The Moral Instruction of Children, Felix Adler [little readers .txt] 📗

I am strongly in favor of omitting the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac. I do not think we can afford to tell young children that a father was prepared to draw the knife against his own son, even though he desisted in the end. I should not be willing to inform a child that so horrible an impulse could have been entertained even for a moment in a parent's heart. I regard the story, indeed, as, from an historical point of view, one of the most valuable in the Bible; it has a deep meaning; but it is not food fit for children. A great mistake has been made all along in supposing that whatever is true in religion must be communicated to children; and that if anything be very true and very important we ought to hasten to give it to children as early as possible; but there must be preparatory training. And the greatest truths are often of such a kind as only the mature mind, ripe in thought and experience, is fitted to assimilate.

One of the most charming idyls of patriarchal times is the story of Rebecca at the Well. It illustrates positively, as the story of Sodom does negatively, the duty of hospitality toward strangers. "Drink, lord, and I will give thy camels drink also," is a pleasant phrase which is apt to stick in the memory. Moreover, the story shows the high place which the trusted servant occupied in the household of his master, and offers to the teacher an opportunity of dwelling on the respect due to faithful servants.

The Jacob Cycle.

What treatment shall Jacob receive at our hands, he, the sly trickster, who cheats his brother of his birthright and steals a father's blessing? Yet he is one of the patriarchs, and is accorded the honorable title of "champion of God." To hold him up to the admiration of the young is impossible. To gloss over his faults and try to explain them away were a sorry business, and honesty forbids. The Bible itself gives us the right clew. His faults are nowhere disguised. He is represented as a person who makes a bad start in life—a very bad start, indeed—but who pays the penalty of his wrong-doing. His is a story of penitential discipline.

In telling the story, all reference to the duplicity of Rebecca should be omitted, for the same reason that malicious step-mothers and cruel fathers have been excluded from the fairy tales.

The points to be discussed may be summarized as follows:

Taking advantage of a brother in distress.—Jacob purchases the birthright for a mess of pottage.

Tender attachment to a helpless old father.—Esau goes out hunting to supply a special delicacy for his father's table. This is a point which children will appreciate. Unable to confer material benefits on their parents, they can only show their love by slight attentions.

Deceit.—Jacob simulates the appearance of his older brother and steals the blessing. In this connection it will be necessary to say that a special power was supposed to attach to a father's blessing, and that the words once spoken were deemed irrevocable.

Jacob's penitential discipline begins.—The deceiver is deceived, and made to feel in his own person the pain and disappointment which deceit causes. He is repeatedly cheated by his master Laban, especially in the matter which is nearest to him, his love for Rachel.

The forgiveness of injuries.—Esau's magnanimous conduct toward his brother.

The evil consequences of tale-bearing and conceit.—It is a significant fact that Joseph is not a mere coxcomb. He is a man of genius, as his later career proves, and the stirrings of his genius manifest themselves in his early dreams of future greatness. Persons of this description are not always pleasant companions, especially in their youth. They have not yet accomplished anything to warrant distinction, and yet they feel within themselves the presentiment of a destiny and of achievements above the ordinary. Their faults, their arrogance, their seemingly preposterous claims, are not to be excused, but neither is the envy they excite excusable. One of the hardest things to learn is to recognize without envy the superiority of a brother.

Moral cowardice.—Reuben is guilty of moral cowardice. He was an opportunist, who sought to accomplish his ends by diplomacy. If he, as the oldest brother, had used his authority and boldly denounced the contemplated crime, he might have averted the long train of miseries that followed.

Strength and depth of paternal love.—"Joseph is no more: an evil beast has devoured him. I will go mourning for my son Joseph into the grave." It is a piece of poetic justice that Jacob, who deceived his father in the matter of the blessing by covering himself with the skin of a kid, is himself deceived by the blood of a kid of the goats with which the coat of Joseph had been stained.

In speaking of the temptation of Joseph in the house of Potiphar, it is enough to say that the wife conspired against her husband, and endeavored to induce Joseph to betray his master. A pretty addition to the story is to be found in the Talmud, to the effect that Joseph saw in imagination the face of his father before him in the moment of temptation, and was thereby strengthened to resist.

The light of a superior mind can not be hidden even in a prison.—Joseph wins the favor of his fellow-prisoners, and an opportunity is thus opened to him to exercise his talents on the largest scale.

