RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY

by

HENRY F. COPE

General Secretary of the Religious Education Association

The University of Chicago PressChicago, IllinoisCopyright 1915 byThe University of ChicagoAll Rights ReservedPublished April 1915Second Impression September 1915Third Impression March 1916Fourth Impression June 1917Fifth Impression August 1920Sixth Impression July 1922Seventh Impression September 1922Composed and Printed ByThe University of Chicago PressChicago, Illinois, U. S. A. 

The University of Chicago PressChicago, Illinois

The Baker and Taylor CompanyNew York

The Cambridge University PressLondon

The Maruzen-Kabushiki-KaishaTokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Sendai

The Mission Book CompanyShanghai

PREFACE

In the work of religious education, with which the present series ofbooks is concerned, the life of the family rightly occupies a centralplace. The church has always realized its duty to exhort parents tobring up their children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, butvery little has ever been done to enable parents to study systematicallyand scientifically the problem of religious education in the family. Today parents' classes are being formed in many churches; ChristianAssociations, women's clubs, and institutes are studying the subject;individual parents are becoming more and more interested in the rationalperformance of their high duties. And there is a general desire forguidance. As the full bibliography at the end of this volume and thereferences in connection with each chapter indicate, there is availablea very large literature dealing with the various elements of theproblem. But a guidebook to organize all this material and to stimulateindependent thought and endeavor is desirable. 

To afford this guidance the present volume has been prepared. It isequally adapted for the thoughtful study of the father and mother whoare seeking help in the moral and religious development of their ownfamily, and for classes in churches, institutes, and neighborhoods, where the important problems of the family are to be studied anddiscussed. It would be well to begin the use of the book by reading thesuggestions for class work at the end of the volume. 

With a confident hope that religion in the family is not to be a wistfulmemory of the past but a most vital force in the making of the betterday that is coming, this volume is offered as a contribution and asummons. 

 The Editors

New Year's Day, 1915

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE I. An Interpretation of the Family 1

 II. The Present Status of Family Life 10

 III. The Permanent Elements in Family Life 27

 IV. The Religious Place of the Family 37

 V. The Meaning Of Religious Education in the Family 46

 VI. The Child's Religious Ideas 60

 VII. Directed Activity 75

 VIII. The Home as a School 87

 IX. The Child's Ideal Life 101

 X. Stories and Reading 110

 XI. The Use of the Bible in the Home 119

 XII. Family Worship 126

 XIII. Sunday in the Home 145

 XIV. The Ministry of the Table 164

 XV. The Boy and Girl in the Family 173

 XVI. The Needs of Youth 183

 XVII. The Family and the Church 198

 XVIII. Children and the School 212

 XIX. Dealing with Moral Crises 218

 XX. Dealing with Moral Crises (_Continued_) 231

 XXI. Dealing with Moral Crises (_Continued_) 240

 XXII. Dealing with Moral Crises (_Concluded_) 249

 XXIII. The Personal Factors in Religious Education 259

 XXIV. Looking to the Future 268

Suggestions for Class Work 281

A Book List 290

Index 297

CHAPTER I

AN INTERPRETATION OF THE FAMILY

§ 1. TAKING THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS TERMS

The ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childlessfamilies, irreverent children, and the decadence of the old type ofseparate home life are signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives, andinsufficient purposes. Where the home is only an opportunity forself-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap boarding-house, asleeping-shelf, an implement for social advantage. While it is true thatgeneral economic developments have effected marked changes in domesticeconomy, the happiness and efficiency of the family do not depend whollyon the parlor, the kitchen, or the clothes closet. Rather, everythingdepends on whether the home and family are considered in worthy andadequate terms. 

Homes are wrecked because families refuse to take home-living inreligious terms, in social terms of sacrifice and service. In suchhomes, organized and conducted to satisfy personal desires rather thanto meet social responsibilities, these desires become ends rather thanagencies and opportunities. 

They who marry for lust are divorced for further lust. Selfishness, evenin its form of self-preservation, is an unstable foundation for a home. It costs too much to maintain a home if you measure it by the personaladvantages of parents. What hope is there for useful and happy familylife if the newly wedded youth have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to frivolous pleasures, and guided by ideals of success interms of garish display? Yet what definite program for any othertraining does society provide? Do the schools and colleges, Sundayschools and churches teach youth a better way? How else shall they betrained to take the home and family in terms that will make forhappiness and usefulness? It is high time to take seriously the task ofeducating people to religious efficiency in the home. 

§ 2. THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE

The family needs a religious motive. More potent for happiness thancourses in domestic economy will be training in sufficient domesticmotives. It will take much more than modern conveniences, biggerapartments, or even better kitchens to make the new home. Essentiallythe problem is not one of mechanics but of persons. What we call thehome problem is more truly a _family_ problem. It centers in persons;the solution awaits a race with new ideals, educated to live as morethan dust, for more than dirt, for personality rather than forpossessions. We need young people who establish homes, not simplybecause they feel miserable when separated, nor because one needs aplace in which to board and the other needs a boarder, but because thelargest duty and joy of life is to enrich the world with other lives andto give themselves in high love to making those other lives of thegreatest possible worth to the world. 

The family must come to a recognition of social obligations. We all hopefor the coming ideal day. Everywhere men and women are answering tohigher ideals of life. But the new day waits for a new race. Modernemphasis on the child is a part of present reaction from materialism. New social ideals are personal. We seek a better world for the sake of ahigher race. The emphasis on child-welfare has a social rather than asentimental basis. The family is our great chance to determine childhoodand so to make the future. The child of today is basic to the socialwelfare of tomorrow. He is our chance to pay to tomorrow all that we oweto yesterday. The family as the child's life-school is thus central toevery social program and problem. 

§ 3. WIDER CHILD-WELFARE

This age knows that man does not live by bread alone. Interest inchild-welfare is for the sake of the child himself, not for the sake ofhis clothes or his physical condition. Concern about soap andsanitation, hygiene and the conveniences of life grows because these allgo to make up the soil in which the person grows. There is danger thatour emphasis on child-welfare may be that of the tools instead of theman; that we may become enmeshed in the mechanism of well-being and losesight of the being who should be well. To fail at the point of characteris to fail all along the line. And we fail altogether, no matter howmany bathtubs we give a child, how many playgrounds, medicalinspections, and inoculations, unless that child be in himself strongand high-minded, loving truth, hating a lie, and habituated to live ingood-will with his fellows and with high ideals for the universe. Moderninterest in the material factors of life is on account of their potencyin making real selfhood; we acknowledge the importance of the physicalas the very soil in which life grows. But the fruits are more than thesoil, and a home exists for higher purposes than physical conveniences;these are but its tools to its great end. Somehow for purposes of socialwell-being we must raise our thinking of the family to the aim of thedevelopment of efficient, rightly minded character. The family must beseen as making spiritual persons. 

§ 4. THE COST OF A FAMILY

Taking the home in religious terms will mean, then, conceiving it as aninstitution with a religious purpose, namely, that of giving to theworld children who are adequately trained and sufficiently motived tolive the social life of good-will. The family exists to give societydeveloped, efficient children. It fails if it does not have a religious, a spiritual product. It cannot succeed except by the willingself-devotion of adult lives to this spiritual, personal purpose. 

A family is the primary social organization for the elementary purposeof breeding the species, nurturing and training the young. This is itsphysiological basis. But its duties cannot be discharged on thephysiological plane alone. This elementary physiological function islifted to a spiritual level by the aim of character and the motive oflove. Families cannot be measured by their size; they must be measuredby the character of their products. If quality counts anywhere it countshere, though it is well to remember that it takes some reasonablequantity to make right quality in each. 

The family needs a religious motive. It demands sacrifice. To followlower impulses is to invite disaster. The home breeds bitterness andsorrow wherever men and women court for lust, marry for social standing, and maintain an establishment only as a part of the game of socialcompetition. To sow the winds of passion, ease, idle luxury, pride, andgreed is to reap the whirlwind. Moreover, it is to miss the greatchance of life, the chance to find that short cut to happiness whichmen 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 learnit. In homes where this is true, where all other aims are subordinatedto this one of making the home count for high character, to traininglives into right social adjustment and service, the primary emphasis isnot on times and seasons for religion; religion is the life of thathome, and in all its common living every child learns the way of thegreat Life of all. In vain do we torture children with adult religiouspenances, long prayers, and homilies, thinking thereby to give themreligious training. The good man comes out of the good home, the homethat is good in character, aim, and organization, not sporadically butpermanently, the home where the religious spirit, the spirit ofidealism, and the sense of the infinite and divine are diffused ratherthan injected. The inhuman, antisocial vampires, who suck theirbrothers' blood, whether they be called magnates or mob-leaders, grafters or gutter thieves, often learned to take life in terms of graftby 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 painstakingattention, both because of its immediate importance to human happinessand because of its potentiality for the future of society. The kind ofhome and the character of family life which will best serve the worldand fulfil the will of God cannot be determined by sentiment orsupposition. We are under the highest and sternest obligation todiscover the laws of the family, those social laws which are determinedby its nature and purpose, to find right standards for family life, todiscriminate between the things that are permanent and those that arepassing, between those we must conserve and those we must discard, to beprepared to fit children for the finer and higher type of family lifethat must come in the future. 

