INSTRUCTION A SAFEGUARD TO PURITY.

White Ribbon, Volume 22, Issue 255, 18 September 1916, Page 1

INSTRUCTION A SAFEGUARD TO PURITY.

(Paper read at meeting of Gisborne W.C.T.U. by Rev. James Aitken.) Mrs President and Ladies,—l esteem it indeed a high privilege to be invited to address your meeting this afternoon. This is indeed the first occasion on which I have had the honour of speaking to any branch of the W.C.T.U., and I cannot but take the opportunity of expressing my ad-

miration of the Union and my warm sympathy with its aims. 1 have been deeply impressed by the breadth and variety of your interests. While, perhaps, putting temperance first, and giving it prom Lienee in the name by which you ca’i yourselves, there is no question affecting the spiritual or moral or physical, or even material good of the community which does not find a place within the scope of your 27 departments. And all questions of whatever nature >ou regard from

Mr*. Evan*, Rec. See. Mrs Reodely, Treas. Mlss'Henderson, Car. Sec,

the highest of standpoints, as your name of Chiistian Union indicates. While I am debarred by an unfortunate accident of sex from being enrolled among your members, I am always keenly interested in your work, and it w ill be a pleasure to me at any time to be of use to you in any wav in which 1 can serve you. 1 congratulate you most heartily on the strength of your Branch here, and on the energy which, I believe, office-bearers and members put into their work. It

is, of course, impossible for any single branch to pursue all the objects covered by the programme of the Union with equal diligence and zeal. To attempt to do so would be a wasteful dissipation of your interest and influence. But the comprehensiveness of your programme enables you to take action and to strike a blow for righteousness in this or that direction, as occasion offers, while in the main you follow out one or two clearly defined lines of policy. It is undoubtedly best for each Branch to concentrate its attention on such objects as circumstances indicate, while holding itself in readiness to bring its influence to bear in other directions as occasion demands. I confess that I have had great difficulty in choosing a subject on which to address you this afternoon. When your President invited me to speak she gave me a free hand to choose, only suggesting that I might say something about peace and arbitration. I thought for a time that I might look up some of the history of international arbitration for you, and say something about its principles and prospects; but I considered that I had been making some reference to that subject in another place not so very long ago, and I felt that it partook less of a directly practical nature than you had a right to expect. And so, after much hesitation, I determined to take my courage in my hands and to speak to you to-day upon the most delicate of all the subjects that come within your programme, an aspect of the subject of social purity, which is included in your tenth department. I am going to say something about the Need of Instruction as a Safeguard of Turin. It is a subject in which I know you are specially interested. It is one in which the need of practical effort, the need of doing something, is great and urgent. And it is one in which, as women, you are capable of exercising a far-reaching and decisive influence. There are few occasions on which one may speak freely upon it; and I do not know that I would have ventured to choose it even today without the permission of such of your office-bearers as I have leen able to consult. A few weeks ago one aspect of the question of social purity was debated at considerable length in Parliament, and received considerable attention in

the public press. Attention was directed on that occasion to those fell diseases which are the consequences of impurity. Our legislators discussed the evil both from the side of treatment and of prevention. In the latter connection, with a view to prevention, they emphasised most strongly the need of education. They insisted on the necessity of spreading throughout the community information which should serve as a warning against the dangers, and so as a preventive against the ravages of disease. Now that is a necessary and most important aspect of the question. But there are other aspects perhaps deeper and more important. '1 here is the question of the effect of impurity on character and on domestic life, the moral and spiritual ravages of the evil, and the sad shattering of many homes and of many young lives which results from it. In these connections, too, the need of instruction is clamant. Experience and observation alike impress me with the appalling extent of ignorance which prevails. It is extraordinary how’ many children, both boys and girls, are allowed to grow up without any effort on the part of those who are responsible for their upbringing to impart to them information which it is vitally important they should receive. They come to the age when “the mightiest of instincts wakes from its repose”; they do not know what to expect; they have not been warned against any dangers; no ideal has been set before them of the sacredness of the new functions which are developing; no true insight has been given them into the noblest meanings of chivalry and modesty. They are left to find out for themselves the nature and purpose of the new phenomena which are making their appearance in their own bodies; and they have to learn haphazard from each other or from any source of information they may chance to light on. The fact th.it their parents have never mentioned these things to them leads them to entertain false thoughts about them. They deem there is something wrong, something wicked about the whole business; and yet the very strength of their infolding experience compels them to interest and enquiry. Is it any wonder that some delicate young souls are tortured with undesened self-reproaches? Is it any wonder that some fall into dangerous