Affliction chastens.—The famine had in the mean time spread to Palestine. The shadow of the grief for Joseph still lay heavily on the household of the patriarch. Joseph is lost; shall Benjamin, too, perish? It is pleasant to observe that the character of the brothers in the mean time has been changed for the better. There is evidently a lurking sense of guilt and a desire to atone for it in the manner in which Judah pledges himself for the safety of the youngest child. And the same marked change is visible in the conduct of all the brothers on the journey. The stratagem of the cup was cunningly devised to test their feelings. They might have escaped by throwing the blame on Benjamin. Instead of that, they dread nothing so much as that he may have to suffer, and are willing to sacrifice everything to save him. When this new spirit has become thoroughly apparent, the end to which the whole group of Jacob stories pointed all along is reached; the work of moral regeneration is complete. Jacob himself has been purified by affliction, and the brothers and Joseph have been developed by the same hard taskmaster into true men. The scene of recognition which follows, when the great vice-regent orders his attendants from the apartment and embraces those who once attempted his life, with the words, "I am Joseph, your brother: does my father still live?" is touching in the extreme, and the whole ends happily in a blaze of royal pomp, like a true Eastern tale.

A word as to the method which should be used in teaching these stories. If the fairy tale holds the moral element in solution, if the fable drills the pupil in distinguishing one moral trait at a time, the biblical stories exhibit a combination of moral qualities, or, more precisely, the interaction of moral causes and effects; and it is important for the teacher to give expression to this difference in the manner in which he handles the stories. Thus, in the fables we have simply one trait, like ingratitude, and its immediate consequences. The snake bites the countryman, and is cast out; there the matter ends. In the story of Joseph we have, first, the partiality of the father, which produces or encourages self-conceit in the son; Joseph's conceit produces envy in the brothers. This envy reacts on all concerned—on Joseph, who in consequence is sold into slavery; on the father, who is plunged into inconsolable grief; on the brothers, who nearly become murderers. The servitude of Joseph destroys his conceit and develops his nobler nature. Industry, fidelity, and sagacity raise him to high power. The sight of the constant affliction of their father on account of Joseph's loss mellows the heart of the brothers, etc. It is this interweaving of moral causes and effects that gives to the stories their peculiar value. They are true moral pictures; and, like the pictures used in ordinary object lessons, they serve to train the power of observation. Trained observation, however, is the indispensable preliminary of correct moral judgment.

The Moses Cycle.

The figures of the patriarchs and the prophets appeal to us with a fresh interest the moment we regard them as human beings like ourselves, who were tempted as we are, who struggled as we are bound to do, and who acted, howsoever the divine economy might supervene, on their own responsibility. Looked at from this point of view, the figure of Moses, the Liberator, approaches our sympathies at the same time that he towers in imposing proportions above our level. Let us briefly review his career. Like Arminius at a later day, he is educated at the court of the enemies of his people. In dress, in manners, in speech, he doubtless resembles the grandees of Pharaoh's court. When he approaches the well in Midian, the daughter of Jethro exclaims, "Behold, an Egyptian is coming!" But at heart he remains a Hebrew, and is deeply touched by the cruel sufferings of his race. His first public intervention on their behalf takes place when he strikes down and kills a native overseer whom he detects in the act of maltreating a Hebrew slave. This is characteristic of the manner in which reformers begin. They direct their first efforts against the particular consequences of some great general wrong. Later on they perceive the uselessness of such a procedure and take heart to attack the evil at its source. Moses flees into the desert. The lonely life he leads there is necessary to the development of his ideas. Solitude is essential to the growth of genius. The burning bush is the outward symbol of an inward fact. The fire which can not be quenched is in his own breast, and out of that inward burning he hears more and more distinctly the voice which bids him go back and free his people. But when he considers the means at his disposal, when in fancy he sees his people, a miserable horde of slaves, pitted against the armed hosts of Pharaoh, he is ready to despair; until he hears the comforting voice, which says, "The Eternal is with thee; the unchangeable power of right is on thy side: it will prevail!" Like Jeremiah, like Isaiah, like all great reformers, Moses is profoundly imbued with the sense of his unfitness for the task laid upon him. He pleads that he is heavy of speech. He can only stammer forth the message of freedom. But he is reassured by the thought that a brother will be found, that helpers will arise, that the thought which he can barely formulate will be translated by other lesser men into a form suitable for the popular understanding. He returns to Egypt to find that the greatest obstacle in his way is the lethargy and unbelief of the very people whom he wishes to help. This again is a typical feature of his career. The greatest trials of the reformer are due not to the open enmity of the oppressor, but to the meanness, the distrust and jealousy, of those whom oppression has degraded. At last, however, the miracle of salvation is wrought, the weak prevail