New England Religious Herald

More About the Young

Last week we endeavored to show that the church is too slightly interested in the salvation of the young—that responsibility is very insufficiently felt by parents, and that when recognized it is too often transferred in whole or in part to others, dependence being placed on Sabbath school instruction or revivals, to the neglect of home labor. We feel that these faults must be admitted and that most parents expect the conversion of their children to be secured by influences out of the family rather than in it—a position which reverses the relation of things and involves neglect and unbelief.

But after these admissions have been made, can it be allowed that duty has been discharged towards the young in other respects? Granting that parents have expected too much of the Sabbath school and the church, have even these agencies been faithfully employed for their conversion? We fear not. Imperfect and inadequate as the Sabbath school is for the great work of training the young in holiness even its influence has been sparingly exerted.

How little effort has been used to gather in the neglected children of the city, who could easily be obtained in numbers surpassing the room appropriated for their accommodation. How little has been done or attempted for the instruction of young men and females in Bible Classes. What complaint has been made that teachers were not forthcoming for existing classes of all grades, and that those nominally engaged were so often absent or tardy. And then how little interest many teachers feel in their classes: how formal their instructions, how cold their exhortations, how small their faith. They do not seem to love their work, nor to believe that it is of much use, as very probably it is not. They seldom or never visit their scholars during the week, they forget to pray for them, one by one, in the closet, and they do not commit themselves to securing the speedy conversion of the whole class. Thus while relying on the Sabbath school for much that it cannot accomplish, we have failed to render it efficient even in its proper sphere.

Nor have we done much better in our use of the church as an auxiliary. We have had great faith in revivals as a substitute for parental training, by which the children were to be regularly and almost mechanically converted as they successively reached what was supposed to be the suitable age of from fifteen to twenty, and yet we have been as slow to secure revivals as to promote Christian nurture, thus leaving the young to grow up in sin. The natural and divinely constituted relation of parent and child, on which chief reliance should be placed, has been forced to give way to the labors of the pastor, the Sabbath school teacher, and other comparative strangers, while the tender years of early childhood, when the heart is peculiarly impressible, have been thought to promise less success than the riper period of incipient manhood or womanhood, when temptations are more numerous and powerful! And yet while professing to consider revivals so efficacious that we allow them to supersede prior duties and absorb better hopes, we have been most culpably indifferent about their promotion, allowing year after year to pass in barrenness. It would naturally be supposed, that with the prevalent theory we should be so anxious for the salvation of the young, both those in our families and others in the congregation, that our efforts would be unceasing to secure what is considered the last and greatest spiritual power which can be brought to bear upon them. But is it not true that we have been as careless here as elsewhere, and have been content to slumber on, without the regenerating presence of the Spirit and without any of those social aggressions and community-subduing victories of religion which we denominate revivals? Who have been burdened in soul because revivals had disappeared? Who have spent hours and even whole days and nights in prayer to have the manifestation of the Spirit, so that these dead children might be made alive? Alas, scarce a voice has been heard, scarce a finger has been lifted. Some are slothful and some are unbelieving, and all more or less indifferent and idle.

And now we ask in sorrow, What has been the result of such an alienation of the heart from the spiritual interests of the young? Precisely what might be expected. Family nurture, the most valuable means of grace, being neglected, and Sabbath schools and revivals being also slighted, the young have grown up in ungodliness. If the hearts of the fathers are not turned to the children, the hearts of the children will not turn to the fathers; for it is a law of grace as of physics, that action and re-action are equal. Those who were in a hopeful and impressible condition ten years ago are now advanced to an age which promises comparatively little success in efforts to win them to Christ. Those who were children in the last powerful and general revival in this city, are now young men and women of eighteen and twenty, of whom almost none are the followers of the Savior. A generation has grown up from childhood to maturity and nearly all in bondage to Satan! Look among our congregations where those to whom we refer abound, and how many have been added from their number to the membership of the church? Gaze into the galleries and run your eye over the young in the slips below, and how many do you recognize as professors of religion? Scarcely any. And what do you suppose to be the condition of a mass of young men in a city filled with temptation and from which the Spirit of God has been absent for years, as regards the exhibition of special saving power?