practices unawares; and that, even if the worst habits are not formed, their imaginations are polluted, their memories are blighted, and in their ignorance they lay up for themselves a heritage of lasting shame. I hold very strongly that children should learn from their parents’ lips the holy secret of the transmission of life —the boys from their fathers; the girls from their mothers. It is a father’s duty to instruct his son; it is a mother’s duty to instruct her daughter. From none may a child learn the lesson so beautifully as from his or her parents. Very jealously should every parent guard the privilege which belongs to him or her to be the first to reveal the mystery to the little ones in the home. The father should teach the boys, the mother should teach the girls. But rather than let any outsider- any chance informant—have the opportunity, the mother may well teach both the boys and girls if she will.

The task is by no means so difficult as it appears, if it be undertaken in time. Our children are taught na f ure lessons in their day schools, and there they learn the secret of the reproduction of flowers. They know all about toe seed-box, and the seed, and the need for the fertilising pollen, and many of the wonderful ways in which the life-kindling dust is intioduced to the waiting germ. There is information in the child’s mind already which we may build upon. Further, our children are familiar with the happenings of the poultry run. They have seen the hens laying their eggs in the nests; they have watched a setting placed under a brooding fowl. They have counted the days till the Hatching, and they have welcomed with wonder and del’ght the little chic ks on their emergence from their shells. There, I say, we have information to build on. And it is easy to add to that knowledge the idea that in the higher animals the young come from an egg, just as the chickens do, only God has built for them a nest inside their own bodies, where the egg may b.» hatched and the little one may grow for a time, where He Himself may fashion and perfect body and limb, and from which in due time He takes it and gives it into its mother’s rare. It should cause a woman no confusion to explain to her own child hov. God built that nest under her own heart

and wrought therein the greatest of all miracles, and took therefrom the baby which He placed in her arms.

The task is not so difficult as it appears if it be undertaken in time. And the time to undertake it is when the child asks his first question about these things. Every boy and girl wants to know where the kittens and the puppies, the lambs and the calves, and the foals come from. Every boy and girl is eager to learn the origin of the new brother or sister who has come into the family. The children will ask questions, and the questions make your opportunity. The greatest mistake you can make is to turn your little daughter’s question aside with a false answer or with a fairy tale. Don’t tell her the doctor brought the baby; don’t fall back on any of the poetic fictions like that about the stork. Tell her simply and straightforwardly as much as she is able to take in. Satisfy her natural and legitimate curiosity as far as you can. And make a bargain with her that when she has any furthe 1 questions tc ask about the matter, she shall bring them to you, and you shall answer them. If a mother turns aside her child’s question with a laugh or with a lie ; if she tells her that she must not speak of these things, and gives her to understand that her curiosity was wrong, then her child will never come back to her again for information on that subject. Wherever she goes to find it out, it will not be to her mother. But, if her mother answers her honestly and simply at the first, then there will be established between them a sacred confidence which will never be broken, which will be among the mother’s greatest pleasures, and which will be a sacred memory for the child all her life.

Many women moan to tell their girls some day; but they put it off too long. The time to do it is early. The time to impart instruction is as soon as the child wants to know. The lesson is most easily taught then, ahd it is then that it sinks into the child's mind without any accompanying erroneous associations of shame and wrong. When that first lesson has been taught in time, it is not difficult to add to it in due course pure, noble, elevating thoughts concerning the powers that are about to waken in the growing boy or gir . It is a simple matter to warn them against the dan-

gers that may .be incurred*. and to save them from many bitter anxieties and fears. And it can readily be understood between mother and daughter, that, like some other physical functions, these are not usually discussed in company; : thdt all matters pertaining to them are to be reserved for private communications. But let a daughter know that whatever she wishes to know her mother will tell her. That is the great point. Lei there be an established confidence between mother and child. The sense that her mother has treated her as worthy of confidence, has trusted her and sympathised with her, will draw that child to her mother and bind her to her with a tie that will grow more close and more sacred and more tender as the years go by, as she realises more and more how much she owes to her mother’s wisdom and love.