Methods of securing family efficiency will not be discovered byaccident. If it is worth while to study the minor details, such asbaking cakes and sweeping floors, surely it is even more important tostudy the larger problems of organization and discipline. There is ascience of home-direction and an art of family living; both must belearned with patient study. 

It is a costly thing to keep a home where honor, the joy of love, andhigh ideals dwell ever. It costs time, pleasures, and so-called socialadvantages, as well as money and labor. It must cost thought, study, and investigation. It demands and deserves sacrifice; it is too sacredto 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 lossand the investment of much time. Patient study of the problems of thefamily is a part of the price which all may pay. 

No nobler social work, no deeper religious work, no higher educationalwork 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 backin 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 onlyknows the worth of that work. But if we are wise we shall each take upour work for our world where it lies nearest to us, in co-operation withparents, in service and sacrifice as parents or kin, our work in theshop where manhood is in the making, where it is being made fit to dwelllong 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?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] _The Corner-Stone of Education_, by Edward Lyttleton, headmaster ofEton, is a striking argument on the determinative influence of parentalhabits 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 menwere 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 andshade trees, each with its group on the front porch, where vines trailedand flowers bloomed, listening to the hum of conversation and thestrains of music in one home and another, it seemed, to at least one ofthese men, that this type of living could hardly pass away. The separatehome, each family a complete social integer, each with its own circle ofactivities and interests, its own group, and its own table and fireside, seemed too fine and beautiful, too fair and helpful, to perish undereconomic pressure. Indeed, one felt that the village home furnished asetting for life and a soil for character development far higher andmore efficient than could be afforded by any other domesticarrangement--that it approached the ideal. 

But two weeks later two men sat in an upper room, in the second largestcity in America, discussing again the future of the family. Instead ofthe quiet music of the village, the clang of street cars filled theears, trains rushed by, children shouted from the paved highway, families were seated by open windows in crowded apartments, seeking coolair; the total impression was that of being placed in a pigeonhole in ahuge, heated, filing-case, where each separate space was occupied by afamily. One felt the pressure of heated, crowded kitchens, suffocatinglittle dining-rooms; one knew that the babies lay crying in their bedsat night, gasping their very lives away, and that the young folks werewandering off to amusement parks and moving-picture shows. Here was anentirely different picture. How long could family life persist underthese conditions where privacy was almost gone and comfort almostunknown?

In the village separate home integers appear ideal; in the city they arepossible only to the few. The many, at present, find them a crushingburden. Desirable as privacy is, it can be purchased at too high aprice. It costs too much to maintain separate kitchens and dining-roomsunder city conditions. 

§ 2. COMMUNAL TENDENCIES

Present conditions spell waste, inefficiency, discomfort. The womanlives all day in stifling rooms, poorly lighted, with the nerve-rackinglife of neighbors pouring itself through walls and windows. The mencome from crowded shops and the children from crowded schoolrooms tocrowd themselves into these rooms, to snatch a meal, or to sleep. Howcan there be real family life? What joy can there be or what idealscreated in daily discomfort and distress? Little wonder that such homesare sleeping-places only, that there is no sense of family intercourseand unity. Little wonder that restaurant life has succeeded family life. 

Many hold that we are ready for a movement into community living, thatjust as the social life of the separate house porches in the villageshas become communized into the amusement parks in the cities, so all theactivities of the family will move in the same direction. How long couldthe family as a unit continue under these conditions?

The village life will persist for a long time; it may be that, when weapply scientific methods to the transportation of human beings in thesame measure as we have to the moving of pig iron, we can develop largebelts of real village life all around our industrial centers. But moreand more the village tends to become like the city; in other words, highly organized communal life is the dominant trend today. Just asbusiness tends to do on a large scale all that can be more economicallydone in larger units, so does the home. We must look for the increasingprevalence of the city type of life for men and women and for families. 

§ 3. THE ECONOMICAL DEVELOPMENT

It is worth while to note, in some brief detail, just what changes areinvolved in the tendency toward communal living. At the beginning of theindustrial revolution which ushered in the factory period, each familywas a fairly complete unit in itself. The village was little more than anucleus of farmhouses, with a few differing types of units, such asworkers in wood, in wearing apparel, and in tools. The home furnishednearly all its own food, spun and made its clothes, trained its ownchildren, and knew scarcely any community endeavor or any syndication ofeffort except in the church. 

The industrial revolution took labor largely out of the home into thefactory. Except for farm life, the husband became an outside worker andthe older boys followed him to the distant shop or factory. Earning aliving ceased to be a family act and became a social act in a largersphere. But in this change it ceased to be a part of the familyeducational process. Boys who, from childhood up, had gradually learnedtheir father's trade in the shop or workroom, which was part of thehouse, where they played as children in the shavings, or watched theglowing sparks in the smithy, now missed the process of a father'sdiscipline and guidance as their hands acquired facility for theirtasks. The home lost the male adults for from nine to twelve hours ofeach day, more than two-thirds of the waking period, and thus it lost alarge share of disciplinary guidance. In the rise of the factory system, to a large extent the family lost the father. 

When the workshop left the home its most efficient school was taken fromit. The lessons may have been limited, crude, and deadly practical, butthe method approximated to the ideals which modern pedagogy seeks torealize. Among the shavings children learned by doing; schooling wasperfectly natural; it involved all the powers; it had the incalculablevalue of informality and reality. The father gone and the mother stillfully occupied with her tasks, the children lost that practical trainingfor life which home industry had afforded. On the one hand, the youngbecame the victims of idleness and, on the other, the prey of thevoracious factory system. 

This condition gave rise to the public-school system. It appealed toRobert Raikes and others. The school appeared and took over the child. Of course schools had existed, here and there, long before this, but nowthey had an enlarged responsibility; they must act almost in the placeof the parents for the formal training of children. Having lost thefather and older males for the greater portion of the day, the home nowloses the children of from seven to the "'teen" years for five or sixhours of the day. The mother is left at home with the babies. Thefamily, once living under one roof, now is found scattered; it hasreached out into factory and school. Its hours of unified life have beenmarkedly reduced. 

But the factory system soon had a reflex influence on the home. Thatwhich was made in the factory came back into the home, not only in theform of the articles formerly made by the men, but in those made by thewomen. Clothes, candles, butter, cheese, preserves, and meat--allformerly home products for the use of the family producing them--nowwere prepared in larger quantities, by mechanical processes, and werebrought back into the home. Woman's labor was lightened; the older girlswere liberated from the loom and they began to seek occupation, education, and diversion according to their opportunities in life. 

That last step made it possible for people to think of the communizationof home industry, to think of eating food cooked in other ovens thantheir own, to think of one oven large enough for a whole village. Manyinteresting experiments in co-operative living immediately sprang up. But the next step came slowly and, even now, is only firmly establishedin the cities, in the actual abandonment of the family kitchen for thecommunity kitchen in the form of the restaurant. In such families wehave unity only in the hours of sleep and recreation. 

Along with abandonment of the separate kitchen there has proceededthe abandonment of the parlor in the homes of the middle classes. To lose the old, mournful front room may be no subject for tears, but the loss of the evening family group, about the fireside orthe reading-lamp, is a real and sad loss. The commercialized amusementshave offered greater attractions to vigorous youth. The theater andits lesser satellites, amusements, entertainments, lectures, thelyceum, and recreation-by-proxy in ball games and matches have takenthe place of united family recreation. Of course this has been anatural development of the older village play-life and has been byno means an unmixed ill. 

Now, behold, what has become of the old-time home life! The family thatspent nearly twenty-four hours together now spends a scarce seven oreight, and these are occupied in sleeping! Little wonder that the nextstep is taken--the abandonment of this remainder, the sleep period, under a domestic roof, as the family moves into a hotel!

