strike others as far-fetched
or fanciful. It refers to the start that our children are to take in
life, or, rather, to the ground from which they are to start. Their
destiny depends, of course, upon what they make of themselves in their
career; but does it not also depend upon their starting-ground, and is
there not something dreary in the frequent remark that we can make
anything of ourselves, and the implication that we are nothing at all at
the outset? The old civilization reversed this and the great question
was not, What shall a man make of himself? but, What is his _status_?
and his family or national birthright was more urged than his individual
enterprise. Now I am not fighting against our American individualism, or
expecting to establish a new national caste; yet may I not hint that it
would be well, if our children were brought up in such sense of their
native privilege, worth, and respectability as to start upon a solid
ground of loyalty and reliance, and to go forth into the world with the
feeling, that, whilst they have much to win, they have also much to
hold? I would not have them bred in Jewish exclusiveness or pride; yet
even that is better than no sense of birthright at all. How striking and
suggestive is that trait in the life of one of the most benevolent and
liberal-minded of our American Israelites, who, when his leg was broken,
and his physician advised amputation, stoutly refused to submit to the
knife, and said that he would rather die first, since he was of the
tribe of Levi, and none of that tribe were allowed to enter the
sanctuary with mutilated limbs! A plucky son of Abraham indeed; and his
pluck would be worthy of our imitation, if we insisted on such a
_status_ of manly integrity as to refuse to do any wrong to our manhood,
on the ground of its destroying our position and selling our birthright.
We do need certainly some deeper sense of our personal and national
worth at the outset: and our children should be trained to look upon
themselves as heirs of the ages, children of Providence, and bound to
keep the priceless trust confided to them. A cheerful home should love
them before they can return the love, a great nation guard over
themselves, and a broad and exalted and genial and helpful church should
be mother to them before they know how to interpret her care; and the
golden light of the first home should shine upon them as but the faint,
earthly gleam of that uncreated light that kindle