The time will soon come when the dangers which threaten purity from unscrupulous men and women in the world ought to be spoken of. 1 am very sure that many g rls have been ruined, as the phrase goes, and many a boy too, through ignorance. Do any of you know a play of Robert Browning’s called “A Blot on the ’Scutcheon”? It is the simplest of all his plays, and very tender and beautiful. Tr*e heroine is Mildred Tresham, and she falls. But in the case of both her and her lover her fall is the consequence rather of her ignorance than of any sinful impulse. And the cry in which she bewails her fate is surely the most pathetic ibat ever escaped a girl’s lips: ”1 was so young, I loved him so, I had *no mother, God forgot me, and I tell.” But it was not God who forgot her; it was her guardian who failed in a most urgent duty towards her. What about the girls who have their mothers? And how often is it far less the girl’s s:n than the mother’s, who should have told her things, and never did?

A girl, as well as a man, should know what evil there is in the world. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. We allow our girls to travel freely nowadays; the conditions of modern life compel them to go out into situations often away from home. It is nothing- short of cruel to let them go without telling them what sort of people there ;q-e in the world, both men and women, and what sort of

people they may im-et. That a girl should be wooed and won in marriage who does not know what marriage is, is a shame and a sin. Girls ought to be taught—and taught by their mothers —the simple facts about marriage, and the highest ideals of marriage. They should be led to demand the highest ideal from any man who aspires to marry them. They should be taught to look for a man whose moral character is above reproach, a man without a past. That is the surest way to raise the stand;, d which prevails among men. You women have so mu< h in your hands. You demand, and rightly, that the standard of morality should be the same for both sexes, that the man who sins should be as severely condemned as the woman who sins. You have it in your own hands. It is for you to pronounce the condemnation. Make it clear that a man with a stain on his record has no entry into your society, no footings in your drawingroom, no chance of marrying your daughter; and a great deal will have been accomplished. But while men are aware that among the girls from whom they hope to choose a wife there are few who even know the existence of the sort of sins which they commit, let alone any who will refuse their advances because of their past guilt, is it any wonder that they themselves think as little of their misconduc t as the women seem to do. It is for the women to demand a h’gh standard of the men, just as the men demand a high standard of the women; and every girl ought to know both what a high standard really means and how essential to her own welfare and happiness a high standard is.

I sneak of these things to you, because it is within the reach of every one of you to do something real and practical towards bringing about a better state of things in this connection. You have your own children, and you can begin, as our Saviour told the Gadarene demoniac to begin, with your own home. You can see to it that none of >our children grow up ignorant, and that none of them learn from other and less reverent lips those essential things which they should learn from your own. You have, too, your circle of friends, among whom these matters are sometimes spoken of; and you can bring your influence to bear, now here and now there, on behalf of a franker,

wiser, kinder dealing with the children an i their desire to know. There is a great deal to be done in these directions, and you can do i f . You can make ths l nion a centre of influence which will permeate the whole community, and go far, without any stir or noise, to sweeten and purify our moral life. And here is one practical suggestion 1 would make to you as a branch of the Union. 1 here are many books and pamphlets published nowadays, the aim of which is to help .n this matter of informing the children and and educating our growing boys and girls. How would it do if you formed a little library of the best of these books? It would be a library from which any mother might borrow a book to help her in the task of enlightening and guid ng her own children, from which any member might borrow a book to lend to a friend. The books would need to be wisely chosen. They need not he very many. Some small charge might be made for the loan of them. 1 can conceive such a little library being of great use. We once had a little library of that sort in the manse —only a very 1 ttle one; but it is astonishing how many times the volumes were lent. And 1 know they did a lot of good. But we made no charge for the loan ol them, and one by one they forgot to come bark. No doubt they are doing good service still, somewhere. 1 just throw out the suggestion to you. 1 thank you very heartily for the hearing you have given me .his afternoon.