The Unfolding Life

Row upon row they stretched, fifteen acres of regal chrysanthemums, roses pink, yellow, white and red, fragile lilies of the valley, carnations and vivid orchids, no two alike, yet all expressions of plant life. Skilled gardeners from England and Germany were busy with these exquisite flower children, watering, pruning and training upon slender cords, that every bud might come to perfect unfolding. The laws of the plant world and the law of each individual flower were well known to them. They knew that all required sunshine and soil, warmth and moisture, but in varying amount.

The chrysanthemums grew in the sunlight, while only a few days before cutting could the lilies of the valley be released from their darkened beds. All needed cultivation but not in the same way. Some were massed, while yonder were thousands of carnations, and every one sole monarch of its own little garden plot. Painstakingly and completely, day after day, the needs of each frail life were met, until the flowers grown in this greatest of Canadian greenhouses have become renowned far across the border for their unsurpassed beauty, coloring and size.

The quiet walk between the glorious masses of bloom that October afternoon brought a vision of a greater Child garden, with an infinite variety of human plants to be tended, every one with its own individuality, needs, possibilities and a divine purpose for it cherished in the heart of the Heavenly Gardener. The work of nurture He has given to parents and teachers, longing unspeakably that it shall be so wise and tender that His plan for every life may be realized.

But as the earnest soul takes up the task, it seems so bewildering. "Three little ones in the home, and every one different! Ten boys in the Sunday School class and no two alike! Where does nurture begin? How is it carried on?"

Though the differences in human lives are countless, there are certain great likenesses. All have life, needs, possibilities; they all grow and develop in the same general way. From these common likenesses have been formulated a few principles which are as helpful to a child gardener as a knowledge of the laws of plant life to one who nurtures roses and carnations. Their understanding is not dependent upon physical parenthood. God will interpret the meaning to any one whom He calls into fellowship with Himself in the matchless work of soul culture.

The First Principle deals with the nature of life-What is it? Some answer must be given in order to arrive at an aim, a method, and an inspiration for work. If a child is only a beautiful figure upon which to display dainty garments, the mother has a plain pathway marked out for her. If a boy is a capacity to be filled, or a machine to grind out facts or dollars, the teacher's course of action is clear.

God's conception of life is surely greater than these, yet He never gave a definition. Jesus said it is more than meat, that it is worth more than all the world, that it does not consist in abundance of things, that it is eternal, but He nowhere tells us what it is, for He can not. It is a part of God. He can only make us understand it in any wise by giving its characteristics and values. Perhaps these may come to us more clearly through considering first what life is not.

Life is not merely "plastic clay" to be moulded, or a "block of marble" to be hewn according to the will of the sculptor.

This poetic conception emphasizes rightly the tremendous power of environment and personality in shaping character, but it is really a dangerous half truth. If the child were a block of marble, he would be no different from the dead, inert lump that lies in the studio awaiting the will of the sculptor. They would both be things. But a child has life, and the difference between life and thing lies in an inner power or activity which life possesses and uses when and as it will. This activity has to be reckoned with. Sun and rain and earth can not make a plant grow if it does not use its own mysterious inner force upon them. No sort of influence can affect a life, if the life does not respond to it. This response will be either receiving or rejecting the influences that come, working with or against them. Assuredly this is a condition very different from "plastic clay." Two great tasks, therefore, are included in the work of nurture: the first, to see that all that comes to plastic life from the outside is what it ought to be; the second, to somehow arouse the power within to vigorous effort upon the best things.

Life is not a "pure white page," even in its beginning.

There is here also a half truth, and an error. Life is unstained by guilt in its early years. It comes innocent from the hand of God, but fingers long since vanished have traced lines that mar the perfect whiteness. There are tendencies away from God as well as toward Him, and these are not the result of environment. Environment will cultivate tendencies but can not implant them. Favoring conditions will make an apple tree produce magnificent apples, but they will never implant in it any tendency to bear roses or produce thorns. Failure to recognize the fact of two sets of tendencies in the life will lead to a fatal mistake in nurture. Christ will be presented only as an Example and not as a Savior also, thus setting before a life its pattern and leaving it impotent to reach it.

A life in its beginning is not a "little man."

