Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1893 — CHILDREN'S RIGHTS. [ARTICLE]

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS.

Warning to the Rash—Suggestions to Parents. P»thetlc Story of .Jephthah and HU , Daughter—'Training In Childhood. Dr. Talmage, who is now on a vacation tour in the West, chose for a topic, last Sunday morning, “Children’s Rights.” the text being. Judges xi, 3t>—“My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lord, do to me accordingly..to that which' hath proceeded out of thy mouth.” He said: Jephthah was a freebooter. Early urned out from a home where he

ught to have been cared for, heebnsorted with rough men and went orth to earn his living as best he ■ould. In those times it was considered right for a man to go out on in- . lependent military expeditions, lephthah was a good man according to the light of his dark age, but Jirough a wandering and a predatory life he became reckless and pre r ffpitate. The grace of God changes i man’s heart, but never reverses nis natural temperament. The Israelites wanted the Ammontes driven out of their country, so hey sent a delegation to Jephthah, isking him to become eommander-in-hief of all the forces. He might -ave said,- “You drove me out .vhen you had no use for me, but low you are in trouble, you want me jack.” But he did not say that. He takes command of the army, sends nessengers to the Ammonites to tell them to vacate the country, and getting no favorable response narshals his troops for battle. Before going out to the war Jephthah makes a very solemn vow that if ever the Lord will give him the on his return home Whatsoever first comes out of his loorway he will offer in sacrifice as a burnt offering. The battle 'pens. It was no skirmishing on the edges of danger, no unlimbering if batteries twro miles away, but the hurling of men on the. ” point of swords and spears until the ground could no more drink the blood, and the horses reared to leap over the ole of bodies of the slain. In those >H times opposing forces would fight antil their swords were broken, and then each one would throttle his man anti! both fell', teeth to teeth, grip to grip, death stare to death stare, until the plain was one tumbled mass of corpses from which the last trace >f manhood had been dashed out.

Jephthah wins the day. Twenty cities lav captured at his feet. Sound the victory all through the mountains of Gilebd! Let the trumpeters call up the survivors! Homeward to your wives and children! HomeWard with your glittering treasures! Homeward to have the applause of an admiring nation! Build triumphal arches! Swing out flags . all over Mizpeh! Open all your doors to receive the captured treasures! Through every hall spread the banquet! Pile up the vivands! Fill high the tankards! Tie nation is redeemed, the invaders are routed, and the national honor is vindicated!

Huzza for Jephthah,the eonquerer! lephthah, seated on a prancing steed advances amid acclaiming multitudes, but his eye is not on the excited populace, Remembering that he had made a solemn vow that, returning, from victorious battle, whatsoever first came out of the doorway of his home, that should be sacrificed as a burnt offering, he has bis anxious look upon the door. 1 wonder what spotless lamb, what brace of doves will be thrown upon the fires of the burnt offering. Oh, horrors! Paleness ofdeath blanches his cheek. Dispair seizes his heart. His daughter, his only child, rushes out the doorway to throw herself iu her father’s arms and shower upon him more kisses than there were wounds on his breast or dents on his shield. All the triimphal splendor vanishes. Holding back his child from his heaving breast and pushing the locks back from the fair brow and looking into the eyes of inextinguishable affeetiou. with choked utterance, lie says: “Would God I lay stark on the bloody plain! My daughter, my only child, joy of my home, life of my life, thou "art the sacrifice!”

The whole matter was explained to her. This was no whining, hollow hearted girl into whose eyes the father looked. All the glory of sword and shield vanished in the presence of that girl. There may have been a tremor of the lip as a rose leaf trembles in the sough of the south wind. There may have been the starting of a tear like a raindrop shook from the anther of a water lily, but with a self Sacrifice that man may not reach and only woman's heart can compass she sur : renders herself to fire and to death. She cries out. in the words of my text, “My father, if thou hast opened thy mouth unto the Lo % rd, do unto me whats ever hath proceeded from thy mouth.”