Along with the tendency toward communal working and eating we see thetendency to communal living by the development of the apartmentbuilding. Since roof-trees are so expensive, and since in a practicalage, few of us can afford to pay for sentiment, why not put a dozenfamilies under one roof-tree? True we sacrifice lawns, gardens, naturalplaces for children to play; we lose birds and flowers and the charm ofevening hours on porches, or galleries, but think of what we gain inbricks and mortar, in labor saved from splitting wood and shovelingcoal, in janitor service! The transition is now complete; the home issimply that item in the economic machinery which will best furnish usstorage for our sleeping bodies and our clothes!

We are undoubtedly in a period of great changes in family life, and nofamily can count on escaping the influence of the change. The one singleoutstanding and most potent change, so far as the character of familylife is concerned, is, in the United States, the rapid polarization ofpopulation in the cities. The United States Census Bureau counts allresidents in cities of over 8, 000 population as "urban. " In 1800 the"urban" population was 4 per cent of the total population; in 1850 itwas 12. 5 per cent; in 1870, 20. 9 per cent; in 1890, 29. 2 per cent; in1900, 33. 1 per cent; in 1910 it was estimated at 40 per cent. [2] Hereis a trend so clearly marked that we cannot deny its reality, while itssignificance is familiar to everyone today. 

However, the village type remains; there are still many homes where ameasure of family unity persists, where at least in one meal daily and, for purposes of sleeping and, occasionally, for the evening hours ofrecreation, there is a consciousness of home life. Yet the most remotevillage feels the pressure of change. The few homes conforming to theolder ideals are recognized as exceptional. The city draws the villageand rural family to itself, and the contagion of its customs and idealsspreads through the villages and affects the forms of living there. Youths become city dwellers and do not cease to scoff at the villageunless later years give them wisdom to appreciate its higher values. Thestandard of domestic organization is established by the city; that typeof living is the ideal toward which nearly all are striving. 

The important question for all persons is whether the changes now takingplace in family life are good or ill. It is impossible to say whetherthe whole trend is for the better; the many elements are too diverse andoften apparently conflicting. Faith in the orderly development ofsociety gives ground for belief that these changes ultimately work for ahigher type of family life. The city may be regarded as only atransition stage in social evolution--the compacting of masses ofpersons together that out of the new fusing and welding may arise newmethods of social living. The larger numbers point to more highlydeveloped forms of social organization. When these larger units discovertheir greater purposes, above factory and mill and store, and realizethem in personal values, the city life will be a more highly developedmechanism for the higher life of man. The home life will develop alongwith that city life. 

§ 4. PURPOSEFUL ORGANIZATION

At present the home is suffering, just as the city is suffering, from alack of that purposeful organization which will order the parts arightand subject the processes to the most important and ultimate purposes. The city is simply an aggregation of persons, scarcely having anyconscious organization, thrown together for purposes of industry. Itwill before very long organize itself for purposes of personal welfareand education. The family is usually a group bound in ties of strugglefor shelter, food, and pleasure. Such consciousness as it possesses isthat of being helplessly at the mercy of conflicting economic forces. The adjustment of those forces, their subjection to man's higherinterests, must come in the future and will help the family to freedomto discover its true purpose. 

It is easy to insist on the responsibility of parents for thecharacter-training of their children, but it is difficult to see howthat responsibility can be properly discharged under industrialconditions that take both father and mother out of the home the wholeday and leave them too weary to stay awake in the evening, too poor tofurnish decent conditions of living, and too apathetic under the dullmonotony of labor to care for life's finer interests. The welfare of thefamily is tied up with the welfare of the race; if progress can besecured in one part progress in the whole ensues. 

There are those who raise the question whether family life is apermanent form of social organization for which we may wisely contend, or is but a phase from which the race is now emerging. Some see signsthat the ties of marriage will be but temporary, that children will beborn, not into families but into the life of the state, bearing onlytheir mothers' names and knowing no brothers and sisters save in thebrotherhood of the state. Whether the permanent elements in family lifefurnish a sufficiently worthy basis for its preservation is a subjectfor careful consideration. 

§ 5. THE HOME AND THE FAMILY

The family is more important than the home, just as the man is more thanhis clothing. The form of the home changes; the life of the familycontinues unchanged in its essential characteristics. The family causesthe home to be. Professor Arthur J. Todd insists that the family is thebasis of marriage, rather than marriage the cause of the family. [3]Small groups for protection and social living would precede formalarrangements of monogamy. Westermarck concludes that it was "for thebenefit of the young that male and female continued to livetogether. "[4] The importance of this consideration for us lies in thethought of the overshadowing importance of this social group which wenow call the family. The family is the primary cell of society, thefirst unit in social organization. Our thought must balance itselfbetween the importance of this social group, to be preserved in itsintegrity, and the value of the home, with its varied forms of activityand ministry, as a means of preserving and developing this group, thefamily. 

One hears today many pessimistic utterances regarding the modern home. Some even tell us that it is doomed to become extinct. Without doubtgreat economic changes in society are producing profound changes in theorganization and character of the home. But the home has always beensubject to such changes; the factor which we need to watch with greatercare is the family; the former is but the shell of the latter. 

The character of each home will depend largely on the economic conditionof those who dwell in it. The homes of every age will reflect the socialconditions of that age. The picture in historical romances of the homeof the mediaeval period, where the factory, or shop, joined thedining-room, where the apprentices ate and roomed in the home, where onemight be compelled to furnish and provision his home literally as hiscastle for defense, presents a marked difference to the home of thiscentury tending to syndicate all its labors with all the other homes ofthe community. Since the home is simply the organization and mechanismof the family life, it is most susceptible to material and socialchanges. It varies as do the fashions of men. 

Much that we assume to be detrimental to the life of the home is simplydue to the fact that in the evolution of society the family, as it were, puts on a new suit of clothes, adopts new forms of organization to meetthe changing external conditions. 

§ 6. THE HOME CHANGING; THE FAMILY ABIDING

The home is of importance only as a tool, a means to the final ends ofthe family life; the test of its efficiency is not whether it maintainstraditional forms but whether it best serves the highest aims of familylife. We may abandon all the older customs; our regret for them, as welook back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than theregrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on thespinning-wheel and the hand loom that cumbered the kitchen of theirchildhood. Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated, that human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discardedthe family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developingcivilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his ownhouse, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these daysof specialized service in community living, the home has changed witheach step of industrial progress, but the family has remainedpractically unchanged. 

The family stands a practically unchanging factor of personal qualitiesat the center of our civilization; the family rather than the homedetermines the character of the coming days. In its social relationshipsare rooted the things that are best in all our lives. In its socialtraining lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment anddevelopment than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil ofsociety, central to all its problems and possibilities. 

Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We arewhat we are, not by the ideals held before us for thirty minutes a weekor once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in theclassroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circumstances that havetouched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be. 

The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of familylife. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot thatclaims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedgedinto its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered loveand held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than theplace made it potent. 

Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits, tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who hasleft no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them somethingbetter, the aptitude for things good and honorable, the memory of a goodname, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The personallife has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the futureshould be not whether we can pass on intact the forms of homeorganization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of idealfamily life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes fromthe much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on thebetter part, the personal values in the association of lives in thefamily. 

 I. References for Study

 W. F. Lofthouse, _Ethics and the Family_, chaps. Ii, xi, xii. Hodder & Stoughton, $2. 50. 

 Charles R. Henderson, _Social Duties from the Christian Point of View_, chaps. Ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1. 25. 

 C. W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0. 25. 

 II. Further Reading

 Jacob A. Riis, _Peril and Preservation of the Home_. Jacobs, Philadelphia, Pa. , $1. 00. 

 Charles R. Henderson, _Social Elements_. Scribner, $1. 50. 

 Charles F. Thwing, _The Recovery of the Home_. American Baptist Publication Society, $0. 15. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. The tendency toward community life illustrated in the schools, amusement parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose of the family, how far is communal life desirable?

 2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable condition for the higher purposes of the family?

 3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost by present factory consolidation of industry?

 4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those which are now passing?

 5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger measure of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?

 6. What are the important things to contend for in this institution? Why should we expect change in the form of the home and what are the features which should not be changed?

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Figures taken from C. W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and ReligiousEducation in the American Home_, 1911. 

[3] A. J. Todd, _Primitive Family and Education_, p. 21. A most valuableand suggestive book. 

[4] Cited by Todd, p. 21. 

