1882 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



669 



tmm- 



Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion; put 

 on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem.— IPA. 52:1. 



SOMEBODY has said, that order is heav- 

 ^^ en's first law ; but before we can have 

 ^^'^ order we must have life and wakeful- 

 ness. Go into an unbroken wilderness, and 

 all is disorder. It may not be particularly 

 displeasing to the eye, for order is not ex- 

 pected there ; but let human habitations 

 come in, and what a great change must be 

 wrought! Without the guiding care of man, 

 what a fearful disorder nature makes! Eve- 

 ry thing drops and tumbles and scatters, dies 

 and decays, with no one to even look on or 

 care. Even if man should come in and put 

 the crooked, broken branches straight, make 

 paths around, through, and between the 

 great monarchs of the forest, turn up the 

 soil, and plant a garden, unless he were con- 

 stantly on hand to tight against the devasta- 

 tion and ruin of nature, how quickly would 

 it all go back! You may have noticed, per- 

 haps, some spot where a log house and little 

 home has some time been started and then 

 abandoned. How quickly and surely disor- 

 der and decay again resume sway! It is not 

 only the winds and the storms "that scatter 

 and cover up, but foul weeds soon choke up 

 the doorway ; and the squirrels, and birds of 

 the air, the spiders and insects, seem to make 

 haste in making the spot uncomfortable and 

 dismal. Humanity and human life stand 

 alone in favor of law and order. All else of 

 nature, animate and inanimate, is against it. 

 They are dead set against all progress and 

 improvement. My friends, it is so with sin. 

 Sad as it may seem, it is the rule and natu- 

 ral tendency. 



Humanity unrestrained is like the work of 

 the elements of the forest — devastation, 

 decay, ruin, and death. J^et an ungoverned 

 child come into a well-kept household ; have 

 you not seen them make a wreck of almost 

 every thing that could be wrecked, in a space 

 of time so short that one wonders to see how 

 they could, during the interval, accomplish 

 so much. The first work of the baby, after 

 it learns to use its hands, is to tear the books 

 and litter the fioor ; after it is old enough to 

 climb to the bureau drawers, its delight is to 

 pull out the things and scatter them over the 

 floor, in a scene of disorder that an older 



ferson could hardly produce if he should try. 

 f he gets into a pretty garden, the flowers 

 are torn in pieces, the dirt scattered about, 

 and destruction seems to be his delight. 

 Like the winds and the storms, the rank 

 Aveeds, the squirrels and the spiders, he 

 seems to have no desire but to assist in the 

 general work of destroying and leveling to 

 the earth all that has been built up with so 

 much care and pains. A mother's care oft- 

 en stops tlie baby ; and with an amount of 

 pains and care that can hardly be computed, 

 she pleads and entreats, reasons and ex- 

 plains, and finally develops intellect and in- 

 telligence, where there might otherwise have 

 been — what V Dear reader, can you form 

 any idea of what a child would be, nursed 

 and brought up by one of the lower animals, 



if such a thing were possible? We some- 

 times have a feeble illustration of what a 

 child may be, by noting those who grow up 

 almost without training, or those who have 

 their own way through life. 



In these past Home I'apers I have given 

 the histories of a few such. They trouble, 

 vex, and injure those about them while they 

 are young ; and when they get old enough 

 they" injure themselves. As they have not 

 been accustomed to restraint in childhood, 

 why should they impose any restraint on 

 their appetite and passions? With the same 

 want of reflection, or care, with which he de- 

 stroyed the things in his untrained child- 

 hood, he now without scruple, or care of 

 consequences, pours down the fiery liquid 

 that destroys both soul and body, and finds 

 the only possible stopping-place for such as 

 he in a drunkard's grave. 



Y^'ou may say, that education and civiliza- 

 tion should teach our children and our boys 

 bettei". I grant it ; but what if they won't 

 be educated? Within the past few months 

 I have had quite a little tussle with the boys 

 and girls of our establishment to get them 

 to go to school. Most of them are in school; 

 but a few of them would not go, and they 

 are not all boys either. What shall we do 

 with those who will not be taught? What 

 shall we do with those who deliberately 

 choose darkness rather than light? 



The natural man, uneducated and untrain- 

 ed, chooses that which will minister to his 

 animal wants and his own immediate pas- 

 sions and desires. The God part of man is 

 in direct opposition to all this. Jesus pleas- 

 ed not himself. Can any thing more em- 

 phatically describe the difference between 

 man unsubdued and unconverted, and man 

 after Christ has come into his life? At first 

 he lives tmly to please himself; when con- 

 verted he pleases not himself, or the selfish 

 part of his nature, but he lives to please God 

 and his fellow-men. Again I come around 

 to my favorite and oft-repeated text," Thou 

 Shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 

 might and with all thy strength and with all 

 thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself.'' 

 Now to go back a little, you will see that the 

 task of lifting and enlightening and subdu- 

 ing this savage nature, God has so arranged, 

 that it falls on one's fellow-men. The task 

 of training the infant not to destroy every 

 thing, and cram it into his mouth, devolves 

 upon the mother, and the child grows up a 

 barbarian or a civilized being, according as 

 the parents teach and restrain it. It is not 

 only the parents who are responsible for 

 their children, but to a certain extent broth- 

 er is responsible for brother. Cain did say, 

 it is true, "Am 1 my brother's keeper?" 

 but then, Cain was a murderer when he said 

 it, and it has been characteristic of murder- 

 ers from his time down, to say pretty much 

 the same thing. Saloon-keepers say to-day, 

 when kindly talked to for the ruin they have 

 done, " Why, do you mean to insinuate that 

 I am to blame for that man's having the 

 delirium-tremens?" Well, while we can 

 curse and kill each other by our example and 

 counsel, we can also (thank God) in the same 

 way lift each other up. God knows we need 

 lifting up, each and all of us, and that we 



