The children and the church and the Young Peoples Society of Christian Endeavor as a means of bringing them together

Front matter

Shelf

rf

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S

CHAPTER I. CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. p AGE

Jewish Customs respecting Child Life. — Different Names applied to Children. — The Naturalness of Child Life in the Bible.

— Bible Child Life a Religious Life. — The Religious Life

of the Child a Growth. — A Word to Parents I

Chapter II. Is There A Place In The Church For Children ?

Jerusalem full of Boys and Girls playing. — A Place for Children in the Church. — Indicated by the Nature of Childhood. — By the Nature of Conversion. — By the Nature of the Church.

— The Church of the Future 15

Chapter III. Church Membership For Children

The Need of it. — Shown by the Sluggish, Depleted State of our Churches. — The Difficulty of Impressing with Religious Truth Persons of Mature Years. — Obstacles. — Opposition and Indifference of Parents, Teachers, and Churches. — "I am afraid my Child will not Hold Out." — Unreasonable Expectations. — Encouragement. — Experience of Eminent Divines 27

Chapter IV. The Young People's Society Of Christian Endeavor

Its Origin. — Its Constitution. — Its Objects: To Promote Constant Confession of Christ and Earnest Christian Endeavor.

— Its Spirit : The Spirit of Aggressive, Spiritual, Evangelical Christianity. — Its Rules : Are they too Strict ? . . . 38

Vlll CONTENTS.

THE YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY OF CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR.

How it fits Children for Church Membership. — A Half-Way House to the Church. — A Training School within the Church. — A Watch-Tower for the Church 52

Chapter VI. The Young People's Society Of Christian Endeavor

Questions Answered. — How can the Society be Started? — What Age Limit shall be Imposed ? — Is this Plan fitted for Small, Weak Churches ? — What does "Absolute Necessity " mean ? — How should an Experience Meeting be conducted ?

— Why should the Roll be called at its Close ? — What other Work may be attempted. — How shall the Indifferent be dealt with ? Suggestions. — Care in admitting Members.

— Strict Adherence to the Rules. — Constant Vigilance needed. — The Pastor's Place in this Work an Essential Place. Objections Answered. — That the Society will detract from the Pre-eminence of the Church. — That it will interfere with the Church Prayer Meeting. — That it will foster a Brazen, Wordy Type of Piety 63

Chapter VII. The Young People's Society Of Christian Endeavor

Further Misapprehensions corrected. — The Object not only to awaken, but to keep awake. — Not to make Children Prominent, but to make them Useful. — Further Questions answered. — " How may Interest in Religious Matters be first aroused?" — The Sunday-School Prayer Meeting. — A Catechetical Class. — This Society not a Labor-Saving Contrivance. — A Flexible Organization. — What has been done. — What may be done 78

CONTENTS. IX

APPENDIX. Pagb Children and Public Worship. — The Veneration of the Ancient Jews for their Temple. — The Statistics about Church-Going. — Why are not the Children in the Pews ? — Testimony of Representative Christian Men of Portland concerning early Church-Going. — What this Testimony teaches. — To win Boys and Girls to Public Worship. First, Understand them. Second, Be manly. Third, Present the Youth's Side of Truth. Fourth, Give a new Bent to much of the Home Life. Fifth, Modify many prevailing Theories regarding the Conversion of Children. Sixth, Continue the Revision of much Sunday-School Effort. Seventh, Appreciate the joyous Hopefulness of a Church full of Children 91

INTRODUCTION".

Here is a good thing for the church of Christ, for the Christian home, and for all that have the care of the young. You will not lay it aside till you have gathered the honey.

The plan is a fresh seed, dropped into the new soil of youth, and promises much. In the fields of the young there is no fallow ground ; everything grows in the springtime, wheat and tares.

This book is born of an earnest effort to keep the young within reach of direct Christian influence, bringing them to Christ, and into His fold ; rearing them, not for His service, but in it, leaving no time nor place for " sowing wild oats."

The guides of youth have made provision for these oats much too long.

The book is neither a plea for Christian nurture without conversion, nor for conversion without nurture, — looking : ward the work outside the church 01 apart from it, — but for planting and training the young in the household of faith in a living, practical way.

The child problem is one of the most pressing at this hour. Mammon has no happy old people, however much delight he may promise the boys and girls at the start. They follow, to be deceived and destroyed. It is very hard for God to get a hearing in any human heart, yet it is easier to reach the child heart than any other. Lose not the hour of childhood.

Xll INTRODUCTION.