CHAPTER III

THE PERMANENT ELEMENTS IN FAMILY LIFE

§ 1. THE DOMINANT MOTIVE

The chief end of society is to improve the race, to develop the higherand steadily improving type of human beings. We can test the life of thefamily and determine the values of its elements by asking whether and inwhat degree they minister to this end, the growth of better persons. This is more than a theoretical aim or one conceived in a search forideals. It is written plain in our passions and strongest inclinations. That which parents supremely desire for their children is that they maybecome strong in body, capable and alert in mind, and animated by worthyprinciples and ideals. The parent desires a good man, fit to take hisplace, do his work, make his contribution to the social well-being, ableto live to the fulness of his powers, to take life in all its reaches ofmeaning and heights of vision and beauty. In true parenthood all hopesof success, of riches, fame, and ease, are seen but as avenues to thisend, as means of making the finer character, of growing the idealperson. If we were compelled to choose for our children we should electpoverty, pain, disgrace, toil, and suffering if we knew this was theonly highway to full manhood and womanhood, to completeness ofcharacter. Indeed, we do constantly so choose, knowing that they mustendure hardness, bear the yoke in their youth, and learn that

 Love and joy are torches lit At altar fires of sacrifice. 

With this dominating purpose clearly in mind we are prepared to ask, What are the elements of family life which among the changes of today weneed most carefully to preserve in order to maintain efficiency incharacter development? In days when the outer shell of domesticarrangements changes, when readjustments are being made in theorganization of the family, what is there too precious to lose, soworthy and essential that we waste no time when seeking to maintain it?

§ 2. POTENCIES TO BE PRESERVED--SOCIAL QUALITIES

The first great element to be preserved in all family life is that ofthe power of the small group for purposes of character development. Theinfant's earliest world is the mother's arms. In order to grow into aman fitted for the wider world of social living, he must learn to livein a world within his comprehension. A child's life moves through thewidening circles of mother-care, family group, neighborhood, school, city, state, and nation into world-living. He must take the first stepsbefore he is able to take the next ones. He must learn to live with thefew as preparation for living with the many. In earliest infancy hetakes his first unconscious lessons in the fine art of living with otherfolks as he relates himself to parents and to brothers and sisters. 

Secondly, the family life affords the best agency for social training. The family is the ideal democracy into which the child-life is born. Here habits are formed, ideals are pictured, and life itself isinterpreted. It is an ideal democracy, first, because it is a socialorganization existing for the sake of persons. The family comes nearerto fulfilling the true ideal of a democratic social order than does anyother institution. It is founded to bring lives into this world; it ismaintained for the sake of those lives; all its life, its methods, andstandards are determined, ideally, by the needs of persons. It is anideal democracy, secondly, because its guiding principle is that thegreater lives must be devoted to the good of the lesser, the parent forthe little child, the older members for the younger, in an attempt toextend to the very least the greatest good enjoyed by all. Thirdly, ideally it is a true democracy in that it gives to each member a sharein its own affairs and develops the power to bear responsibilities andto carry each his own load in life. Thus the family group is the bestpossible training for the life and work of the larger group, the state, and for world-living. [5] The maintenance of the ideals of the state, asa democracy, depends on the continuance of this institution with itspeculiar power to train life in infancy and childhood for the life ofmanhood in the state. Such training can be given only in the smallergroup that is governed by the motives peculiar to home and family life. The power to impress these principles depends on the size of the group. The small social organization, the family circle of from three membersto even a dozen, bound by ties of affection, is the one great, efficientschool, training youth to live in social terms. 

Thirdly, the family sets spiritual values first. Our age especiallyneeds men and women who think in terms of spiritual values, who riseabove the measures of pounds and dollars and weigh life by personalqualities and worth. That is precisely what the home does. It prizesmost highly the helpless, economically worthless infant; it measuresevery member by his personal character, his affectional worth. Itsriches do not depend on that which money can buy, but on the personalqualities of love, goodness, kindness; on memories, associations, affection. The true home gives to every child-life the power to choosethe things of the world on the basis of their worth in personality. Onlythe mistaken judgments of later years, the short-minded wisdom of theworld, make youth gradually lose the habit of preferring the home'sspiritual benefits to the material rewards of the world of business. Nolife can be furnished for the strain of our modern materialism thatlacks the basis of idealism furnished in the true family. 

§ 3. POTENCIES TO BE PRESERVED--THE MORAL LIFE

Fourthly, the power of family living to develop love as loyalty is to benoted. In this small group is laid the foundation of the moral life. "The family is the primer in the moral education of the race. "[6] Herethe new-born life begins to relate itself to other lives. Here it beginslife in an atmosphere saturated by love, the central principle of allvirtue, eventually loyalty to ideals in persons and devotion to them, "the greatest of these, " because it is the parent of all virtue. Themoral life, that life which is adjusted, capable, and adequately motivedfor helpful, efficient, enriching living with all other lives, is not amatter of rules, regulations, and restrictions. Neither is it a matterof separate habits as to this or the other kind of behavior, though thiscomes nearer to it than do rules and prescriptions. The character-lifewhich parents desire for their children is not that which will do theright thing when it has discovered that right thing in some book ofrules, nor that life which will do the right thing because societypoints that way, nor even that life which automatically does the rightthing, but it is the life which, constantly moved by some high innercompulsion, some imperative of vision and ideal, moves to the highestpossible plane of action in every situation. This is the life ofloyalty. It begins with loyalty to persons, with that devotion whichbegins with affection. In no other place is this so well developed as inthe relations of the family. This is the child's first and mostpotential school. Here the lessons are wholly unconscious; here they arestrengthened by the pleasurable emotions. It is a joy to be loyal tothose we love. Indeed, who can tell which comes first, the joy, theloyalty, or the love?

The power of this small social group of the family to develop thefundamental principle of loyalty, the root of all virtues, gives aposition of great importance to the affections in the family. We do wellto contend for the maintenance of conditions of family living which willstrengthen the ties of affection. If children could be thrust into thecare of the state, in large groups, separated from parental care andoversight, it is difficult to see what emotional stimulus towardaffection would remain. The personal devotion to intimate adults wouldin only the smallest degree compensate for the loss of father andmother. We know nothing of such devotion arising to any large degree inorphan asylums, still less in institutions under the cold and impersonalcare of the state. It has been urged that the affections of parentsstand in the way of a scientific regimen and education for smallchildren. The cold, passionless, automatic parent, then, would be theideal--a Mr. Dombey or a Mr. Feverel. Parents make many mistakes, butthese mistakes are not due to too much affection, but to untrained mindsand uneducated affections. It were better to save the values of theiraffections and on them to build a wise discipline for childhood byproviding adequate training of parents for their duties. 

Fifthly, there are some elements of the cost of family life, even itsapparently unnecessary sacrifice and pain, that we do well to seek tokeep. Character grows in paying the high price of maintaining a family. It is the most expensive form of living for adults. Marriages are nowdelayed because of the fear of the actual monetary cost; but far moreserious is the cost in care, in nerves, in patience, in all the greatelements of self-denial. No child ever knows what he has cost until hehas children of his own. But this discipline of self-denial is thatwhich saves us from selfishness. It is necessary to have some personalobjects for which to give our lives if they are to be saved fromcentrifugation, from death through ingrowing affection. True, manybachelors and spinsters have learned the way of self-denying, fellow-serving love. But how can a true parent escape that lesson? Nordoes it stop with parents; as children grow up together they, too, mustlearn mutual forbearance, conciliation, and, soon, the joy of service. One sees selfishness in the little child gradually fading in thepractice of family service, helpfulness, consideration for others. Thesingle child in a family misses something more important than playmates;he misses all the education of play and service. But who cannot remembermany families that have grown to beauty of character under thediscipline of home life, and especially when this has involved realsacrifices? The stories in the Pepper books illustrate the spirit thatblossoms under the trials and hardships of the struggle of a family fora livelihood and for the maintenance of a home. 

A clear function becomes evident for this social group called thefamily. It is that of dealing with young lives, in groups bound by tiesof blood and similarity, for purposes of the development of personalcharacter. The family has an essentially educational function. Bearingin mind that "educational" means the orderly development of the powersof the life, we can think of our families as existing for this purposeand to be tested by their ability to do this work, especially by theirability to develop persons, young lives, that have the power, thevision, the acquired habits and experience to live as more than animals. The family is an educational institution dealing with child-life for itsfull growth and its self-realization, especially on character levels. The educational function suggests the features of family life which wedo well to seek to preserve. Many incidental forms may pass, but theessential human relations and experiences that go to develop life andcharacter must be maintained at any cost. 

