Prodigal Sons and Daughters : Part 1

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 12 of 20)

"Because of fathers' sins the cost
Is counted in the children's blood;
They starve where once they might have stood
Content and strong as bird or bee." - H.H.

"The primary function of social science is to interpret men's experience in passing from stage to stage in the evolution of human values." - Albion W. Small.

"Every wrong-doer should have his due. But what is his due? Can we measure it by his past alone, or is it due any one to regard him as a man having a future as well? As having possibilities for good as well as achievements in bad?" - John Dewey.

"Judge not, that ye be not judged. He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone." - Jesus.

"The Sage is ever the good Saviour of men; he rejects none. For the good men are the instructors of other good men and the bad men are the material for the good men to work upon. The good I would meet with goodness, the not-good I would meet with goodness also." - Lao-Tsze.

"The good man is apt to go right about pleasure and the bad man is apt to go wrong. It is only to the good man that the good presents itself as good, for vice perverts us and causes us to err about the principle of action." - Aristotle.

"I cannot but think that the extreme passion for getting rich, absorbing all the energies of life, predisposes to mental degeneracy, to moral defects, or to outbreaks of insanity in the offspring." - Maudesley.

"Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or out of it which can be called good without qualification except a Good Will." - Kant.

"The object of moral principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself," - John Dewey.

"I call that mind free which resists the bondage of habit, which does not live on its old virtues, which does not enslave itself to precise rules, but which forgets what is behind, listens for new and higher monitions of conscience, and rejoices to pour itself forth in fresh and higher exertions." - Channing.

Who Should Hear Sermons on the Prodigal Son? - A young woman deeply interested in social service was asked by the warden of a prison to address its fifteen hundred inmates on a Sunday morning when they should be all assembled in Chapel. Hesitating at undertaking such a difficult task, she asked the warden what he would think she should talk about. "Anything you like," he said, "except this: don't speak on the prodigal son, for the last fourteen ministers and speakers have read that parable and talked about it." "Indeed, no," answered the young woman, "that parable is not for them. They should be taught what is justice to the elder brother and preached to from the text, 'Work out your own salvation.'" It is really a bit difficult to find just the right audience for a preachment on that appealing parable. The harsh-natured fathers who most need its lesson are not likely to be in church when it is read and the tender fathers often need to be stiffened up to work with all the rest of society to make the prodigal behave better; and the elder brothers, the hard-working "sons of Martha," who have to save in order to pay the taxes for the institutions and agencies that take care of the prodigal, should not have the fact that their sacrifice and service are usually taken as a matter of course unduly emphasized when they meet their fellows.

The fact is that the prodigal, like the genius, is often one who takes life's practical affairs so lightly that until he is really hungry in the far land whither he has taken himself for pleasures denied at home, he seldom considers how his behavior affects the rest of the family. Moreover, the prodigal is often such a charming and engaging creature that all is forgiven him many times more than is good for his soul, and who, therefore, has many fatted calves set before him in renewed festivals over his repeated home-comings.

Yet, when all is said in the way of caution against overindulgence of the wayward, the one thing about parental love that marks it as the supreme type of affection is the fact that it holds all its own in permanent bond whatever the character of the child or his return for devotion.

Distinction Between the Mentally Competent and Defective in Criminal Class. - The parent who has a prodigal son or daughter to-day has the benefit of much social wisdom and much educational treatment of the wayward, unknown in the past. In the first place, we are learning to sort out in the criminal and vicious classes those who are mentally responsible and those who may be supposed to be the helpless victims of their instincts and tendencies. If it is true, as one has said, that "the test of sound moral character is that it possesses coherence under liberty and has learned those various arts of adaptation to ever-varying circumstance which make it a working quality, constant, rational, and automatic," we must perceive the intimate connection between mental power and moral competency. In point of fact, we now know that the overwhelming majority of criminals and constantly vicious persons, in ordinary times when no social hysteria of recent war gives a "crime wave," come from the mentally feeble or perverted types.

The draft examinations in the Great War gave a shock to all students of social conditions in their revelation of the widespread deficiencies, physical and mental, of young men of our country. Mr. Henry Wysham Lanier, writing on this topic, shows "that out of a total of fifty-four millions of men twenty-six millions were either in the Army or Navy or registered and ready for call," and that of these "three millions out of thirteen were unfit to serve their country as soldiers." Nearly three-quarters of a million had some mechanical incapacity, defects in bones, joints, etc. About one-half million had imperfections of sense organs and nearly as many serious troubles of the circulatory system. A third of a million showed nervous and mental incapacity for the soldier's work. About 300,000 had tuberculosis or severe venereal disease. About the same number had skin or teeth ailments. Altogether, the first severe examinations weeded out as unfit for the service nearly one-third of those who were drafted.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.