The consequences of sin in this world, and in every world, are fearful. The sooner the child life is cleansed, through the blood of the Crucified One, and the new life from above is begun, the better every way; God has no sorrow so great as seeing a soul in sin. He comes with His deliverance now, if we will open to Him. He is of God who heareth the words of God.

How can the young be made to see the vast advantages that surround them, and be led to improve their opportunities as they ought ?

No question comes to parents of this generation with deeper solicitude than this, — unlimited stores of knowledge on every side, privileges and blessings for mind and heart without end, and often so little appetite on the part of the children for them. Parents lead their young to the fountains of living water ; everything is made beautiful and attractive, and still they do not care to drink. How shall they be induced to ? What can be done if there is no hunger for life's true knowledge, no thirst for God's word and service ?

Blessings on him who shall impart the teaching skill, and give the relish for divine things, and know how to feed the lambs.

Every boy has his time to awake and grow to a wise, Christian manhood; every girl her opportunity to rise and put on her garments of Christian beauty, and begin her ministry of love and helpfulness. This time gone unimproved, life's best hour is passed. This era in child life comes and goes as the clover blossoms, and then heat and drought and waste. The summer is ended. The bright, sweet song of the Gospel has been sung to the soul ; all that follow are broken lays. The young need to be taken in this early bloom, set into the life of God, that

INTRODUCTION. Xlii

they may be enclosed in His gardens, and kept fragrant and fresh forever. The sun puts its finger on the bud of a tender plant and it flowers, so let Christ lay His hand on the plants in the home.

" In the kingdom of Thy grace Grant a little child a place."

The children must have their portion at home and in the Lord's house. It must be constant and wholesome and "convenient" for them. "If we would have better sheep, we must take better care of the lambs " ; we must make a place for them in confession of Christ and service, in worship and work, in giving and doing. Let the Christian duties all begin in childhood, when faith and love begin. The young repay many fold for all the thought and care bestowed upon them by the church. It is the divine order and method, old and young moving together along the homeward way. It helps to keep the parental heart and hearthstone warm. The children gathered into the worship make the church like a Christian service, glad with song and promise and youthful joy all the year round.

And why should it not be so ?

When the great Shepherd comes to draw water for His flock on the Lord's day, how good it is to find all the fold gathered and ready, sheep and lambs alike. The Lord's ministry is to them both, in invitation and blessing. He carries every kind of food in the same hand.

The old are twice blessed in the blessing on the young. Many a little girl is a Christian at four years of age. Many a boy at seven ; some earlier. " Feed my lambs," says the Master. Arrange to do it by system and in faith • gather them in, carry the weak ones. Let the truth be unsealed and applied to all their needs. In no other way can so

XIV INTRODUCTION.

effective and valuable Christian workers be made. All their faculties, taken early, will be limbered and made flexible and deft in their Lord's use.

Do not let us of this age stumble any longer over these great and self-evident truths. Every work has its special wisdom by which it is best done. The secret of success in winning the world for Christ and building the church of God is in gaining and saving the children. That done, all the rest comes as a consequence ; for the world's manhood is secure when we have gained its childhood.

The state of the heart toward God determines one's moral condition. That state may be made right in childhood easier than at any other time thereafter. If the heart should with difficulty be brought to God later, the aftermath of the autumn Christian is not like the abounding green of the early summer time.

Why should Christian parents wait, before they strive to make their children Christians, till there has been a funeral among the group of little ones ? Why should the pastor's first prayer in the home be at the bedside of the sick ?

The method set forth in this volume is no longer an experiment. It has been very successfully tried by the author, and by many others, who, adopting the suggestions of the author, are happy to attest their great practical value.

The Society of Christian Endeavor, brought from Portland to St Louis without injury, is one of the busiest bees in the Pilgrim hive. It brings in honey and comb, and finds many wayside flowers that had been overlooked. It comes in every day rich with golden power. It is one of the special helps to the pastor. It is wings for him, and flies all over the city.

INTRODUCTION. XV

This work is not intended to be a mere sentiment or theory thrown out, but a working plan for organization and use in every church where it shall find favor, till it gives place to something better.

C. L. GOODELL.

St, Louis, November, 1882.

THE CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH.

Chapter I. Child Life In The- Bible

Jewish Customs respecting Child Life. — Different Names applied to Children. — The Naturalness of Child Life in the Bible. — Bible Child Life a Religious Life. — The Religious Life of the Child a Growth. — A Word to Parents.