 I. References for Study

 C. F. And C. B. Thwing, _The Family_, chap. Vii. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1. 60. 

 W. F. Lofthouse, _Ethics and the Family_, chaps. Iv, v. Hodder & Stoughton, $2. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 "The Improvement of Religious Education, " _Proceedings of the Religious Education Association_, I, 119-23. $0. 50. 

 _Religious Education_, April, 1911, VI, 1-48. 

 S. P. Breckinridge and E. Abbott, _The Delinquent Child and the Home_. Russell Sage Foundation, $2. 00. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What is the chief end of all forms of social organization?

 2. What is in the last analysis the aim of every parent?

 3. What advantage has the family over the school and larger groups for educational purposes?

 4. In what sense is the family an ideal democracy?

 5. Show how the family sets spiritual values first. 

 6. What in your judgment are the first evidences of character development? In what way do these come to the surface in the family? What is the factor of love in the development of character?

 7. Is that an ideal family in which none of the members bear pain or are called upon for self-denial? Can you see any especial advantage to character in the very difficulties and apparent disadvantages in the life of the family?

FOOTNOTES:

[5] See "Democracy in the Home, " _American Journal of Sociology_, January, 1912. 

[6] Francis G. Peabody, _The Approach to the Social Question_, p. 94. 

CHAPTER IV

THE RELIGIOUS PLACE OF THE FAMILY

§ 1. DEVELOPMENT AS A RELIGIOUS INSTITUTION

The family is the most important religious institution in the life oftoday. It ranks in influence before the church. It has always held thisplace. Even among primitive peoples, where family life was an uncertainquantity, the relations of parents, or of one of the parents, to thechildren afforded the opportunity most frequently used for theirinstruction in tribal religious ideals and customs. We cannot generalizeas to the practices of savage man in regard to family life, for thosepractices range from common promiscuous relationships, without apparentcare for offspring, to a family unity and purity approaching the best weknow; but this much is certain, that there was a common sense ofresponsibility for the training of young children in moral and religiousideas and customs, and that, in the degree that the family approached toseparateness and unity, it accepted the primary responsibility for thistask. The higher the type of family life the more fully does itdischarge its function in the education of the child. [7]

It might be safe to say that among primitive peoples there were threestages, or types, of relationship based on the breeding of children, orthree stages of development toward family life. The first is a loose andindefinite relationship existing principally between the adults, or themales and females, under which children born when not desired areneglected or strangled and, when acceptable, may be in the care ofeither parent, or of neither. Since the group, associated throughinfancy with at least one parent, is as yet undeveloped, any instructionwill be individual and usually incidental. 

The second form is that of a kind of family unity, either about themother or the father, or both, or about a group of parents, in which thechildren live together and are sheltered and nurtured for their earlieryears. Here, however, the real relationship of the child is to thetribe, the family is but his temporary guardian, and, at least by theage of puberty, he will be initiated into the tribal secrets. If he is aboy, he will cease to be a member of the family group and will go tolive in the "men's house, " becoming a part of the larger life of thetribe. [8] Such moral and religious instruction as he may acquire willcome from the songs, traditions, and conversation which he hears as achild. 

The third type approaches the modern ideal, with a greater or lessdegree of permanent unity between the two parents and with permanence inthe group of the offspring. The parental responsibility continues for agreater length of time and, since the tribe makes smaller claims, andthe parents live in the common domestic group, much more instruction ispossible and is given. The tribal ideals, the traditions, observances, and religious rites are imparted to children gradually in their homes. 

The last type brings us to the Hebrew conception of family life. Itdeveloped toward the Christian ideal. At first, polygamy was permitted;woman was the chattel of man and excluded from any part in the religiousrites. But it included the ideal of monogamy in its tradition of theorigin of the world, it denounced and punished adultery (Deut. 22: 22), and it gave especial attention to the training of the offspring. "Andthese words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart; andthou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk ofthem when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up ... And thou shaltwrite them upon the door-posts of thy house and upon thy gates" (Deut. 6: 6, 7, 9). 

Much later, the messianic hope, the belief that in some Jewish familythere should be born one divinely commissioned and endowed to liberateIsrael and to give the Jews world-sovereignty, operated to elevate theconception of motherhood and, through that, of the family. It mademarriage desirable and children a blessing; it rendered motherhoodsacred. It tended to center national hopes and religious ideals aboutthe family. [9]

There are a few glimpses of ideal family life in the Old Testament. Theyare all summed up in the eloquent tribute to motherhood in the words ofKing Lemuel in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It must beremembered, however, that such ideals did not belong to the Jews alone, that Plutarch shows many pictures of maternal fidelity and wifelydevotion, that Greek and Roman history have their Cornelia, Iphigenia, and Mallonia. [10]

The Jews are an excellent example of the power of the family life tomaintain distinct characteristics and to secure marked development. Practically throughout all the Christian era they have been a peoplewithout a land, a constitution, or a government, and yet never withoutrace consciousness, national unity, and separateness. Their unity hascontinued in spite of dispersion, persecution, and losses; they haveremained a race in the face of political storms that have swept otherpeoples away. Their unity has continued about two great centers, thecustoms of religion and the life of the family. 

 The results of Jewish respect for family life can also be seen in the health of their own children. In 1910, for instance, among poor Jews in Manchester the mortality of infants under one year of age was found to be 118 per thousand; among poor Gentiles, 300 per thousand; and comparisons made some six years ago between Jewish and Gentile children in schools in the poorer parts of Manchester and Leeds (England) have shown that the Jewish children are uniformly taller, they weigh more, and their bones and teeth are superior. [11]

§ 2. THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY

The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a newinstitution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but ascontrolled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of thehome and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He did notgive formal rules for the regulation of homes; rather he made aspiritual ideal of family life the basic thought of all his teaching. Hesaid more about the family than concerning any other human institution, yet he established no family life of his own. He is called the founderof the church, yet he scarcely mentions that institution, while hefrequently teaches concerning home duties and family relations. Heglorifies the relations of the family by making them the figure by whichmen may understand the highest relations of life. He speaks more offatherhood and sonship than of any other relations. He gives directionfor living, using the family terms of brotherhood. He points forward toideal living in a home beyond this life. He teaches men when they thinkof God and when they address him to take the family attitude and callhim Father. 

If we sum up all the teachings of Jesus and separate them from ourpreconceptions of their theological content, we cannot but be impressedwith the facts that he seized upon the family life as the bestexpression of the highest relationships; that he pointed to a purifiedfamily life, in which spiritual aims would dominate, as the bestexpression of ideal relationships among his followers; and that heglorified marriage and really made the family the great, divine, sacramental institution of human society. 

We can hardly overestimate the importance of such teaching to thecharacter of the family. The early Christians not only accepted Jesus astheir teacher and savior; they took their family life as the opportunityto show what the Kingdom of God, the ideal society, was like. Familylife was consecrated. Men and women belonged to the new order withtheir whole households. Religion became largely a family matter. Theworship that had been confined to the temple now made an altar in everyhome and a holy of holies in the midst of every family. The scripturesthat belonged to the synagogue now belonged in the home. Above all, thisfamily existed for the purposes taught by Jesus, that men might grow inbrotherhood toward the likeness of the divine Fatherhood. It was aninstitution, not for economic purpose of food and shelter, not forpersonal ends of passion or pride, but for spiritual purpose, for thegrowth of persons, especially the young in the home, in character, into"the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. "

Christianity is essentially a religion of ideal family life. Itconceives of human society, not in terms of a monarchy with a king andsubjects, but in terms of a family with a great all-Father and hischildren, who live in brotherhood, who take life as their opportunityfor those family joys of service and sacrifice. It hopes to solve theworld's ills, not by external regulations, but by bringing all men intoa new family life, a birth into this new family life with God, sosecuring a new personal environment, a new personality as the center androot of all social betterment. He who would come into this new socialorder must come into the divine family, must humble himself and becomeas a little child, must know his Father and love his brothers. 

Christianity, then, not only seeks an ideal family; it makes the familythe ideal social institution and order. It makes family life holy, sacramental, religious in its very nature. This fact gives addedimportance to the preservation and development of the ideals of familylife for the sake of their religious significance and influence. It notonly makes religion a part of the life of the home but makes a religiouspurpose the very reason for the existence of the Christian type of home. It makes our homes essentially religious institutions, to be judged byreligious products. 

 I. References for Study

 G. A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chap. Xvi. Revell, $1. 35. 

 Article on "The Family, " in Hastings, _Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics_. 

