Nurture

“ It must, of course, be remembered that the influences of both breed and nurture are alike influential on the fate of the individual. The influence of nurture is so obvious that few are likely to under-rate it. ”

“ According to this definition nurture has to do with that period of our existence when we are not able wisely to make choices for ourselves. It is for those persons who are in infancy and early youth, and also for those whose normal development has been thwarted or hindered. The influences of the home, and of the church so far as they are related to its younger members, are in the line of nurture rather than of culture. ”

“ Ten boys in the Sunday School class and no two alike! Where does nurture begin? How is it carried on?"
Though the differences in human lives are countless, there are certain great likenesses. All have life, needs, possibilities; they all grow and develop in the same general way. From these common likenesses have been formulated a few principles which are as helpful to a child gardener as a knowledge of the laws of plant life to one who nurtures roses and carnations. Their understanding is not dependent upon physical parenthood. ”

“ In the babble of the grandchildren, with all the sons and daughters grown and secure, the typical life of humanity ebbs and ends. Looked at thus with a primary regard to its broadest aspect, life is seen as essentially a matter of reproduction; first a growth and training to that end, then commonly mating and actual physical reproduction, and finally the consummation of these things in parental nurture and education. ”

“ The succour which the infant man requires from its parents, to an extent, and for a duration, so much exceeding that required for the nurture of other creatures, is the natural beginning of the social state, established insensibly and by degrees. ”

“ So the child in the womb lives there a full span of existence; it is nurtured and it grows, it sleeps and it wakes, it lies passive and it disports itself, it is sensitive to cold and to heat, to thirst and to hunger, and God alone knows what it thinks and what mental impressions it forms of the existence through which it is passing. ”

“ Infancy demands the nursery. It is not full-formed and equipped for the battle of life. It lies in the cradle in a state of mere involution, and in the hands of its parents is altogether passive, and susceptible of impressions as wax before the sun. The germ of the man is there; but it has yet to be developed. Its indwelling life must be nurtured with tender and assiduous care. It demands an influence suited to the expansion of its nature into bloom and maturity. It demands physical development, mental evolution, moral training, and spiritual elevation. ”

“ Although heredity has been always known to the ancients as well as ourselves to exercise a considerable influence on human character, yet we are unable to calculate what proportion this birth-influence bears to nurture and education. But this is the real question. We cannot pursue the mind into embryology: we can only trace how, after birth, it begins to grow. ”

“ That does not matter; the ovule has no power to reach the pollen grain, but the latter sends forth a slender tube, within the tube of the style; the ovule is reached; behold, then, the fruit, with its seed, and, if you like, future apple trees! Accept the parable: the parent is little better in this matter than the witless bee; it is his part to deposit, so to speak, within reach of the soul of the child some fruitful idea of God; the immature soul makes no effort towards that idea, but the living Word reaches down, touches the soul,--and there is life; growth and beauty, flower and fruit. ”

“ Then deep into this infant soul sinks the iron weight of what we call Discipline. We women, having small knowledge of child-nature or world-nature, never studying nature at all, but each girl-mother handed on from nursery to nursery, a child teaching children, we undertake to introduce the new soul to life!
We show him, as "life," the nursery, kitchen and parlor group in which we live. We try to teach him the behavior required by these surroundings. ”

“ There is structural adaptation in the brain tissue to the manner of thoughts we think––a place and a way for them to run in. Thus we see how the destiny of a life is shaped in the nursery, by the reverent naming of the Divine Name; by the light scoff at holy things; by the thought of duty the little child gets who is made to finish conscientiously his little task; by the hardness of heart that comes to the child who hears the faults or sorrows of others spoken of lightly. ”

“ Nursery Theology.--Now listen to what goes on in many a nursery:--'God does not love you, you naughty, wicked boy!' 'He will send you to the bad, wicked place!,' and so on; and this is all the practical teaching about the ways of his 'almighty Lover' that the child gets!--never a word of how God does love and cherish the little children all day long, and fill their hours with delight. ”

“ Further, it is part of the natural 'plan' that there shall be developed impulses and capacities suitable to each phase of life as it emerges. Thus it has been shown that the lengthening of infancy—that is, the prolongation of the time during which the young human being is dependent upon its parents for support and protection—is nature's method of developing to a greater degree the capacity of the human animal for more complex adjustment. ”

“ The human soul is reproduced in precisely the same way that the mere animal soul is reproduced, through the instrumentality of parents, the father's life providing the life-germ, or seed, that in which the germ of life exists capable of reproducing itself, and the mother's life providing the soil in which this new germ of life grows. ”

“ And this condition of his infancy follows him through life: he is really an infant, a nursling, as dependent for the daily bread of body, mind, and spirit on supplies which he cannot command, as an infant at the mother's breast. So large is the range of his necessities, so infinite his wants, that he needs just the arm and the treasure of the Omnipotent to supply it. ”

“ Oh, when will the children of God in the regeneration experience and manifest the same spirit of adoption which animates dear children as an instinct of nature toward fathers of their flesh! These two rules, following each other in a circle, would make the outspread field of a Christian’s life sunny, and green, and fruitful, as the arching of the solid system brightens and fertilizes the earth. ”

“ Verily, the creation of each one of you is brought together in his mother’s womb for forty days in the form of seed, then he is a clot of blood for another period, then a morsel of flesh for another period, then there is sent to him the angel who blows the breath of life into him and who is commanded regarding four matters: to write down his means of livelihood, his life span, his actions, and whether he is happy or unhappy. ”