Do you imagine that Satan and his servants are idle because the church is, or that young men will receive no harm while they are receiving no good? The gambling room, the drinking saloon, the low theatrical exhibition, the ball room, the brothel, and the resorts of errorists and infidels, will infallibly influence them, if the house of God does not. If the truths of the Bible find no lodgment in the heart, the doubts of scepticism and the lies of Universalism will. If spiritual religion does not control them, you may be sure that they will be led away in great numbers by the deceitful charms of vice. Hence we find as a matter of fact, that while Christians have been asleep, the devil has been busy sowing tares, so that infidelity and dissipation have made sad progress among the young. Now we contend that such a sight as that of hundreds and thousands of impenitent youth among numerous churches, is both unnatural and unchristian, and argues the grossest neglect of duty at home and in the appliance of public means of grace. Surely the appropriate and only fitting spectacle is that of churches filled with holy families, parents and children uniting in the service of a common Savior. But it is the misery of our present condition that here are fathers and mothers professing religion, and there are their children, with scarce an exception, devoted to the world! What does this bare statement, aside from all other facts, argue, but that the 'hearts of the fathers' have not been 'turned to the children.' Else why this awful division in the family, this separating line run through nearly every household?

But if so little has been done for the young, has not something been accomplished for others? Have not adults been gathered into the churches to compensate in part for the deficiency of youthful converts? Not at all. The lack of success is even more glaring in that direction, which is only what might be expected; for if the comparatively tender and impressible heart be not moved, much less will the more hardened nature yield; and if there is not piety enough to secure effort for the young who are the most interesting class, and who are bound to us also by natural ties, surely there will not be sufficient devotedness to constrain Christians to labor for those less attractive and unrelated. Hence we may conclude that the measure of labor and success among the young, will at least equal that among other classes, and that interest and effort will probably begin with them.

What, then, is indispensable to the reviving and progressive life of religion among us, is, that we should awake to the solemn responsibility of bringing these precious youth under the power of the gospel. Parents must take up their neglected home duties and let the tide of natural affection mingle with the current of holy love for God and innumerable souls, until they are borne onward to deep anxiety and earnest action. They must not let their desire to promote the outward welfare of their children surpass their intense longing for their eternal salvation. They must let it be seen that they are more troubled lest their children should miss of heaven than fail of earthly comfort and wealth, and are more fearful lest they should grow up with depraved hearts, haters of God and holiness, than that they should fall short of worldly respectability. Those who are engaged in Sabbath schools and Bible classes, should labor more directly for the conversion of their scholars, and that during the week as well as on the Sabbath, while their number should be immediately reinforced from those who are now idle. The whole church, also, should look with an eye of pity upon the hundreds of young men who are living in impenitence and in many cases are already vicious in their habits, and upon the multitude of young females now among us, who will shortly scatter to distant places or pass into a more hopeless age and state. It is sad to see them devoting their best days to sin while no man cares for their souls. It is not right, and their weekly presence in the sanctuary should be a rebuke to us, until we see them gathering there, a company of converts, to consecrate themselves publicly to God as to connect themselves with the church of the Redeemer. But in order to secure this, there must be a state of mind which rises above desire and vague expectation. Doubtless we have long desired the salvation of our children and other youth, and have to some extent prayed and labored for such a result, dimly expecting it, also, at some uncertain period in the future. We must go beyond this, or nothing will be accomplished. Desire must rise into determination, instant and irrevocable.

We must commit ourselves to the present work of securing their conversion without delay. This must lie on our hearts, this must be our ceaseless aim, this must be the subject of urgent prayer and continuous labor, till accomplished. Let it be a settled thing, that we take no rest till this end is secured. Then we may hope for success.

In conclusion we cannot but address a word to those in whose behalf we have been pleading, many of whom are readers of this paper. And what do these youth need, (many, if not most of whom have or have had pious parents,) but that their hearts should turn from the vanities of sin to the solemn realities to which they were so often pointed in the days of childhood.

Oh, young friends, never forget the precepts of those, who, with the double love of nature and grace, have sought to instil the fear of God into your souls. They may not have been as faithfully urgent as the importance of the case demanded, but they taught you enough to make duty plain and sin inexcusable. Tread in their footsteps, give heed to their warnings, yield to their prayers. Perhaps you have sought to please them in other respects, by devotion to business, by the cultivation of your minds, and by little gifts of filial remembrance: oh! gladden their hearts by embracing the Savior whom they love, and setting your face towards the heaven of their future abode. Determine that the family shall no longer be divided in character and eternal prospect, but that you will renounce the service of sin and seek with them present holiness and unending glory. Resist not the efforts which are made to draw you to Christ. If your parents or others urge you to repent and follow Jesus, remember that it is from love they speak, because their heart is turned to you, and instead of repulsing them with anger, impatience, or indifference, turn your heart to them, enter into their feelings, respond to their appeals, give ear to their advice and join them in their devotion to God.