The Safeguarding of First Imaginings

“God saw that every imagination of the thoughts of man’s heart was only evil continually.” — Gen. vi. 5.

This is a very spiritual perception to find place in so old a book. One would have thought that so antique a document would have taken a more outward view of the situation. We should have expected it to say, “The Lord saw that man was perpetrating deeds of appalling atrocity.” Instead of that it is not the deed at all it emphasises; it is the imaginings. And this old document is right. It is before its time. In an age when men looked only at the act, the writer of Genesis fixed his eye on the imagination. The imagination was to him what God saw — the main part of the process. You and I, in all cases of moral corruption, should follow the example of this ancient seer; we should seek the cause, not in the deed of to-day, but in the ideal of yesterday. All corruption begins with an evil imagination, in other words, with the admiration of a bad ideal. The origin of sin is a

false model of greatness. A boy becomes selfish because he is taught that great people are those who possess much. He becomes violent, because he has nursed the thought that true heroism is fighting heroism. He becomes irreligious because he has been told that independence is manliness. The picture-book is the child’s first educator; and it educates either for good or ill. It educates for ill when pictures of badness are beautifully painted. That becomes an imagination of the heart. Evil is made attractive, fair, heroic — an object to be sought for, a thing to be desired.

Ye who train the young — parents and teachers — beware of the first gallery in which you put the child! Beware of the earliest pictures which its heart will hold! They are the germ-cells of the spirit — they will make or mar. Beware how you suffer a bright colour to light upon a vicious form! The vice will grow dim to the eye, but the bright colour will remain. There is only one picture that the child’s heart can safely hold; it is the form of Jesus. Put it there early — before all things! Let it be the first painting in the soul — the child’s first ideal of greatness! Let the morning message of heroism be a message of unselfishness! Not on Caesar, not on Alexander, not on Napoleon, let the opening eye be centred; point it to Jesus! Let it gaze on the glory of what man calls weak, unfit for survival! Let it see the strength of gentleness, the courage of meekness, the might of restraint, the victory of forgiveness, the majesty of patience, the triumph of peacemaking, the manliness of compassion, the Divineness of sacrifice! Let it behold the splendour of that epitaph, “Himself He cannot save,” the lustre of that inscription, “Obedient unto death “! Let it mark the heroism of that bloodiest of battlefields where Love stood dauntless to receive its mortal wound! Let it catch the light of the Dolorous Way, the sheen of Gethsemane, the glow of Calvary — till the heart of the child shall cry, “When I grow up, I will be a Christ!” Then will the tempter vanish, then will the kingdom come; for the victory is already complete when we have imaged the beauty of holiness.