In considering the relation of children to the church, and in attempting to devise measures for bringing young people into closer relationship and fellowship with the church, it is wise for us to consider first of all the Bible position in regard to the religious nurture of children. This is not a difficult task, for the Scriptures leave no doubt in the minds of most readers in regard to the supreme importance they attach to the early and careful religious training of the young. The Bible treats child life as it does every other subject, in accordance with the customs in vogue at the time it was written ; and from its general tenor, we have every reason to suppose that it approves and supports these existing customs. Thus, in order fitly to appreciate the child life of the Bible, we must inquire how children were regarded, what was their education, and how much attention was paid to them by the Jews, the people among whom the Bible was written. When we turn to this subject we are surprised to find how large is its literature. The verynumber and variety and minuteness of the names for "child" show the importance of child life, and the close scrutiny with which it was watched. There were no less than nine of these names, denoting the different stages of the child's history. Besides the general names for son or daughter, there was one that meant "the newly born" child, another that meant "the suckling," another still that referred to the time just before weaning, and a fourth that meant the weaned child. When he becomes a little older and begins to go alone with short and tottering steps, he is called tapJi> or "the quickly stepping one," — or " the little trotter," as we might phrase it. When he becomes still older, and is able to help his parents, he is called elem, or " the strong." When able to defend and take care of himself, he is naar, or " free " ; and when he has attained his majority and is fit for military service, then he is bachur, or "matured," — " the ripe one." What a watchful eye do all these names indicate ! By following them along we can almost see the development and growth of the Jewish youth and maiden. Immediately after the birth of the child it was washed, rubbed with salt, and wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and the announcement of its birth was hailed with joy, especially if it was a son. When the boy was eight days old he received his name, and the rite of circumcision was performed.

CHILD LITE Ds THE BIBLE. 3

Twenty-two days after this his father redeemed him by giving to the priest thirty shekels of the sanctuary, thus acknowledging in a most forcible way that he belonged to the Lord who gave him. The ceremony of redemption was performed in this way : The parents of the month-old child made a feast for their friends, and invited a priest, who must be a lineal descendant of Aaron. Having offered grace and some introductory prayers, the priest looks at the child and at the price of redemption, and asks the father which he would prefer, the money or the child. Upon the father's reply that he would rather pay the price of redemption, the priest takes the money and swings it round the infant's head, saying, " This is for the first-born ; this is in lieu of it ; this redeems it. And let this son be spared for life, for the law of God, and for the fear of heaven." The priest then lays his hand upon the child's -head and blesses him, and the rite is over. Does not this custom, as some one* has remarked, bring to us with new force the Apostle Peter's words, ■ Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, is with silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb without blemish and without spot " ? When the child was weaned the event was celebrated by a feast given by the parents to their friends, and when he had become the " quickly stepping" little one he was dressed in the fringed or

* Rev. Dr. Ginsbnrg, from whose writings many of these facts, con-

tasselled garment : and now his religious education began, for he was taught that the word which stood for this tasselled garment was the Hebrew numeral for six hundred, and that this six hundred, with the eight threads and five knots that composed the tassels, made up six hundred and thirteen, the number of precepts in the law ; and hence the tasselled garment in which the little boy was arrayed was a symbol to him of the perfect law. During the earliest period of the child's life the mother had his training solely in her hands ; but when the boy became a little older the father undertook his religious teaching, while the mother was responsible for the girls until they were married.

At the age of five the boy began to learn the Bible, and at the age of ten the collection of Jewish traditions. The parents were the teachers, and it is a singular fact that we read of no schools in the Bible until after the Babylonish captivity. The reason for this is plain Before this there was no need of them, for during a sixth part of a Jew's time, labor was prohibited by Sabbaths and sacred feasts, and this time the parents occupied in teaching their children. But when the Jewish father came to resemble the modern Christian father, so much wrapped up in his business that he had no time to teach his children, then schools were established, but under the strictest regulations. They must not be in a crowded or unwholesome part of the town ; they must not be near a river that was crossed by an unsafe bridge ; no teacher could have more than twenty-five pupils under his charge ; and the parents always took care that their children were in the class at the proper time. In these schools, too, the greatest attention was paid to the manners of the children. They must salute every one they met on the street, and not to respond to a salutation was considered as bad as committing a robbery. An ordinary man was greeted with the words, " Peace be with thee ! " a teacher, " Peace be with thee, my teacher and my master" ; and a king, "Peace be with thee, my king, peace." Compare this polite greeting with the impertinent stare or the saucy salutation of many a modern school-boy.

