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By the Rev. J. K. Gutheim
Delivered at Cincinnati, Sabbath Tetzaveh, 5607,
(27 Feb. 1847.)
Brethren—
A new member has this day been added to our
community; a son of Israel has, by a sacred rite, graduated as Bar
Mitzvah. He has attained the age which, from time immemorial, was
considered the period of religions maturity, and is henceforward
amenable to the laws and ordinances of our Holy Religion.
Simple and unostentatious as the manner is in which
this act is performed, it nevertheless constitutes an epoch in our life;
and the day on which we have been, for the first time, called up to the
Torah to bless the Lord for the inestimable boon which He has bestowed
on us in the Revelation of his Holy Word—that day is written, with
indelible characters, on the tablets of our heart. Who is there among us
that does not revert, with feelings of deep emotion, to that hallowed
hour when he was permitted to read the Revealed Word of the living God
to an assembled congregation? that does not cherish a fond remembrance
of the heartfelt congratulations of beloved parents, relatives, and
friends, who in their care and solicitude, were anxious to make that day
one of holy rejoicing? Years may have passed between the day, when with
a bright eye we gazed into an unclouded future, and the present one that
recalls it to our memory,—years may have intervened, marked by trials
and sufferings, years of disappointment, sorrow, and trouble; the boy
may have grown up to a man; time and the struggle of life may have left
their impress on the furrowed brow; the hands that then blessed us may
have mouldered in the grave; the kind and loving souls that then watched
over us, and prayed for us, may have closed their career on earth and
returned to their eternal home; yet amidst all the changes that have
taken place within or without us, the day of our Bar Mitzvah shines
forth like a luminous point, and refreshes our heart with sacred
recollections of the past. With a holy delight we dwell on the innocent
pursuits of our boyhood’s career; with fond regret we look back to the
dear home of our childhood, and to the school where our intellectual
faculties were cultivated and the principles of our holy religion
instilled into our mind. Such are the reminiscences which the day of our
Bar Mitzvah awakens in our bosom, and of which we cannot fail to be
forcibly struck whenever we witness this religious act.
And purer still, holier still will be this feeling,
if in an advanced age we can look back to that important day over a
series of well-spent years; if our retrospect is marred by no frowning
prominence that is calculated to awaken pangs of compunction in our
breast; if we can lay the hand on our heart and say to ourselves, “Ever
since I acted as a free and responsible agent, I have endeavoured to
shun vice and to practise virtue, I have been true to my religion, true
to my God, ‘who has implanted in me eternal life.’”
If such, my brethren, are the reflections to which
a day like this give rise, ought you not to make it your special study,
so to train your children, that when they have become responsible for
their acts, they are also capable of distinguishing between right and
wrong, true and false? must it not be your highest aim so to equip them
for their journey through life, that in their intercourse with the world
they may be able to draw from the store of wholesome knowledge, with
which they have been providentially provided, and to carry out those
sound principles, which, at an early age, were inculcated into their
hearts? For the happiness or misery of your children, in after life,
will mainly depend on the education they have received in their youth.
To speak, therefore, on education, let us devote the present hour. Let
us examine
I. How ought we to educate our children?
II. For what purpose ought we to educate them?
In answering these two questions, I have selected
my text from one of the compositions of the Royal Philosopher, Prov.
22:6.
חנוך לנער על פי דרכו גם כי יזקין לא יסור
ממנה:
“Train up a child in the way he should go; and when
he is old he will not depart from it.”
I.
The necessity of providing our youth with a good
education must be manifest to every one, to the educated as well as to
the uneducated. To the educated—for these cannot be but sensible of the
manifold advantages they themselves derive from it; and to the
uneducated—for these must be keenly alive to that position of
intellectual inferiority, in which a neglected or defective education
has left them. Both these classes of society will, therefore, and must
agree, that by the proper cultivation, alone, of those excellent
faculties, with which an all-wise God has endowed us, will man occupy
that exalted rank in the scale of created beings assigned him by his
Creator.
