chance to find that short cut to happiness which men call pain and suffering.
A family is humanity's great opportunity to walk the way of the cross. Mothers know that; some fathers know it; some children grow up to learn it. In homes where this is true, where all other aims are subordinated to this one of making the home count for high character, to training lives into right social adjustment and service, the primary emphasis is not on times and seasons for religion; religion is the life of that home, and in all its common living every child learns the way of the great Life of all. In vain do we torture children with adult religious penances, long prayers, and homilies, thinking thereby to give them religious training. The good man comes out of the good home, the home that is good in character, aim, and organization, not sporadically but permanently, the home where the religious spirit, the spirit of idealism, and the sense of the infinite and divine are diffused rather than injected. The inhuman, antisocial vampires, who suck their brothers' blood, whether they be called magnates or mob-leaders, grafters or gutter thieves, often learned to take life in terms of graft by the attitude and atmosphere of their homes.1
§ 5. MOTIVES FOR A STUDY OF THE FAMILY
The modern family is worthy of our careful study. It demands painstaking attention, both because of its immediate importance to human happiness and because of its potentiality for the future of society. The kind of home and the character of family life which will best serve the world and fulfil the will of God cannot be determined by sentiment or supposition. We are under the highest and sternest obligation to discover the laws of the family, those social laws which are determined by its nature and purpose, to find right standards for family life, to discriminate between the things that are permanent and those that are passing, between those we must conserve and those we must discard, to be prepared to fit children for the finer and higher type of family life that must come in the future.
Methods of securing family efficiency will not be discovered by accident. If it is worth while to study the minor details, such as baking cakes and sweeping floors, surely it is even more important to study the larger problems of organization and discipline. There is a science of home-direction and an art of family living; both must be learned with patient study.
It is a costly thing to keep a home where honor, the joy of love, and high ideals dwell ever. It costs time, pleasures, and so-called social advantages, as well as money and labor. It must cost thought, study, and investigation. It demands and deserves sacrifice; it is too sacred to be cheap. The building of a home is a work that endures to eternity, and that kind of work never was done with ease or without pain and loss and the investment of much time. Patient study of the problems of the family is a part of the price which all may pay.
No nobler social work, no deeper religious work, no higher educational work is done anywhere than that of the men and women, high or humble, who set themselves to the fitting of their children for life's business, equipping them with principles and habits upon which they may fall back in trying hours, and making of home the sweetest, strongest, holiest, happiest place on earth.
Heaven only knows the price that must be paid for that; heaven only knows the worth of that work. But if we are wise we shall each take up our work for our world where it lies nearest to us, in co-operation with parents, in service and sacrifice as parents or kin, our work in the shop where manhood is in the making, where it is being made fit to dwell long in the land, in the family at home.
I. References for Study
Edward Lyttleton, The Corner-Stone of Education, chaps. i, vii. Putnam, $1.50.
A. Gandier, "Religious Education in the Home," Religious Education, June, 1914, pp. 233–42.
II. Further Reading
The Family a Religious Agency
C. F. and C. B. Thwing, The Family. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1.60.
J. D. Folsom, Religious Education in the Home. Eaton & Mains, $0.75.
G. A. Coe, Education in Religion and Morals. Revell, $1.35.
The Place of the Family
A. J. Todd, The Family as an Educational Agency. Putnam, $2.00.
W. F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family. Hodder & Stoughton, $2.50.
J. B. Robins, The Family a Necessity. Revell, $1.25.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. Describe the changes within recent times in the conditions of the home, its work, housing, and supplies. How far have these changes affected the community of the family, the continuity of its personal relationships, and its religious service?
2. What are the fundamental causes of family disasters? Admitting that there are sufficient grounds for divorce in numerous instances, what other causes enter into the high number of divorces?
3. State in your own terms the ultimate reasons for the maintenance of a family.
4. What are the motives which would make people willing to bear the high cost of founding and conducting a home?
5. What points of emphasis does this study suggest in the matter of the education of public opinion?
6. State your distinction between the family and the home; which is the more important and why?
1 The Corner-Stone of Education, by Edward Lyttleton, headmaster of Eton, is a striking argument on the determinative influence of parental habits and attitudes of mind.
CHAPTER II
THE PRESENT STATUS OF FAMILY LIFE
§ 1. CONTRASTED TYPES
In a beautiful village, in one of the farther western states, two men were discussing the possible future of the home and of family life. Sitting in the brilliant moonlight, looking through the leafy shades, watching the lights of a score of homes, each surrounded by lawn and shade trees, each with its group on the front porch, where vines trailed and flowers bloomed, listening to the hum of conversation and the strains of music in one home and another, it seemed, to at least one of these men, that this type of living could hardly pass away. The separate home, each family a complete social integer, each with its own circle of activities and interests, its own group, and its own table and fireside, seemed too fine and beautiful, too fair and helpful, to perish under economic pressure. Indeed, one felt that the village home furnished a setting for life and a soil for character development far higher and more efficient than could be afforded by any other domestic arrangement—that it approached the ideal.
But two weeks later two men sat in an upper room, in the second largest city in America, discussing again the future of the family. Instead of the quiet music of the village, the clang of street cars filled the ears, trains rushed by, children shouted from the paved highway, families were seated by open windows
