise and low
ing restraint. The street Arab is
cot the ideal child. Nor is the child
who grows up in home where the
political maxim that governments
derive their just powers from the
consent Of tho governed" is accepted
as applying to parental authority.
The authority of father and moth
er is derived from the Fifth Com
mandment and from the constitution
Of nature which lies back of that
commandment. There is no author
ity more august, more sacred, more
Cod given than Darpntal authority
We abdicate it to our shame and sor-
row, to the shame and sorrow of the
church, to the shame and sorrow of
our children themselves.
But, having said this, let me make