We have dwelt somewhat at length on these Jewish customs in the upbringing of children, for more than anything else do they throw light upon the child life of the Bible. In fact, the child life of the Jews is the child life approved and moulded by the Bible. The same rites that we have described were performed for Samuel and Saul and David. In this same fringed garment was the little Solomon clothed, and the infant Isaiah and Daniel. These same precepts were taught in this way to Paul and Peter and John and James. These same salutations dropped from the lips of Timothy, so carefully trained. Yes, and these same blessings were pronounced over the unconscious head of the infant Jesus. In the same garment was He clothed. He was taught this same rule concerning the knots and fringes, and in sweet, boyish accents, we may believe, there fell from His lips, too, the quaint greeting, " Peace be with thee, my teacher and master, peace." Surely anything that throws light upon or is glorified by His blessed life is of supreme interest to us. We have a fewexamples of child life recorded in the Bible. Something is told us of Joseph as a boy. Samuel's early days are dwelt upon. Allusions are made to the infancy of Josiah and a few of the kings of Judah ; and the door of that carpenter's house in Nazareth is occasionally left ajar, that we may get brief glimpses of the blessed child life of Jesus. From these few passages, as well as from what we know of the customs of the times, we learn in the first place that the child life of Bible characters and Bible days was natural and sensible. The goody, precocious, unearthly children, who are always saying such wonderful things, and never giving any evidence of having inherited the ! weaknesses of Adam's race, and who always used to die before they advanced beyond this stage of pious and precocious reflection, do not exist in the Bible. The children of the Bible are pre-eminently childlike. There is nothing about them which leads us to believe that to be " saintly towards the heavens is to be sickly tdwards the earth." While they are children, they speak as children, they understand as children, they think as children ; it is not until they become men that they put away childish things. A study of their lives gives us the impression that it is just as unnatural and unwholesome for a child to act like a man as for a man to act like a child. Indeed, it was part of the educational code of the Jews that the child was not to be forced. One of their sententious maxims was, " If you set your child to regular study before it is six years old, you shall always have to run after and yet never get hold of it."

Look at the story of the infant Samuel, for example. How perfectly natural, simple, childlike it is ! And yet a miraculous event occurred. God himself is one of the speakers. There is every temptation for the writer to make the little boy preternatural in wisdom. Many a modern writer describing the scene would have made him talk more wisely than Eli himself. But the pen of inspiration never makes such mistakes. The child is still a child even when he talks with God. As we follow the story of that marvellous night of vision, we do not find anything strained, unnatural, precocious in it all. Here, if anywhere, should we expect a departure from childlike simplicity ; and yet Samuel, in spite of his visions and early prophetic gifts, was a simple, natural boy. And when we turn over the pages of sacred story, and turn with them the leaves of twelve hundred years of the world's history, we see nothing in that perfect child life, which began in the manger and was continued in Nazareth, that contradicts our proposition that child life in the Bible is natural and simple.

It becomes us to speak with care and reverence of the immaculate life of the child Jesus, and yet we challenge any one to find there anything inconsistent with the boy nature that He is represented as endued with. Even that scene in the temple where He is shown to us at twelve years of age as both hearing the doctors and asking them questions is not so unnatural as we are inclined to think. Every Jewish child from a devout family was well trained in the law, and had a right in the synagogue to ask his elders questions, or to give them his views ; but it was all done in a natural, childlike, appropriate way. The conceited Josephus tells us that the doctors came to consult him concerning the law before he was fourteen ; but we hear no such boast concerning Jesus. And this action of our Lord's did not seem to fill His parents with any wonder or awe, for they immediately began to chide Him in their short-sighted wisdom for eluding their search. The Apocryphal Gospels are filled with the miracles of the boy Jesus. According to them He made clay birds to fly, and struck a little companion dead for blasphemy, and raised the dead to life again. But their very unnaturalness brands them as spurious. When we compare them with the sweet, simple, unostentatious accounts of the true Gospels, we see how incomparably better it is for a child to be a child. We see that even the Lord of all, when He took human flesh, did not transgress the laws of child life.

But again, while child life in the Bible is eminently simple and natural, it is also eminently religious. These two elements must not be divorced in our minds, if we would see the children of the next generation grow up into the kingdom of God. A religious life, a life of faith and prayer, a Christ-like life, is natural for a child, and we make a woful mistake when we think that there is a certain amount of boyish wickedness and girlish frivolity which must be run through before the religious life can begin. How did our Saviour himself represent the religious life to the thronging crowds ? " Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." A child, do we say, cannot be religious because he is still a child ? This is a fearful mistake to act upon. Cannot a rosebud contain the sweetest fragrance and be painted with the most delicate colors because it is yet a bud and not a full-blown flower ? Cannot the tiny cascade that flows down the mountain-side be pure and sparkling and life-giving because it is not yet a sweeping, rushing river? We expect to find fragrance in the bud and purity in the mountain rill ; we should expect to find religious fragrance and purity in the child's life, implanted there very early by the Saviour of little children. We should look for it, plan for it, and be alarmed if we do not find it ; and regard a young soul without it as a distorted and ill-proportioned object, a soul that lacks its chief excellence, just as a scentless bud or a brackish mountain brook would be regarded. But this early religious life, we must remember, does not take care of itself, any more than a rosebud springs up out of the ground without care ; the soil must be prepared, the seed must be dropped, the little plant must be watered and nourished and pruned and trained.

