The home and the public school are the two great agencies which are jointly engaged, or which should be jointly engaged, in teaching children to help themselves. If children are taught, as boys and girls, to think for themselves, speak for themselves and act for themselves, when they are old they will not forget the precious lesson, and will be less likely to become burdens on the community. The highest ambition of every American man and woman should be to be of some useful service to the world; and the first step will be taken toward this noble end when we have thoroughly learned the value and importance of the lesson of self-help. First, learn to help yourself, and then you will be able to see more clearly how to help others.
First impressions are always most lasting. We may not recognize or understand it at the time, but the boys and girls, the very young people, whom God has committed to our care in the home or the Sunday-school or the public school, gather in their early days, in the formative and impressionable period of their lives, the inspirations and impulses which shall guide them in after years either on the road to good or on the road to ruin. I happen to have high testimony on this point. It is the testimony of the grandest preacher who ever stood in an American pulpit. I mean Henry Ward Beecher. The following testimony is taken from a sermon of his preached in Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, on Sunday, January 18, 1874. The subject of the sermon was “Soul Power.” Among other things, Mr. Beecher said:
“In reading the life of Goethe, written by himself, you will notice how he marks the various stages of his self-culture, and says, ‘At this point I met such a man, and he was of great use to me in such and such respects.’ Goethe’s educators were living men, active and powerful, around about him.
“I can look back upon my own early life, and see how one and another took me, and how one prepared me for another. I can see how the largest natures did not always get access to me. It was late in life before my father influenced me very much. I think it was a humble woman who was in our family that first gained any considerable control over me. I feel the effects of her influence to this day.