The social life of boys and girls should be recognized and provided for as a department of the school in which they shall become educated in those things which make for social righteousness and purity later on. As boys treat each other, they will, as a rule, treat each other as men. As boys and girls behave toward each other, so will they as a rule behave as men and women. Courtesy is necessary to the highest degree of success in any enterprise. The boy who is habitually courteous toward other boys will be successful in winning his way as a man among men with any important message with which he may be commissioned; and if he is so instructed that he is gentle, considerate, and true to his mother, sisters, and girl associates, he will be a safe friend as a man, a representative of Christ to his own wife and children, and help to make that home which must stand as a witness for God in the last days.
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The children in whose interests I am writing must be in a peculiar sense messengers of light to the world. They will be on the field of action in the very last scenes of the earth’s history, when souls must be snatched by a power of which we have little comprehension—the power to win quickly; the power to reveal the truth as in a flash of light, so that it will be recognized at sight by the bewildered, desperate soul that has awakened at the last moment to its peril and privilege, and with scant space for repentance and cleansing, cries out for help; and the Holy Spirit must find somewhere those whom he can train and use for the service which in those days must be done to reach every creature, high as well as low, with the gospel.
The truth is worthy of the best possible investment. Its messengers should be free from every offensive habit, custom, and manner—thoroughly equipped in all that is 22 most graceful, most scholarly, as genuine Christian scholarship goes; most refined, most chaste, and agreeable in both public and private intercourse. They should be the most suitably, and that means the most simply and tastefully, dressed.
The theory of the world considers as “good form” that each individual should dress according to the class which he represents; and the Christian who conscientiously and consistently dresses as his name “Christian” would indicate that he should dress, will be respected by even the frivolous “butterfly of fashion,” and will stand a good chance of a hearing by that same “butterfly,” even in the most solemn message, provided it is accompanied with the simple, easy courtesy of good breeding, such as can not be suddenly assumed “for effect,” but which is the result of life-long training. There are honest souls among so-called “social butterflies,” and some workers must be trained 23 to go out into the highways where they flit away their hopeless lives, as well as into the byways and hedges, where social wrecks are huddled in darkness and desolation.
The men and women who must do this work are now boys and girls in our homes or schools, and very much which shall determine the scope of their influence depends upon what the Spirit of God shall find available in them for use. A truly well-trained, courteous man or woman can be used anywhere, among any people; while the uncouth and untrained must be kept in a limited sphere. The truly cultured man or woman whose every gift and grace has been sanctified and consecrated, will be more sure to know what to do in the homes of the wretched and the haunts of vice for the alleviation of distress and the saving of a soul than those who have never thought it worth while to cultivate winsome qualities.
God has so arranged human life and relations 24 that even the most aristocratic and exclusive must take note of, and plan for doing, the same every-day things that are alike common to all; and the only question of deportment which can ever come between the uncouth and the refined, concerns the methods of doing these same most common things.
The mother in the humblest home, with the most meager opportunities, if she has a high enough appreciation of the mission to which her child is called as a representative of the precious “faith of Jesus,” can, in him, place at the disposal of the Holy Spirit such graces of gentleness, such a beauty of holiness, such winsome kindliness, such tact and address, as shall open the way for anything which he has to bring. But to do this she must begin with the child in his relation to the other children of his own age with whom he stands on an equal footing. To treat with deference and politeness only those 25 who because of age or position are recognized as his superiors, would train the child to sychophancy.
The man who can lead other men, except by some appeal to selfish or brutal passion, is very hard to find. A “man’s way” has passed into proverb, and stands for heedlessness as regards his treatment of his equals. His natural sense of pity will make him kind to the helpless, provided he can afford it; he will be respectful to the respectable because his own respectability requires it; and his general interest will lead him to court those who are in a position to bestow favors; but to be all that a consecrated Christian companion might be to those who are on the same plane with himself, or who are so outlawed by public sentiment that no accuser but conscience would arise against him for any wrong done to them, is the point of failure in the association of men with men and women, and is the result of an almost 26 universal idea that “boys don’t need to be so very polite to each other,” nor “so very particular” as to just how they talk when alone among themselves, and that the silly girl or “fallen” among women is legitimate prey for any man.
It is by “behavior” that men and women are protected from, or exposed to, especial and peculiar temptations, as well as made more or less effective in truth-teaching and soul-winning.
It may seem ridiculous to make the use of a handkerchief the subject of grave consideration, but it is a terrible fact that this little scrap of linen has become more dangerous than dynamite to the thoughtless girl in her teens who, for lack of proper teaching, picks up the little tricks of street flirtation, which have so defiled it that it has become almost indecent to handle it outside the seclusion of one’s own room.
Let a bright-faced girl take her handkerchief 27 in hand on the street of even a small country village, and she will immediately become the center of attraction to every lewd fellow who haunts public places, until he has found out what she intends to do with it; and the code of signals for which it is employed is of such a character that the most innocent may be charged with a lewd invitation by what might seem to be its necessary use.
The same is true concerning the sound made by clearing the throat and nasal passages, and coughing. These are all used as signals of vice; and many a giddy, but innocent girl has found herself in situations of great humiliation and danger, simply because she had not been forearmed with a little knowledge as to proper conduct in these matters.
Good form requires that the handkerchief be carried in the pocket out of sight; never brought out in public excepting in a case of 28 necessity, and then used as unobtrusively as possible. The importance of this matter is sufficient to warrant repetition even to line upon line and precept upon precept.
Those who will be able to do the best service in the closing work of the world’s history, to win the richest trophies for our coming King, will be those who, together with the “commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,” and the fulness of the Holy Spirit, will know and observe in deportment that which the world recognizes as good form.