The education of the Jewish children, as we have seen, was eminently a religious training. " If you ask a Jew," says Josephus, "concerning any matter concerning the law, he can more easily explain it than tell his own name ; since we learn it from the first beginning of intelligence, it is, as it were, graven on our souls." "The Jews," says Philo, "look on their laws as revelations from God, and are taught them from their earliest infancy ; they bear the image of the law on their souls." The children were bound to worship God in his sanctuary "as soon as they were able," was the regulation, "with the help of their fathers' hand, to climb the flight of steps into the temple courts." This was the way Samuel was trained, and David and John and Timothy ; and because of this training they became Samuel and David and John and Timothy. It depends upon the parents and teachers of to-day what the next generation shall be, and it depends upon what they do and teach to-day. We have the clean, white, smooth tablets in our hands, in the souls of our children : what shall we write thereon, religion or worldliness ?

Again, child life in the Bible is always represented as a constant growth.

Over and over again we are told the child Samuel grew before the Lord. " And Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him." Of John the Baptist as a child it is said, " He grew and waxed strong in spirit." And even of our Lord Himself the same words are used. How we should shrink from using such an expression if we had no inspired authority

CHILD LIFE IN THE BIBLE. II

for it ! The Saviour grew, increased in spiritual power! "Why," we should say, "it is almost .blasphemy to speak thus." But the Bible says so. " And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit, and the grace of God was on him." This idea is universal throughout the Bible. To become religious does not make a prodigy of a boy or girl. It does not ripen and mature the character all at once. It is not a hot-bed process. The religious child is still a child, needing training, instruction, warning, and we must not expect or look for anything else. When we see the seed sown in fickle April weather springing up in April and flowering in April and bearing fruit in April, when we see saplings grow visibly before our eyes, expand in girth and throw out far-reaching roots and gigantic limbs in a single season, then may we expect to see a child Christian become an old Christian in a week ; but till then we need not expect to see any such phenomena. Of course a child's ideas of religion are crude, of course his knowledge of duty is imperfect, of course he falls into childish blunders and errors ; there would be no such thing as growth in grace were it otherwise. But the a*corn contains the oak, the straight, branchless sapling is the forerunner of the wide-spreading shade tree ; in the child Christian's heart lie the germs of the aged Christian's experience.

We think there is a lesson of vast importance in these considerations of child life in the Bible. We beg for it careful and prayerful attention, for it is a lesson which the church has too long neglected to its own sad hurt. It is this : It is natural, it is possible, it is desirable for children to grow up into Christian manhood and womanhood without experiencing any sharp and sudden transition from an evil life to a good life. Nay, it is not only possible and desirable, it is the thing we ought to expect ; it ought to be as common for young children to be born into the kingdom of God as to be born into the world. It is possible and natural for children to be converted at their mothers' knee, and never know the time when they did not love the Saviour. And this should not be something rare, occasional, remarkable, a phenomenon, a thing to excite remark, like a comet or a meteor. It should be the usual, expected thing that children of religious parents should choose to live for the Saviour as early as they are able to make any choice, and should be received into the church and receive its nurturing, fostering care. Search the child biographies of the Bible through and see if this idea is not borne out. Was Samuel a wise, independent man before he heard God speak his name ? Was John the Baptist allowed to sow any wild oats before he became a preacher of righteousness ? Could Timothy better have strengthened the early church if he had been a roue in his youth ? Did Jesus Himself pass through no period of boyhood growth ? Did even He not require thirty long years of training before He called a single disciple to Him ? The churches and Christian parents at large have had their eyes blinded to this matter. The church has often said to the children, "You cannot come in here : stand out there in the vestibule until you are grown up " ; and a very cold, cheerless vestibule it- has often been. Or else it has said, " Go to the Sunday school : that will do for you while you are young." Devout parents have prayed earnestly that their children might become Christian men and women, but they have forgotten to pray that they might become Christian boys and girls ; and the men and women have too often remained what the boys and girls were. -It has been considered almost a necessity that they should become somewhat bad before becoming very good. Hence the sad lapses from virtue in the children of Christian parents ; hence the drunken boys and ruined girls who have brought shame into Christian homes ; hence the facts which have given rise to the old saw about ministers' sons and deacons' daughters.