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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 79. The Heart Touch upon the Mind.
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The Heart Touch upon the Mind.
Companionships breathe into the child's life an atmosphere that greatly affects his character. They seem to happen, even in the fewer instances where thoughtful parents try to choose and guide. Natural likes decide them very largely. The mere being thrown together constantly seems the only thing that decides what companion a child shall have oftentimes. A bad companion can give a bad twist to the whole life. A thoughtful companion from a good home can as radically affect the life the other way. It is a left-handed influence, all the greater because not planned.
And the rarer friendship that grows up out of companionship does far more. Friendship is like the cream of companionship, the smaller, richer part that separates itself from the rest by its upward movement, and enriches and sweetens the whole life. Neither verbs nor adjectives nor all other parts of speech, can tell the potency of friendship in making and moulding and transforming character. And yet however much the wise father and thoughtful mother may plan they cannot make a friendship for the child. The planning helps. Praying does yet more.
As simple a thing as a book or a picture has great influence in moulding character. Frequently a bad book has blighted and embittered a whole life. Yet more frequently a good book, just one little bunch of small leaves, fastened together, carried off in a pocket, has turned a life completely around. Books and libraries rank very high in their shaping power.
And with the book goes the picture. A bad picture can burn a hole that can't be filled in. It can make a sore that won't heal, and leave a scar that can't be got rid of. And good pictures are like angels of God in their blessed ministry.
The story is told of a young Yale student of twenty-two. The walls of his room were covered with cheap flaming prints of advertisement pictures and actresses and the like. A friend gave him a copy of Hoffman's wonderful, Gethsemane Christ-head. Whether given with a purpose, or merely as a token of friendship isn't told. The young fellow hung up his new art treasure.
Soon he was up on a chair taking the cheap prints down. That great Christ face caught and gripped him. He said: "I couldn't let those cheap things stay up there beside that face!" Its presence revealed their cheapness. And without doubt the change in the walls of his room told of a change on the inner walls of his heart, too.
Great experiences have remarkable training power. A great sorrow may radically affect the character for a lifetime, even with a very young child. The coming of love into life, the life-love, is often as the small warm rain of heaven, and the fragrant dew of a clear, still night, and as the bright shining out of the blue, in bringing a new springtime of mental and moral growth where all had been wintry and barren before.
And conversion has marvellous power over the mental faculties. Real conversion awakens the whole man within. A new gripping life-purpose, a new mental keenness, a new power to sway others, are natural results of conversion. If the thing may be put on so low a level, parents should pray for the child's conversion, not only that his soul may be saved, but that his life may be awakened, and his mental powers aroused into full life. And yet that is not putting it low. The new birth of the Holy Spirit brings a new mental birth, too.
A striking instance of this comes to mind. A young girl of twelve years decided to become a Christian. She was one of a large family of children. The new purpose went down into the vitals of her sensitive nature, and became the over-mastering passion. She had less opportunity of schooling than some of the others. But in strong, gripping life-purpose, in mental keenness, in deep, tender sympathy, and in the achievement of her life, she has, so far, outstripped all the others of the family, parents and children alike, that there seems to be no second.
Careful study and sifting of all the facts leads to the clear, irresistible conclusion that the chief factor in her life has been the touch of the Holy Spirit, to whom she yielded so early and so fully.
These are some of the great influences that make and shape the child.