The success and prosperity in the various walks of
life, the temporal and eternal happiness, can only be fully realized by
means of a wholesome, sound, and judicious education. The knowledge
imparted to the youthful mind shines in refulgent lustre throughout our
career on earth, and is chiefly instrumental in the formation of our
character, the development of our sentiments, and the consolidation of
our views. However much our intercourse with the world, and the peculiar
circumstances in which we may be placed tend to modify our way of
thinking and acting, the impressions received in our youth will cling to
the mind, and can never be totally effaced.
“To train, therefore, the child in the way he
should go,” is a duty that must be recognised by all who are solicitous
to insure the well-being of their children. Indeed it is an obligation
that equals in its importance the intensity of the love which parents
bear towards their offspring. But how shall this education be conducted?
How far shall it extend? What shall it embrace? What shall it exclude?
These are questions which must naturally suggest themselves to the
anxious parent. Is it enough to qualify our youth for their future
vocation in life? Is it enough to let them pass through a course of
study that will enrich their minds with the ample stores of learning and
knowledge that are at our command—to adorn them with all the
accomplishments our enlightened age affords and requires—to elicit their
mental powers, and urge them on to the pinnacle of art and science?
Necessary and beneficial as all this may be, education must not stop
here. We must not only educate the mind, but also the heart. No anomaly
must be allowed to exist between the intellectual and moral parts of our
nature. The development of both must progress in the same ratio; and
whilst our attention is bestowed on the capacities of the mind, the
latent germs of morality that are slumbering in the heart must be
roused, that they may grow and blossom and bear ennobling fruit.
It is the property of a good education to radiate
on every side, to take deep root in the heart as well as in the mind.
Care must, therefore, be taken not as to how much it should exclude, but
how much it should embrace; at the table of education the food must not
be stinted, nor the number and claims of the guests be limited. We must
endeavour to provide education, wholesome, appropriate, extensive,
fitted for the real wants of all sections of our community in this free
country. We must have in view not the past but the present, and more
truly the future; he who labours for the present only loses his labour;
whilst he is working, the present slips from under his hands. We have to
see in the child the future man, and our aim must be to make him master,
not of his faculties only, but also of his passions; to give him
knowledge, and with knowledge virtue, so that in his future capacity of
husband, parent and citizen, in every path in which he may hereafter
have to walk, education may render the individual good and happy, and
society prosperous and permanent.
The first, best and most effective educators are
the parents themselves. In the discharge of your duty you must be guided
by love and earnestness, and act with care and caution, discretion and
self-command. You must educate your children by word and example. There
are no nicer judges, no keener listeners and observers of your words
and actions than your children. And whereas man, before his reasoning
faculties are fully developed, is, emphatically, an imitative creature,
it cannot fail that your children, with whom you are in constant
intercourse, and who look up to you for protection, counsel, and the
solution of many a problem that presents itself to their untutored
minds,—it cannot fail that they will readily adopt our views, and copy
your habits. It becomes, therefore, necessary, to show them a good
example; to teach them, practically, every virtue which humanity
prescribes and religion inculcates; to practise before their eyes deeds
of benevolence, charity, fidelity, modesty, honesty and truth, and thus
leave nothing but good impressions on their minds. There is a saying of
the wise king, “The just man walks in his integrity; his children are
happy after him.”—(Prov. 25:7.) The whole life of the just is an
illustration of his pious feelings and noble principles; his children
will observe him, will imitate him, will follow his precepts, and tread
in his footsteps, and will therefore be happy after him.
A principal part of education is assigned to the
teacher; and in order to render his efforts effective, it is absolutely
necessary that harmony should exist between school and house, teacher
and parents. Nothing can be more detrimental to a good education than
doubts entertained on the competency and honesty of the teacher on the
part of the parents, and expressed in the presence of their children.
The fostering of a refractory spirit in the latter, a great obstacle for
the teacher in the execution of his arduous duties, is the immediate
result. Confidence is the powerful talisman, which at all times should
he, religiously preserved. Teacher and parents have to assist each
other; shoulder to shoulder they must assiduously and untiringly work
for the welfare of the rising generation entrusted to their care. The
best instruction will fail, if parents do not act in a corresponding
spirit; the moral structure will never be brought to perfection, If that
part which has caused so much care and trouble in rearing at school, is
carelessly pulled down at home. If children, as the saying is, are a
blessing of Heaven, the parents should act towards them in such a manner
that they in reality may prove a blessing to them and to mankind; that
in their future career through life we may point to them, exclaiming:ברוך שזה ילד ברוך שזה גדל “Blessed he
who begat such, blessed he who educated them.”
