BOOK III.

THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF HOME LIFE.

1. IDEAS ON DOMESTIC LIFE THE STANDARD OF CIVILIZATION.

Iv

F we search among the peoples and kindreds and tribes of the world's yesterday and to-day, to ascertain how they stand in respect to Christian thought, we may test them upon the ideas which are fundamental to a Christian home; the outcome of the difference between Christian and non-Christian ideas being nowhere else more easily seen. That the men of to-day, and of all the yesterdays, must differ much in their notions of domestic life, is clear enough if we consider the uneven development of different peoples when compared with each other. Some must be far in advance of others. Whether the higher forms of social life have emerged from lower, or whether the lower have fallen away from a higher, it is certain that, with the going by of the centuries, the families, tribes, and nations best equipped with ideas of what is most fitting to man have come to the front.

Whether or not man's body has been but an evolution from lower forms, it is certain that many peoples, the lowest in savagery, have been little different from the highest of the brutes; and those in whom manly characteristics are least developed will entertain but brutal notions of what families are for. Carnal appetite and the looking upon a woman as a creature of sex, and upon children as conveniences or nuisances, — this is brutal. The practical position of woman to-day, and children to-day, in a Christian civilization, differs from that maintained by peoples whose moral evolution has not been aided by Christian ideas. Suppose, for example, we take a great nation like China, or a small one like Siam, we shall find that their people as such believe in no personal All-Father to whom they are bound in love and duty. This indicates a low stage of moral evolution; by so much are they nearer to man primeval than nations where for the most part God is honored as a personal Creator and moral Governor, and as man's best Friend and

Helper. And in those nations nearest the primeval type of man, we are to look for it that they will have notions in regard to domestic life which, in respect to carnal appetite and the degraded position of woman and neglected child life, mark man as at his lowest rather than his highest. And this is true in regard to China and Siam.

Now, it stands to reason that, in the competition of races and the survival of the fittest, those nationalities which make the most of womanhood and childhood, will forge ahead by producing a superior stock. In other words, De Tocqueville was right in saying that the Home is the corner-stone of the Nation.

"To

The frogs of Balboa, fabled to have been bred by the mud and seen half-emerged, a frog above and mud below, offer a good illustration of those pitiable people whose nether members are still mud; to whom it has never occurred that they are, or may be, the sons of God. them gave He the right to become the sons of God" is an idea that ought to be brought to the knowledge of those who are ignorant of it by men who believe it. It is due to society, upon mere humanitarian grounds, that this be done. It cannot be afforded that more than a thousand millions of people should believe that they are bred of the mud with no divine plan or parentage. It cannot be afforded, on humanitarian grounds, that womanhood and childhood should be upon a low brutal plane among a thousand millions of people. As to the theory of domestic life, the stream cannot rise above its fountain; and

those who believe that they "just growed," Topsy fashion, without a personal God who cares anything for them or they for Him, will never honor womanhood or childhood much above the most considerate of the brutes. The idea of God must be made known to the nations, or the idea of Home, as it is understood in Christian countries, will never be known. Has it not passed into a proverb, that there are no Homes in Asia?

2.

CHILD MARRIAGE AND CHILD MURDER.

I.

A colt is more mature at two years than a child at twelve; and at four years than a child at twenty. The prolongation of infancy, of pupilage, pertains to

man; and marks that civilization which is

at the greatest remove from primitive usage. The whole business of child marriage in the Orient is of a piece with other ideas and customs that pertain to man primeval. These peoples, in the evolution of the race, have not left behind them distinctly brutal notions. The domestic cow is a mother in early life; the Asiatic child is a parent at an age when the higher Civilization would keep that child at school in order to develop the higher powers of manhood and womanhood. Intellectual and moral

qualities and a certain

maturity of character ought to be the gift of parents to their children by heredity as well as by training. Children are not fit to propagate a

superior race. India, Burmah, Siam, China, and the Mohammedan countries, must improve their stock of men and women by deferring marriage, and schooling the parents of the next generation in those ideas which logically follow a firm belief in God as the Father of all men.

As to the matter of schooling, the most advanced civilization prefers to keep young man and maiden at school for more than a score of years in order to prepare them for fifty years' work later on. But in Siam those who are twenty-five or thirty years old are "old folks" with from six to ten children; and every child is left to shift for himself and herself at twelve or near that. This Oriental fashion cannot compete with the Occidental notion in the social outcome. The West will breed a higher type of manhood, and the fittest will survive and obtain the ascendancy.

Travelers in Siam picture to us the aquatic population as living like ducks. The parental boatman and his wife of twenty are followed by a flock of babies, each one paddling a tiny boat; mere children becoming expert in physical exercises, and early fitting themselves to set up establishments of their own, with their own babies to care for, and to cast off with early neglect. Such generations come and go like those of man primeval; save that the recent have their food more regularly than the earlier, and they wear more ornaments, and have more semblance of what some writers are pleased to call civilization.

What child life is like in China is illustrated by a quaint anecdote which Miss Gordon-Cumming picked up from one of her English mission friends. A boy of eight who attended the mission school was seen tugging along with a baby in his arms. Being asked, about her,

he was shy. It was his wife. His mother had "swapped off" his baby sister to a woman who wanted a cheap wife for her son, and taken this one; paying a dollar and a few cakes to boot, - this one being fatter than the one she traded off. So two families were fitted up with inexpensive wives, and domestic bliss reigned

supreme.

What child life is like in India appears from the fact that, among two hundred and eighty millions of people, after forty centuries of Hinduism, the girls have no schooling, but at five years old they are initiated. into certain religious ceremonies designed to procure to them

selves husbands. Babes of five pray against early widowhood, pray for husbands blest with longevity. And the girl at five, prays against polygamy; cursing every other wife her future husband may take.1 That is all they do learn till they are married.

The law has so far taken this matter in hand as to make it illegal for girls under twelve to marry. Feebleness of body, weakmindedness, parental ignorance, and an unwholesome atmosphere for the beginnings of life, are incident to child marriage in India.2

The little maiden who said, "You make my heart laugh," - did not live in India. Rukhmabai, who rebelled against her baby be

1 Wilkins, Modern Hinduism, pp. 340, 341. London, 1887.

2 Compare Sir Monier-Williams' statement in the Contemporary Review, XXXIII, pp. 268, 269.