 II. Further Reading

 On the educational function of the family: A. J. Todd, _The Primitive Family as an Educational Agency_. Putnam, $2. 00. 

 On the religious place of the family: C. F. And C. B. Thwing, _The Family_. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1. 60. 

 I. J. Peritz, "Biblical Ideal of the Home, " _Religious Education_, VI, 322. 

 H. Hanson, _The Function of the Family_. American Baptist Publication Society, $0. 15. 

 W. Becker, _Christian Education, or the Duties of Parents_. Herder, $1. 00. A striking presentation of the Roman Catholic view; could be read to advantage by all parents. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What place did religion hold in the primitive family? What reference or allusion do we find in the Old Testament to the place of religion in the family (Deut. 6:7-9, 20-25)? What in the New Testament?

 2. What has been the effect of purity of family life on the Jewish race?

 3. What place did the family hold in the teachings of Jesus?

 4. What shall we think of the relations of the church and family as to their comparative rights and our duty to them?

 5. Do you agree that the family is the most important religious institution?

FOOTNOTES:

[7] For a brief statement see Brinton, _Religions of Primitive Peoples_, Lecture 4, § 7; also Todd, _The Family as an Educational Agency_. 

[8] See Webster, _Primitive Secret Societies_, chaps. I, ii. 

[9] On the place of the family in different religious systems see thefine article under "Family" in Hastings, _Encyclopaedia of Religion andEthics_. 

[10] See Lecky, _History of European Morals_, chap. Ii. 

[11] Quoted by Lofthouse in _Ethics and the Family_, p. 8, from W. Hall, in _Progress_ (London), April, 1907. 

CHAPTER V

THE MEANING OF RELIGIOUS EDUCATION IN THE FAMILY

§ 1. THE FUNCTION OF THE FAMILY

With the brief statement of the history of the family and of itsfunction in society which has already been given we are prepared to puttogether the two conclusions: first, that the family has an educationalfunction, in that it exists as a social institution for the protection, nurture, development, and training of young lives, and, secondly, thatit is a religious institution, the most influential and important of allreligious institutions, whenever it realizes in any adequate degree itspossibilities, because it is rooted in love and loyalty. It exists forpersonal and spiritual ideals and, in Christianity, it is inseparablyconnected with the teachings and the ideals of Jesus. It is educationalin function and religious in character, so that it is essentially aninstitution for religious education. Religious education is not anoccasional incident in its life; it is the very aim and dominatingpurpose of a high-minded family. 

§ 2. WHAT IS RELIGIOUS EDUCATION?

To make this the more clear we may need to clarify our minds as tocertain popular conceptions of education. Education means much morethan instruction; religious education means much more than instructionin religion. Many habitually think of an educational institution asnecessarily a place where pupils sit at desks and teachers preside overclasses, the teachers imparting information which is to be memorized bythe pupils, so that, from this point of view, a Sunday school would bealmost the only institution for the religious education of children inexistence, because it is the only one exclusively devoted to impartinginstruction to children in specifically religious subjects. Such a viewwould limit religious education in the home to the formal teaching ofthe Bible and religious dogma by parents. The memorizing of scripturalpassages and of the different catechisms once constituted a regular dutyin almost all well-ordered homes. Today it is rarely attempted. Doesthat mean that religious education has ceased in the home?

But education means much more than instruction. Education is the wholeprocess, of which instruction is only a part. Education is the orderlydevelopment of lives, according to scientific principles, into thefulness of their powers, the realization of all their possibilities, thejoy of their world, the utmost rendering in efficiency of their service. It includes the training of powers of thought, feeling, willing, anddoing; it includes the development of abilities to discern, discriminate, choose, determine, feel, and do. It prepares the life forliving with other lives; it prepares the whole of the life, developingthe higher nature, the life of the spirit, for living in a spiritualuniverse. 

Religious education, then, means much more than instruction in theliterature, history, and philosophy of religion. It means the kind ofdirected development which regards the one who is developing as areligious person, which seeks to develop that one to fulness ofreligious powers and personality, and which uses, as means to that end, material of religious inspiration and significance and, indeed, regardsall material in that light. Religious education seeks to direct areligious process of growth with a religious purpose for religiouspersons. Religious education is the spirit which characterizes the workof every educator who looks on the child as a spiritual nature, areligious person; it is the work of every educator who sees his aim asthat of training this spiritual person to fulness of living in a societyessentially spiritual. 

In simplest possible terms, religious education means the training ofpersons to live the religious life and to do their work in the world asreligious persons. It must mean, then, the development of character; itincludes the aim, in the parents' minds, to bring their children up tothe measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. It is evident thatthis is a much greater task, and yet more natural and beautiful, thanmere instruction in formal ideas or words in the Bible or in acatechism; that it is not and cannot be accomplished in some singleperiod, some set hour, but is continuous, through all the days; that itpervades not only the spoken words, but the actions, organization, andthe very atmosphere of the home. 

§ 3. THE EDUCATIONAL PROCESS

Normal persons never stop growing. Just as children grow all the time intheir bodies, so do adults and all others grow all the time in mind andwill and powers of the higher life whenever they live normally. We growspiritually, not only in church and under the stimulus of song andprayer, but we grow when the beauty of the woods appeals to us, when theface lightens at the face of a friend, when we meet and master atemptation, when we brace up under a load, when we do faithfully thedreary, daily task, when we adjust our thoughts in sympathy to others, when we move in the crowd, when we think by ourselves. The educationalprocess is continuous. The children in the home are being moved, stimulated, every instant, and they are being changed in minute butnevertheless real and important degrees by each impression. There isnever a moment in which their character is not being developed eitherfor good or for ill. Religious education--that is, the development oftheir lives as religious persons--goes on all the time in the home, andit is either for good or for ill. 

Next to the idea of the continuous and all-pervasive character of thisprocess of religious development the most important thought for us isthat religious education in the home may be determined by ourselves. This continuous, fateful process is not a blind, resistless one. It isour duty to direct it. It is possible for wise parents to determine thecharacters of their children. We must not forget this. It cannot be toostrongly insisted on. The development of life is under law. This is anorderly world. Things do not just happen in it. We believe in a law thatdetermines the type of a cabbage, the character of a weed. Do we believethat this universe is so ordered that there is a law for weeds and nonefor the higher life of man? Do we hold that cabbages grow by law butcharacter comes by chance? If there is a law we may find it and mustobey it. If we may know how to develop character, with as greatcertainty as we know how to do our daily work, will not this be ourhighest task, our greatest joy, the supreme thing to do in life?

§ 4. THE CONSEQUENT OBLIGATION

This is the first great obligation of parents and of those who arewilling to accept the joys and responsibilities of parenthood. We haveno right to bring into this world lives with all the possibilities thata religious nature involves unless we know how to develop those livesfor the best and from the worst. When we picture what a little child maybecome, from the vile, depraved, despoiling beast or the despicable, sneaking hypocrite on one extreme, to the upright, God-loving, man-serving man or woman with the love of purity, honor, truth, andgoodness speaking through the life, we may well pause, realizing we needmore than a sentimental desire that the child may reach the heights ofgoodness: we must know the way there and the methods of leading the lifein that way. True devotion to God and to childhood will mean more thanpetitions for the salvation of children; it will mean the prayer that islabor and the labor that is prayer to know how they may attain fulnessof spiritual life; it will mean reverent searching into the divine waysof growth in grace. The study of the means and methods of religiouseducation, especially of children, in the home and family, is one of themost evident and important religious duties resting on parents and allwho contemplate marriage and family life. 

§ 5. WHAT IS MEANT BY THE RELIGIOUS DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD?

In discussing the development of character in children one hears oftenthe question, "Which is the earliest virtue to appear in a child?"People will debate whether it is truthfulness, reverence, kindness, orsome other virtue. All this implies a picture of the child as a treethat sends forth shoots of separate virtues one after another. But thecharacter desired is not a series of branches, it is rather like asymmetrical tree; it is not certain parts, but it is the whole of apersonality. The development of religious character is not a matter ofconsciously separable virtues, but is the determination of the trend andquality of the whole life. Moral training is not a matter of cultivatinghonesty today, purity tomorrow, and kindness the day after. Virtues haveno separate value. Character cannot be disintegrated into a list ofindependent qualities. We seek a life that, as a whole life, loves andfollows truth, goodness, and service. 

