How Could I Face My Children…?

This comment was heard from a wonderful forthright grandfather. He had just talked with a young grandson⎯one of those searching sessions when a child asks direct, unflinching questions⎯when a child with steady eyes and innocent honesty could make a man earnestly examine himself to see if he detects any deception in his own soul. And then this honest, grateful grandfather said: “How could I face my children, my grandchildren and tell them I had done wrong? How could I?” “Boys,” wrote Emerson, “know truth from counterfeit as quick as a chemist does.”¹ Don’t try to hide your heart from a boy.

Too often we hear of abuse of children: cruelty to children; corruption. One can scarcely conceive of this being so, and it reminds us of this sobering indictment from Him who said: “whoso shall offend one of these little ones. It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”² It is something to think of.

Children come here clean and sweet and teachable. Innocent they come, and innocent they are, until environment or example is otherwise. Heaven help those who abuse or neglect or corrupt, or are cruel to children, or who are indifferent to the environment that takes their innocence from them. Children have a right to be protected from exploitation and from evil influence.

“How could I face my children⎯anyone’s children⎯and tell them I had done wrong?” Heaven help us to live to feel clean and comfortable with honest, innocent children, and with others also, and with our own souls inside.