The element of truth in this conception is perhaps less than in either of these preceding. It is indeed true that child life is that out of which man life is to come, but the difference is more vital than that of inches or strength. The bulb shelters a lily life, but the difference is greater than size. The chrysalis will bring forth the butterfly, but the two are not identical. Childhood will unfold into manhood, but each has its own characteristics and needs, differing in largest degree.

The physiologist tells us that it would be hard to find many important points beyond the most fundamental laws in which the infant and the adult exactly resemble each other. (Oppenheim.) In bodily proportions, in actual composition of bones, muscles, blood and nerves, in size and development of the organs, the differences are wide.

The psychologist proves that there is equal variance in mental conditions. The man has a sense of responsibility to his neighbor and to God, unknown to child life. He thinks and reasons and judges as the child mind can not. His whole outlook upon life is opposite from that of the child.

We recognize this difference in caring for the body, and the babe is fed on milk and the boy on meat. But the difference must be recognized as equally important in caring for the soul. Just as meat is meat, whether minced or uncut, and therefore unsuited for a tiny life, so doctrine is doctrine, whether stated in words of one syllable or four, and equally unsuited to a beginning life. Paul refers to those who need milk and not solid food, spiritually, because they are "without experience of the word of righteousness," clearly indicating a difference in the kind of instruction, not the amount. The subject matter must be adapted to the life, not merely the number of syllables, the method of teaching, as well as the length of the lesson. Without this careful adaptation of food and method, the developing life will be under-nourished, and the most vigorous maturity be impossible.

But these negative statements only safeguard against mistakes by telling us what to avoid. A real working basis must be found in a positive principle.

The study of an unfolding life at any time in its development always reveals two supreme facts, possibilities peculiar to that period, and self activity. The First Principle of development combines these two facts and gives us our nearest approach to a definition.

"Life is a bundle of possibilities and self activity."

The block of marble has possibilities, so has molten metal and a tube of paint; but life has possibilities plus inner power. The three imperative "Oughts" for the parent or teacher are herein suggested.

First, he ought to be able to recognize each possibility as it appears.

Second, he ought to know how best to deal with it.

Third, he ought to know how to stimulate the activity to greatest endeavor.

The Second Principle states the relation of nurture to the unfolding of these possibilities.

"The direction and degree of development are largely determined by nurture."

Every possibility in a life, unless it die out, must develop either upward or downward, toward the best or worst. This development, whether in a plant or a boy, depends on what is given the life to work with and the use that is made of it, or, stated in more dignified terms-the development is a result of influences that come to a life and the response made to them by activity. The sort of influences and the sort of response given will determine the sort of development. When some one is consciously endeavoring to make both outer influences and the inner working of the life the best possible, it is called nurture.

The responsibility that grows out of this thought of nurture is almost crushing, yet its opportunity is sublime. To make a boy strong for his life work, because the right word was spoken at the critical moment, the encouragement given just when his purpose was faltering, to help a girl reach glorious young womanhood because the inspiration came as she stood at the parting of the ways-surely this, in a very real sense, is working with God. The story of almost every life of marked power, reveals a human touch at the cross roads. Is this one meaning in the Master's words, "Inasmuch as ye did it," or "Inasmuch as ye did it not?" "I would have been on the foreign mission field seven years ago," said a splendid young man, "had not my Sunday School teacher laughed at me when I told him my new born desire. I expect to go now, but what of those seven years?"

If the home and the church should begin at once to obey God's command to nurture the children "In the chastening and admonition of the Lord," with all that means, the next generation would see the kingdoms of this world given to Christ and the advent of the King.

The Third Principle defines the work of nurture.

"Nurture must care for both nourishment and activity."

The Watch Care over Nourishment.

Nourishment is the general term for all that upon which the life feeds. It is given both consciously and unconsciously and is absorbed in like manner, but in its effect upon the life, the unconscious nourishment has greater power.

Unconscious Nourishment.

The first factor in unconscious nourishment is personality.

Just as truly as the physical life is nourished by life, so is the mental and the spiritual. Standards of living, ideas, a sense of values, opinions, do not come from text-books but fathers and mothers. The lesson from the printed page may fail to gain entrance, but the lesson from the teacher's life, never. This explains the success of many a humble mother and the failure of many an intellectual teacher. It is at the very heart of all work for another.

Its first message is a personal one. It tells the worker that his life is more compelling than his voice; that the Word must again become flesh to give it authority. It tells him further that if he is to be the bread of life to growing souls, his own pasturage must not be things, but in reality, the living Christ.