§ 6. EARLY TENDENCIES

But it is wise to inquire as to those manifestations of a pure andspiritual life which will earliest appear. One does not need to look farfor the answer. Children are always affectionate; they manifest thepossibilities of love. True, this affection is rooted in physiologicalexperience, based on relations to the mother and on daily propinquity tothe rest of the family, but it is that which may be colored by devotion, elevated by unselfish service, and may become the first great, idealloyalty of the child's life. Little boys will fight and girls willquarrel more readily over the question of the merits of their respectiveparents than over any other issue. Almost as soon as a child can talk heboasts of the valor of his father, the beauty of his mother. Here isloyalty at work. He stands for them; he resents the least doubt as totheir superiority, not because they give him food and shelter, butbecause they are his, because to him they are worthy; in all things theyhave the worth, the highest good; they are, in person, the virtue oflife. Therefore in fighting for the reputation of his parents he ispracticing loyalty to an ideal. 

The principle of loyalty is the life-force of virtue; it is like thepower that sends the tree toward the heavens, the upthrust of life. Itmay be cultivated in a thousand ways. Provided there is the outreach andupreach of loyalty within and that there is furnished without the worthyobject, ideal, and aim, the life will grow upward and increase incharacter, beauty, and strength. 

Next to the affectionate idealization of parents and home-folk one ofthe earliest manifestations of the spirit of loyalty in the child ishis desire to have a share in the activities of the home. He would notonly look like those he admires; he would do what they do. This is morethan mere imitation; it is loyalty at work again. The direction of thistendency is one of the largest opportunities before parents and can makethe most important contribution to character. 

The religious life of the child is essentially a matter of loyalty. Hisfaith, affections, aspirations, and endeavors turn toward persons, institutions, and concepts which are to him ideal. He does not analyze, he cannot describe, or even narrate, his religious experiences, but heaffectionately moves, with a sense of pleasure, toward those thingswhich seem to him ideal, toward parents, customs of the home or school, the church, his class, his teacher, toward characters in story-books. Heis likely to think of Jesus in just that way, as the one person whom hewould most of all like to know and be with. The life of virtue and thereligious life then will be weak or strong in the measure that the childhas the stimulating ideals which call forth his loyalty and in themeasure that he has opportunity to express that loyalty. His religiouslife will consist, not so much in external forms perhaps, still less inintellectual statements about theology or even about his ownexperiences, as in a growing realization of the great ideals, anincreasing sense of their meaning and reality within, and, on theobjective side, a steady moving of his life toward them in action andhabits and therefore in character and quality. 

§ 7. IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS

It is worth while to insist upon two important considerations. Parentswho stand as gardeners watching the growth of the tender plant ofchild-character may be looking for developments that never ought to comeand will be disappointed because they were looking for the wrong thing. First, in watching for the beginnings of the religious life of the childin the family we are not expecting some new addition to the life, butrather the development of this whole life as a unity in a definitedirection which we call religious. It is the first and most importantconsideration that religious education is not something added to thelife as an extra subject of interest, but the development of the wholelife into religious character and usefulness. Secondly, this growth ofreligious character is going on all the time. It is not separable intopious periods; it is a part of the very life of the family. Perhaps thisincreases the difficulty of our task, for it removes it from the realmof the mechanical, from that which is easily apprehended and estimated. It takes the task of the religious education of children out of thestatistical into the vital, and reminds us that we are growing lifeevery second, that there is never a moment when religious education isnot in operation. This demands a consideration, not alone of lessons, ofperiods of worship and instruction, but of every influence, activity, and agency in all the family life that in any way affects the thinking, feeling, and action of the child. We are thinking of something moreimportant than organizing instruction and exercises in religion in thehome; we are thinking of organizing the family life for religiouspurposes, for the purpose of growing lives into their spiritual fulness. 

Perhaps the capital mistake in the religious education of the family isthat we overemphasize this or the other method and mechanism instead ofbending every effort to secure a real religious atmosphere and soil inwhich young souls can really grow while we leave the process of growthmore largely to the great husbandman. And the second great mistake isthat we are looking for mechanical evidence of a religious life insteadof for the development of a whole person. We must reinterpret the familyto ourselves and see it as the one great opportunity life affords us togrow other lives and to bring them to spiritual fulness by providing asocial atmosphere of the spirit and a constant, normal presentation ofsocial living in spiritual terms. 

§ 8. THE ORGANIZATION OF LOYALTY

When parents conceive the family in these terms and so organize the lifeof the home, the child becomes conscious of the fact, and at once thelife of the family furnishes him with his first, his nearest, and mostsatisfactory appeal to loyalty. He feels that which he cannot analyze orexpress, the spiritual beauty and loyalty of family life. That lifefurnishes a soil and atmosphere for his soul. It is an atmosphere madeof many elements: the primary and dominating purpose of parents andolder persons, the habitual life of service and love, the consciousnessof the reality of the Divine Presence, the fragrance of chastenedcharacter and experience, the customs of worship and affections. Thesethings are not easily created, they cannot be readily defined, nor candirections be given in a facile manner for their cultivation. They arethe elements most difficult to describe, hardest of all to secure whenlacking, least easily labeled, not to be purchased ready-made, and yetwithout them religious education is wholly impossible in the family. Without this immediate appeal to loyalty the loyalties of the childtoward higher and divine aims do not develop early; they are retardedand often remain dormant. For us all scarcely any more importantquestion can be presented than this: What appeals to spiritual idealismand loyalty does our family life present to the child? What quickeningof love for goodness and purity, truth and service, is there in the homeand its conduct?

 I. References for Study

 G. A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chaps. I, ii, xii, xiii. Revell, $1. 35. 

 George Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chaps. I, ii. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 J. T. McFarland, _Preservation versus Resurrection_. Eaton & Mains, $0. 07. 

 II. Further Reading

 C. W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0. 25. 

 George Hodges, _Training of Children_, chaps. I, ii, xv. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 G. A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, chaps. I, iv, xvi. Revell, $1. 35. 

 E. C. Wilm, _Culture of Religion_, chaps. I, ii. Pilgrim Press, $0. 75. 

 C. W. Rischell, _The Child as God's Child_. Methodist Book Concern, $0. 75. 

 E. E. Read Mumford, _The Dawn of Character_. Longmans, Green & Co. , $1. 20. See especially chap. Xii on "The Dawn of Religion. "

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. How would you define education?

 2. What is the difference between education and religious education?

 3. What makes the home especially effective in education?

 4. Is it true that it is possible to discover the laws of growth and so determine the development of character?

 5. Recall any very early manifestations of religious character in small children. What would you regard as the best kind of manifestation?

 6. What is the essential principle of the right life? How may we develop this in childhood?

 7. What are the things which most of all impress children?

 8. Would you think it wise to bring a child under the influence of a religious revival?

CHAPTER VI

THE CHILD'S RELIGIOUS IDEAS

How shall I begin to talk with my child about religion? Even the mostreligious parents feel hesitancy here. It may not be at all due to theunfamiliarity of the subject, though that is often the case; hesitationis due principally to a conscious artificiality in the action. It seemsunnatural to say, "My child, I want to talk with you about yourreligious life. " And so it is. There is something wrong when thatappears to be the only way. That situation indicates a lack of freedomof thought and intercourse with the child and a lack of naturalness inreligion. 

§ 1. THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFICULTY

The instinct is correct that tells us that we should be trespassing on achild's rights, or breaking down his proper reticence, in abruptly andformally questioning him about his religious life. The reserve ofchildren in this matter must be respected. The inner life of aspiration, of conscious relationship to the divine, is too sacred for display, evento those who are near to us. He violates the child's reverence who tearsaway his reticence. Even though the child may not consciously object, the process leads him toward the irreverent, facile self-exposure ofthe soul that characterizes some prayer meetings. But we may, also, aseasily err in the other direction and, by failing to invite theconfidences of our children, lead them to suppose we have no interest intheir higher life. 

§ 2. CONDITIONS OF SUCCESS

First, we must be content to wait for the child to open his heart. Wemust not force the door. But we can invite him to open, and the one formof invitation that scarcely ever fails is for you to give him yourconfidence. Talk honestly, simply to him of the aspects of yourreligious life that he can understand. If he knows that you confide inhim, he will confide in you. Here beware of sentimentality. Religion tothe child will find expression in everyday experiences. Your philosophyof religion he cannot comprehend, and with your mature emotions he hasno point of contact. Perhaps the best method of approach is to relateyour memories of those experiences which you _now see_ to have hadreligious significance to you. At the time they may have had no suchspecial meaning. You did not then analyze them. Your child will not andmust not analyze them, either; he must simply feel them. 