She bows to the knife, and the blood, which so often at the father’s voice bad rushed to the crimson cheek, smokes in the fires of the burnt offering. No one can tell us her name. There is no need that we know her name. The garlands that M .zpeh twisted for Jephtha the warrior bad gone into the dust, but all iges ai»c twisting this girl’s chaplet, ft is well that her name came not to as, for no one can wear it. They may take the name of Deborah or Abigail or Miriam but no one in all the ages can have the title of this daughter of sacrifice. « Of course tlus o*eH„, «. nut

pleasant to the Lord, but before you hurl your denunciations at Jephthah’s cruelty remember that in olden times when “vows were made men thought that they must execute them, perform them, whether they were wicked or good. There were two wrong things atbout Jephthah s vows. First, he ought never to have made it. Next, having made it, it avere better broken than kept. But do not take on pretentious airs and say, “I could not have done as Jephthah did.” If today you were standing on the banks of the (ranges, and you had been born in India, vou

might have been throwing your children to the crocodiles. It is not hut because"”ve have more gospel light. Now, I make very practical use of this question when I tell you that the sacrifice of Jephthah’s daughter was a type of the physical, mental and spiritual sacrifice of 10,000 children in this day. There are parents all unwittingly bringing to bear upon their children a class of influences which will as certainly ruin them as khife and torch destroyed Jephthah’s daughter. While I speak, the whole nation, without emotion and without shame, looks upon the stupendous sacrifice. In the first place I remark that much of the system of education in our days is a system of sacrifice. When children spend six or seven hours a day in school and then must spend two or three hours in preparation for school the next day, will you tell me how much time they will have for sunshine and fresh air and the obtaining of that exuberance which is necessary for the duties of coming life? No one can feel more thankful than I do for the advancement of common- school education. The printing of books appropriate for schools, the multiplication -of philosophical apparatus, the establishment of normal schools, which provide our children teachers of largest calibre, are themes on which every philanthropist ought to be congratulated. But this herding of great multitudes of children in :11-ventil-ated school rooms and poorly equipped halls of instruction is making many of the places of knowledge in this country huge holocausts. Politics in many of the cities gets into educational affairs, and while the two political parties are scrabbling for the honors Jephthah’s daughter perishes. It is so mueh so that there are many schools in the country to-day which are preparing tens of thousands of invalid men and women for the future, so that in ftiany places by the time the child’s education is finished the child is finished! In many places in many cities of the country there are large appropriations for everything else, and cheerful appropriations, but as soon as the appropriation is to be made for the educational or the moral interest of the city we are struck through with an economy that is well nigh the death of us. In connection with this I might mention what I call the cramming system of the common schools and many of the academies. Children of delicate brain compelled to tasks that might appall a mature intellect; children going down to school with a strap of books half as high as themselves. The fact is, in some of the cities parents do not allow their children to graduate, for the simple reason, they say, “We can not afford to allow our children’s health to be destroyed in order that they may gather the honors pf an institution.” Tens of thousands of children educated into imbecility. So connected with literary establishments there

ought to be asylums for the wrecked. It is push, and crowd and cram, and stuff and jam until the child’s intellect is bewildered; and the memory is wrecked, and the health gone. There are children turned out from the schools who were once full of romping and laughter and had cheeks crimson with health who are now turned out in the afternoon, pale faced, irritated, asthVnatic, old before their time. It is one of the saddest sights on earth—an old manish boy or an old womanish girl. Girls ten years .of age studying algebra! Boys twelve, years of age. racking their brain over trigonometry! Children unacquainted with their mother tongue crying over their Latin, French and German lessons! All the vivacity of \their na ture beaten out of them by the heavy beetle of a Greek lexicon! And you doctor them for this, and you give them a little medicine for that, and you wonder what is the matter with them. I will tell you what is the matter with them. They are finishing their education! In ray parish in Philadelphia a little child was so pushed at school that she was thrown into a fever, and in her dying delirium all night long she was trying to recite the multiplication table. In my boyhood I remember that in our class at school there-was one lad who knew more than all the rest of us put together. If we were fast in our arithmetic, he extricated us. When we stood up for spelling he was at the head of the class. Visitors came to his father’s house, and he was almost always brought in as a prodigy. At eighteen years of age he was an idiot. He lived ten years an idot, not knowing his right hand from his left or day from night. T ( he parents and the teachers made him an idiot. You may flatter your pride by forcing your children to know more than other children, but you are making a sacraflce of that child if by additions to its intelligence you are making* a subtraction fronMts f uture.