The other message applies to his work. While every life that touches his will always carry away something from the contact, the most helpful human life can never suffice for another's nourishment. Each soul needs the complete Christ for itself. The amazing thing among parents and teachers is their unconcern over His absence from the lives of the children. Years pass, and precept, lesson and admonition are given, while Christ, the Life, is not definitely and personally offered. "According to their pasture so were they filled." Is not this the explanation of so many meagre lives?

The second factor of unconscious nourishment is environment with its subtle atmosphere.

The importance of environment is found in this great law, that life tends to become like that which is around it. So strong is the tendency that the only escape from conformity lies in real struggle. This a little child rarely puts forth, and an adult not always, for it is far easier to follow the line of least resistance and "be like other people."

Growing out of this power of environment comes the problem of all philanthropic and religious work-how to overcome the influence of harmful surroundings. The need is obvious when the surroundings are vicious, yet the home does not need to be in the slums to injure a growing life. It only needs to be Christless. This may seem a very radical statement, but it is nevertheless true. Arresting the highest development is as truly an injury as giving to life wrong direction. Has not a plant been positively injured when its most beautiful possibilities are unrealized because of unfavoring conditions? Is not a body, undersized and stunted because of lack of fresh air and food, as truly deformed as though the back were bent? Has not that soul received the most cruel of all injuries, when its divinest possibilities can never be attained either because of spiritual starvation or misdirection? The Church and the Sunday School attempt to furnish a counteracting environment, but it is infrequent and brief. The only power which can render this temporary, religious environment mote effective in influencing character than a harmful, permanent one, is the Divine. A church building or a Sunday School session of itself, can accomplish little, placed over against a home. Methods of grading and forms of worship are impotent in themselves. It is only a living Christ, actually vitalizing the lesson and the sermon and the plan of work Who makes them efficacious.

If this be so, then the teacher who goes to the home itself to press the claims of a personal Savior on the father and mother, has after all reached the heart of the problem of environment.

The third factor of unconscious nourishment is the Superhuman Power.

This thought has been suggested in connection with personality and environment, but it demands separate emphasis. It is not an easy thing in the stress of the visible to remember the greater power of the Invisible. The most earnest Christian worker is sometimes overwhelmed by discouragement or, again, unduly confident because of the perfection of system and method, forgetting that God knows no obstacle, and that He alone can put life into a plan of work.

But though God uses men and methods, He does not always so approach a life He deals directly with a soul through the influence of the Holy Spirit, and life receives its most holy nurture in those sacred hours. Therefore, the highest service permitted a Sunday School teacher is to pray effectually for the brooding Spirit to rest upon the pupils in his class. The mother can do nothing which shall mean so much for the precious life in her arms as learning, herself, the secret of prevailing prayer, for, "If we ask anything according to His Will, He heareth us; and if we know that He heareth us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of Him." Therefore, O Lord, "Teach us to pray."

Conscious Nourishment.

This is definite instruction so given to a life that it is appropriated. A large part of attempted instruction is never taken in. "I have told you over and over again," says the despairing mother, but telling does not always involve receiving. Placing nourishing food before the boy does not necessarily mean stronger muscle and purer blood. He must eat and digest it. Teaching, to be nourishment, requires first, careful adaptation of the subject matter, then presentation in such a way that the mind will voluntarily reach out, lay hold upon and assimilate it. God again gives the key to real teaching in the word "engraft." Its process in the physical and mental world is identical. First, the delicate adjustment, then a vital union, and lastly, new life resulting.

The Watch Care over Activity.

We have considered nurture in its work of supplying the best nourishment to growing souls, and now its care for activity must be noted. Since the subject will be discussed more fully in a succeeding chapter, only the necessity for the nurture will be considered here. This necessity appears in the four-fold result of activity.

New Experiences.

This is the first result to the child from ceaseless movement of hands and feet and eager eyes. In early life he is not conscious of seeking the new experience, he only wants to be in motion. In later life, energy is definitely put forth for some desired end. But whatever the motive, experiences helpful or harmful, according to the sort of activity, result, and they enter character at par value.

Growth or Increase in Size.

Activity is necessary before anything given to the body or the soul can become a part of life. Food must be acted upon by the digestive, circulatory and assimilative organs to make it bone and muscle and nerve. The mind must think upon the fact in order to add it to the store of knowledge. The heavenly vision must be obeyed before Christian experience is enlarged by it.