“ To let her young child live and grow in Eden-like simplicity is, perhaps, the most tempting and natural course to the mother. But alas! we do not live in the Garden, and it may be well that the child should be trained from the first to the conditions under which he is to live. To the youngest child, as to our first parents, there is that which is forbidden. In the age of unquestioning obedience, let him know that not all of his body does Almighty God allow him to speak of, think of, display, handle, except for purposes of cleanliness. ”

“ The purpose of these outlines, suggestions, analogies, and inferences, is to show that this life is a period of gestation, in close analogy and comparable with that of the child in utero; that with the web and woof of character, organ and function, impulse and use, opportunity and destiny, we are building a spiritual body, the immediate vehicle of the soul, as literally as is the physical body on the outer material plane; that the laws of Spiritual health and vitality are as concrete, apprehensible, and demonstrable as those of physiology. ”

“ This idea, so miraculously abstract, of a Power the infant has never seen, that cannot be symbolled forth and explained to him by the most erudite sage,—a Power, nevertheless, that watches over him, that hears him, that sees him, that will carry him across the grave, that will enable him to live on forever,—this double mystery of a Divinity and of a Soul, the infant learns with the most facile readiness, at the first glimpse of his reasoning faculty. ”

“ Every child is born with a natural temperament or disposition, which is the product of two elementary factors. (1) Inheritance—those qualities which are transmitted by nature from one’s ancestors and (2) maternal impression—the impression made upon the plastic brain of the foetus. The first comes from generations of ancestry, whereas the last is entirely dependent upon the mother; the influence of what she sees, what she hears and what she thinks. These qualities combine for good or for bad, to influence the life of the child. ”

“ This fact proves what I have been trying to impress on your minds, that the soul which spontaneously desires and wills enjoyment, takes possession and becomes conscious of its organs of sensuous perception, partly by an original impulse, given to it by the Creator, and partly, (which I want you especially to observe,) by the genial, sympathetic, intelligent, careful co-working of the mother and nurse; who, by what we call [32] nursery play, gives a needed help to the child to accomplish this feat in a healthy and pleasurable manner. ”

“ Some day, let us hope, a wee body will appear upon his hearth—his own offspring, to be loved, nourished, and instructed; and then probably there will come another and another till a considerable family is grouped around him. The care and training of these children will be a kind of education to himself. ”

“ Thus it is evident and confirmed that the development and growth of man on this earth, until he reached his present perfection, resembled the growth and development of the embryo in the womb of the mother: by degrees it passed from condition to condition, from form to form, from one shape to another, for this is according to the requirement of the universal system and Divine Law. ”

“ The wonderful workings of nature should be made predominant in explaining the reproduction of the lower orders of life while the pure and spiritual phase of human reproduction should be stressed. Coincident with the conclusion of such instruction, there should be given a brief explanation of the functions of the generative organs in the process of reproducing the species, the injury of secret vice and the necessity for personal purity. ”

“ Parenthood being one phase of unfoldment, each individual must at some period of incarnation exercise this important function. To the uses of reproduction, the animal love with its blustering activities of expression, is, rightly understood, adjusted. But above and beyond this is the spiritual union which brings forth children of the mind, the fruitage of the soul, manifest in noble thoughts and brave deeds. ”

“ The backward pull of the tendencies of infancy and childhood, forming, as they do, the foundation upon which all subsequent desires and aspirations are built up; the closeness of the similarity between the situation of the adult confronted with the vast and overwhelming power of Nature and that of the child who helplessly depends upon his parents both for happiness and life—these are influences which may well continue to make religion in some form a permanent necessity. ”

“ This capacity must either be attributed to the individual experience of the infant, so that without experience of his own he can not begin to be possessed of a growing intelligence, or it must be imputed to an innate and implanted power resident in a spiritual organism that comes into exercise whenever the physical organism has begun to draw the breath of life. ”

“ Thus, parents still would fain conceal from budding manhood, the mysteries of procreation, or the sources of life's ever flowing river, by relating some childish tale of new born life, engendered in the hollow trunk of some old tree, or springing with spontaneous growth, like mushrooms, from out the heaps of rubbish. O man! When wilt thou cease to be a child in knowledge? ”

“ What one receives at birth constitutes his heredity.—This consists of a normal or defective{513} physical constitution, the natural bent of mind and its rudimentary possibilities and the innate tendencies toward good or evil. The physical, mental and moral influences one receives after birth constitute his environment. Ideal environment tends to direct, develop and to mature the results of good heredity and to correct the results of bad heredity. ”

“ Disease and weakness descend from parent to offspring by a law of nature, as names descend by a law of custom. God still ordains that the bodily iniquities of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. ”

“ Parents must select Inspiring Ideas.--These are but two of many deterrent thoughts of God commonly presented to the tender soul; and the mother, who realises that the heart of her child may be irrevocabley turned against God by the ideas of Him imbibed in the nursery, will feel the necessity for grave and careful thought, and definite resolve, as to what teaching her child shall receive on this momentous subject. ”

“ But may not the spiritual father be allowed the possession and indulgence of a similar sensation in his connection with the children whom the Lord gives him, as begotten through the ministry of the word of life! If the first-born child in nature be received as a new and acceptable blessing, how much more so the first-born child in grace! ”

“ From the period of conception until birth the child draws to itself all the essential elements required for the organization of a human being; the capabilities and powers of the parent are taxed and called upon to contribute their material to enable nature to reproduce itself. ”