II.
“But for what purpose shall you educate your
children?” This, our second question, is easily answered. They must be
educated for the purpose of becoming good Israelites, which name
signifies champions in the cause of God. This is the highest and
noblest aim we must endeavour to accomplish.
It is a case of very frequent occurrence, that
parents who are most careful in providing for their children an
education that makes them capable, in a worldly point of view, of
occupying with honour any station in life, utterly lose sight of their
spiritual welfare, by withholding from them a proper knowledge of the
tenets of our holy religion. The divine commandments
ושננתם לבניך “Thou shalt inculcate
these laws to thy children,” and ולמדתם אתם את
בניכם “You shall teach them to your children,” are disregarded,
and hence the religious indifference that pervades our community. More
especially, however, is this culpable neglect displayed with regard to
females, whose defective religious instruction leaves them almost in
entire ignorance of the principal features of our creed.
To make, therefore, education subservient to the
grand purpose of training good Israelites, religion must form its basis
and its keystone, and, thus constituted, it must not be confined to one
portion of our community, but must embrace every class and both sexes.
Being the half of human society, the half of our life—in some cases more
than half—in the domestic, in the youthful portion of our existence,
woman claims a larger share than man. The domestic circle is her special
domain. What is the characterizing, creative, stimulating, directing
portion of each man’s little history, but the span between the cradle
and maturity? And this is in the hands of woman. It is in these softest
years that the gentlest hand makes the most lasting impression; it is in
these holiest times that the purest seeds are scattered,—the truest
antidotes against the pains of after years and the corruptions of a more
mature existence. No education descends more thoroughly into the whole
nature of man. But to educate, the educator herself must first be
educated. Not charity only, but knowledge, but wisdom, but virtue, but
religion, must begin at home. It is, therefore, necessary that to these
guardians and consolers of humanity, power, love and faith should be
early given; the power of knowledge, that not unsuccessfully they may
know when to warn for, to detect, to expose, and to conquer evil; the
persuasion of love, that they may have those balms more sweetening than
that of the poet, which take away all its bitterness from the cup of
life; the faith of our divine religion, that they may direct our gaze to
the regions of eternity. If we would really teach men, our duty is of a
necessity first to teach women. No one who has reflected on the
organization of society, but will at once see this; he will recognise in
a moment how deeply, how beautifully, how wisely the whole is
interwoven; the character of woman determining her influence, her
influence determining the whole frame of society, and her character the
product of her education, as that again is the result of her
organization and teaching.
If we look around us and perceive the prejudices
that are yet entertained against our race by other nations, we must
become still more alive to the necessity of educating the growing
generation in such a manner that they may form a sterling clsss of men
who, by their knowledge, pre-eminence, worth, and their love and zeal
for the ancient religion of their fathers, will conquer those degrading
relics of a barbarous age; who, as “champions in the cause of God,” will
vindicate the excellence of our sacred creed, and cause our traducers to
exclaim, as in the days of yore, “Truly this is a wise and understanding
people!” It is for this great purpose that you must educate your
children, and they will grow up to be your pride and joy, and secure
their own lasting benefit.
Parents!—the weal or wo of your children lies in
your hand; your natural impulse will decide for the former. But mistake
not the means by which their happiness can be effected. Act towards them
that they may have no reason to exclaim over your graves, “They have
spoiled me! they have been the cause of an ill-spent life!” but that
they may cherish your memory throughout their lives with the deepest
feelings of affection and gratitude in the innermost core of their
hearts. Train them up by words and example in the way they should walk,
and when they are old they will not depart from it.—May our Heavenly
Father, in his unbounded love for all his children, bless our exertions;
may He enlighten our minds to comprehend his holy law; may he incline
our hearts to follow its precepts in spirit and truth, and may He be
gracious unto us now, and for ever. Amen. |