But there is another aspect of this same thought. Just as truly as activity must precede assimilation, so truly does assimilation follow activity. It may be stated more simply in this way. Nothing can become a part of the life until it has been acted upon; when it has been acted upon it can not be taken out of the life. When digestion is finished and the food is bone and muscle, it can not be withdrawn. When the idea has been thought in or acted upon, it has by that process become a part of the life, and though it may fade from memory its influence is abiding.

Development or Increase of Power and Skill.

Every muscle exercised gains greater freedom. Every knotty problem mastered means increased mental ability. Every victory means greater power in resisting temptation. Whatever the action, whether good or bad, helpful or harmful, greater skill and power in that direction follows it.

This other very important fact needs to be clear, that no amount of energy put forth for another will mean development for him. He must exercise his own arm for strength and solve his own problem. Development only comes through the effort of each individual for himself; hence the best teacher is the one who can rouse the pupil to the greatest endeavor.

Habit Formation.

It is impossible to act, physically, mentally or spiritually, without making it easier to repeat the action, and soon ease passes to tendency, then tendency to compulsion, and life is in the grip of a habit. This is the inevitable outcome of activity, until "nine-tenths of life is lived in the mould of habit."

If it be true that habit is "ten times second nature," the importance of directing activity toward the formation of right habits needs no discussion.

The Fourth Principle of unfolding life deals with its crises. "The crucial points in development are those times when new possibilities begin to unfold."

The life comes from God complete in its possibilities, but at the beginning all is in germ. As life progresses, development of these possibilities proceeds, but it is not uniform. The body acquires ability to control the larger muscles before it can adjust the finer and more complex ones, as instanced in the child's ability to walk before he can thread a needle. The mind is able to imagine before it can reason clearly. The feelings center on self before they reach out to the world around. As every new possibility begins to develop, two serious facts must be remembered:

Direction must be given in the beginning before tendencies are fixed.

A beginning is always a time of easy adjustment and flexibility. Business corporations can readily alter a course of action before a policy has been established. The nurseryman can easily secure the straight trunk of the mature tree in the yielding sapling. The law is just as true when it touches human life. The trend of any possibility is determined largely in the beginning of its unfolding. After that time has gone by, conditions are practically fixed, and he that is unjust will be unjust still, and he that is holy will be holy still.

Future strength and vigor are largely determined in the beginning of development.

It is well nigh impossible to overcome the effect of early neglect. If the culture of the growing stalk is passed over, the corn in the ear can not be full. If the bodily needs of the boy are unmet, he can not reach his full development as a man. If his budding intellectual life, his awakening feeling life, or the delicate unfolding of his spiritual life is neglected, a complete, rounded out maturity is impossible. A starved childhood is always the prophecy of a stunted manhood, while life nourished in its beginning foretells vigorous maturity.

The very important question now arises, "How may these crucial times be recognized?" The answer is given in the Fifth Principle. "A new interest always accompanies an awakening possibility."

The increasing love of a story discloses a growing imagination. The passionate hero worship of a boy's heart reveals the fact of a budding ideal. The interest in clubs and desire for companionship tell of awakening social feelings. Life is always the exponent of its own need to one who cares to know, and it further reveals what should be given it, and how.

The Sixth Principle has already been touched upon in the preceding discussion, but it needs the emphasis of special statement, because of its importance. "Development is from within, out, through what is absorbed, not from without, in, through external application without absorption."

If development were a matter of external application, the post would grow and the stone and the stick, because they have earth and air and moisture around them. If it came from without, in, the most admonished child would be the best, the most talked to pupil the wisest, but the reverse is usually true. That which adheres simply to the surface of rock and child is veneer, which the testing circumstance will rub off. Only that which is assimilated is of any value to the life.

These are the great principles revealed in the development of life from infancy to maturity. The factor of human contact appears in every one. The question, "What is my touch upon this unfolding life?" can not be evaded. The stonecutter takes the marble and hews out the rough block; the sculptor finds its hidden soul. The artisan takes the canvas and the common sign appears; the artist makes it immortal. But God gives life to parents and teachers to fashion. Will hands clumsy and unskilled, miss the perfect beauty, or the touch of master workmanship bring forth a likeness to the Christ?

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