their children by putting tuem into the arms of an idol which thrust forth its hand._ The child was put • into the arms of the idol, and no sooner touched the arms than it dropped into the ' fire. But it was the art of the mothers to keep the children smiling and laughing until the moment they died. There may Se & fascine tion and hilarity about the styles of education of which I am speaking, but it is only laughter at the moment of sacrifice. Would God there were only one Jephthah’s daughter! _.

Again, there are many parents who are sacrificing their children with wrong systems of discipline—too great rigor, ortoo great leniency There are children in families who rule the household. They come to the authority., The high chair in which the infant sits is the throne and the rattle is the scepter, and the other children make up the parliament where father and mother have no vote. Such children come up to be miscreants. There is no chance in this world for a chijd that has never learned to mind. Such people become the botheration of the cnurch of God and the pest of the world. Children that do not learn to obey human authority are unwilling to learn to obey divine authority. Children will* not respect parents whose authority they do not respect. Who are these young men that swagger through the street, with their thumbs in their vest, talking about their father as “the old man.” “the governor,” “the squire,” “the old chap,” or their mother as “the old woman?” They are those who in youth, in childhood, never learned .to respect authority. Eli, having heard that his sons died in their wickedness, fell over backward and broke his neck and died. Well he might. what is life to a father whose sons are debauched? The dust of the valley is pleasant to his taste, and the driving rains that drip through the roof of the sepulcher are sweeter than the wines of Helbon. But, on the other hand, too great rigor must be avoided. It is a sad thing when domestic government becomes cold military despotism. Trappers on the prairie fight fire with fire, but you cannot successfully fight your child’s bad temper with your own bad temper. We must not be too minute in our inspection. We cannot expect our children to be perfect. We must not see everything. Since we have two or three faults of our own, we ougnt not be too rough when we discover that our chilcreu have as many. If tradition be true, when we were children we were not all little Samuels, and our parents were not fearful lest they could uot raise us because of premature goodness. You can not scold or pound your children into nobility of character. The bloom of a child’s heart can never be seen under a cold drizzle. Above all, avoid fretting and scolding in the household. Better than ten years of fretting at your children is one good, round, old-fashioned application of the slipper! That minister of the gospel of whom we read in the newspapers that he whipped his child to death because he would not say his prayers will never come to canonization. The arithmetics can not calculate how many thousands of children have been ruined forever either through too great rigor or too great leniency. The heavens and the earth are tilled with the groans of the sacrificed. In this Important matter seek' 'Divine cUrection,'OTather,h.Q. mother. Some one asked the mother of Lord Chief Justice Mansfield if she was not proud to have three such eminent sons, and all of -them

so good. “No,” she said, “It is nothing to be proud of, but something for which to be very grateful.” Further on thousands and tens of thousands of the daughters of America are sacrificed to worldliness. They are taught to be in sympathy with all the artificialities of society. They are inducted to all the hallowness of what is called fashionable life. They are taught to believe that history is dry. but 50-cent stories of adventurous love are delicious. With capacity that might have rivaled a Florence Nightingale in heavenly ministries or made the father’s house glad with filial or sisterly demeanor, their life is a” waste, their beauty a curse, their eternity a demolition.* I congratulate all parents who are doing their best to keep their children away from the altar of sacrifice. Your prayers are going to be answered. Your children may wander away from God but they will come 1 back again. A voice comes from the throue to-day encouraging you. “I will be a God to thee, and to thy seed after thee.” And though when you lay your head in death there may be some 1 wanderer of the family far away from God. and you may be twenty years in heaven before salvation shall come to his heart, he will be brought into the kingdom, and before the throne of God you will rejoice that you were faithful. Come at last, although so long postponed 1 his coming. Come at ast ‘