Secondly, rid your mind of the "times and seasons" notion. There is nomore reason why you should talk religion on Sunday than on Monday, unless the day's interests have quickened the child's questioning. Therecan be no set period; no times when you say, "This is the forty-fiveminutes of spiritual instruction and conversation. " The time availablemay be very short, only a sentence may be possible, or it may belengthened; everything will depend on the interest. It must be natural, a real part of the everyday thought and talk, lifted by its characterand subject to its own level. Its value depends on its natural reality. 

§ 3. RELIGIOUS REALITY

Thirdly, avoid the mistake of confounding conversation on "religion"with religious conversation, of thinking that the desired end has beenattained when you have discussed the terminology of theology. Toillustrate, in the family one hardly ever hears the word hygiene, butwell-trained children learn much about the care of their bodies inhealth, and the family economy is directed consciously to that end. Agood, nourishing meal always contributes more to health than manylectures on dietetics. Yet back, hidden away in the manager's mind, isthe science of dietetics. So is it with quickening the child's power andthought in the spiritual life. We must avoid the abstract, theintellectually analytical. Religion should present itself concretely, practically, and as an atmosphere and ideal in the family. We parentsmust not look for theological interest in the child. A Timothy Dwight atten or twelve, though once found in Sunday-school library books, is amonstrosity. The child's aspiration, his religious devotion, his lovefor God will find expression in almost every other way before it will beformulated into questions of a serious theological character. Nor oughtwe to force upon him the phrases of religion to which we are accustomed. He will live in another day and must speak its tongue. His faith mustfind itself in consciousness and then be permitted to clothe itself inappropriate garments of words. Those garments must be woven out of therealities of actual experiences in the child's life. We cannot prepareor make them for him. The expression of religion will be consonant withthe stage of development. If his faith is to be real he must never beallowed or tempted to imagine that if only he can use the words, theverbal symbol, he has the fact, the life-experience. Try then to usewords which are simple and meaningful to him and be content to wait forlife to lead him to formulate vital verbal forms for himself. 

§ 4. PATIENCE AND COMMON-SENSE

Fourthly, we must have faith in God's laws of growth. If we be butfaithful, furnishing the soil, the seed, the nurture, we must wait forthe increase. Many factors which we cannot control will determinewhether it shall be early or late and what form it shall take. We mustwait. It is high folly that pulls up the sprouting grain to see whetherit is growing properly. 

Fifthly, manifestations of the religious life will vary in children andin families. The commonest error is to expect some one popular formalone, to imagine that all children must pass through some standardizedexperiences. Mrs. Brown's Willy may rise in prayer meeting. Do not bedownhearted. Willy is only doing that which he has seen his parents do, and, usually, only because they do it. Your boy, or girl, is seekinghealth of life, of thought, of action; is growing in character. Let themgrow, help them to grow. You know they love you even when they saylittle about it; you do not expect them to climb to the housetop anddeclare their affection. A flower does not sing about the sun, it growstoward it. That is the test of the child's religion: Is he growingGodward in life, action, character?

§ 5. THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GOD

Sixthly, deal most carefully with the child's consciousness of God. Thetruth is that the child in the average home has a consciousness of God. It grows out of formal references in social rites and customs, informalallusions in conversation, and direct statements and instruction. Butfrequently the resultant mental picture is a misleading one, sometimeseven vicious in its moral effect. Where superstitious servants take moreinterest in the child's religious ideas than do his parents, we have thechild whose life is darkened by the fear of an omnipotent ogre. Nursemaids will slothfully scare small children into silence by threatsof the awful presence of a bogey god. The life of the spirit cannot betrusted to the hireling. Parents must be sure of the character as wellas the superficial competency of those who come closest to childhood. Achild's ideas are formed before he goes to school. The family cannotdelegate the formation of dominant ideas to persons trained only fornursery tasks. 

But frequently the mother is a misleading teacher. To her the child goeswith all the big questions outside the immediate world of things. Is sheprepared to answer the questions? Few dilemmas of our life today aremore pathetic than this: the mother has outgrown the theology of herchildhood; she remembers keenly the suffering and superstition, thestruggle that followed the darkened pictures she received as a littleone, but she has nothing better to offer the child. No one has taughther how to put the later, more spiritual concepts into language for thechild of our day. Weakly she falls back on the forms of words she onceabhorred. 

There are certainly two approaches of reality for the child-mind to theidea of God. Two immediate experiences are rich in meaning; they are thelife of the family and the wonder of the everyday world, the life andvariety of nature and human activities. The first is a very simple andrich approach. By every possible means help children in the family tothink of God as the great and good Father of us all. Do this in thephrasing of prayers and graces, in the answers to their questions, inthe casual word. Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is forthe adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on uslike a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becomingours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of ourlives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God interms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal inpersonality. 

The child's keen interest in the world of nature is our opportunity tolead him to love the gracious source of all beauty and goodness. Howkeen is the child's enjoyment of the beauty of the world! Can we foreverfix the general concept of all this beauty as the thought of God in thewords of flower and leaf, mountain and stream? And might we not alsoconnect the idea of God with the affairs of daily life? That depends onthe parent's attitude of mind; if we think of the universal life that isbehind all battles and business and affairs, there will be a differencein our answers to the thousand curious inquiries that rise in thechild's mind. 

Nor must we leave the child to think of God as a separate, far-offperson, on a throne somewhere in the skies. The child is finding his wayinto a universe. The God who is a minute fraction of that universe makespossible the religion that is no more than a negligible fraction oflife. The child asks concerning clouds, the sea, the trees, the birds, and all the world about him; he tends to interpret it causally andideally. Childhood affords the great opportunity for giving the color, the beauty and glory, the life of the divine to all this universe, toinstil the feeling that God is everywhere, in all and through all, andthat in him we live and move and have our being. The child's joy in thisworld can thus be given a religious meaning. He sings

 My God, I thank thee thou hast made This earth so bright.... , and so beauty and joy become part of his religion. His faith becomes agladsome thing; he knows that the trees of the forest clap their hands, the mountains and the hills sing, and the morning stars chant togetherin the gladness of the divine life. 

Such a view of the world comes not by prearranged and indoor interviews. One must walk out into the good outdoor world for the opportunity andthe inspiration. The garden plot, the park, and, best of all, the openfields and woods speak to a child and furnish us an open book from whichwe may teach him to read. Recalling religious impressions, the writerwould testify to feeling nothing deeper, as a result of churchattendance in childhood, than the shapes of seats and the colors ofwalls; but there remain deep impressions of wonder, beauty, and themeaning of God from Sunday mornings spent with his father under thegreat beeches in Epping Forest, listening to the reading and singing ofthe old hymns, or joining in conversation on the woods and the flowers, and even on the legends of Robin Hood in the forest. 

§ 6. THE EVERYDAY OPPORTUNITIES

Seventhly, natural conversation affords the best opportunity for directinstruction. A child is a peripatetic interrogation. His questions coverthe universe; there are no doors which you desire to see opened that hewill not approach at some time. There is great advantage when thereligious question rises normally; when the child begins it and when theinterest continues with the same naturalness as in conversation on anyother subject. Then questions usually take one of three forms: merechildish, curious questions, questions on conduct, and questions onreligion in its organized form. 

The child's curiosity is the basis of even those questions which haveusually been credited to preternatural piety. The tiny youngster whoasks strange questions about God asks equally startling ones aboutfairies or about his grandmother. But his questions give us the chanceto direct him to right thoughts of God. Here we need to be sure of ourown thoughts and to keep in mind our principal purpose, to quicken inthis child loyalty to the highest and best. He must be shown a God whomhe can love and, at the same time, one who will call for his growingloyalty, his courage, and devotion. Everything for the child's futuredepends on the pictures he now forms. We all carry to a large degree ourchildhood's view of God. 

Some of the child's questions probe deep; how shall we answer them? Whenyou know the truth tell him the truth, being sure that it is told inlanguage that really conveys truth to his mind. The danger is thatparents will attempt to tell more than they know, to answer questionsthat cannot be answered, or that they will, in sloth or cowardice orignorance, tell children untrue things. If a child asks, "Did God makethe world?" the answer that will be true to the child may be a simpleaffirmative. If the child asks or his query implies, "Did God make theleaves, or the birds, with his fingers?" we had better take time toshow the difference between man's making of things and the working ofthe divine energy through all the process of the development of theworld. When the child asks, "Mother, if God made all things, why did hemake the devil?" it would surely be wise and opportune to correct thechild's mental picture of a personal anti-God and to take from him hisbogey of a "devil. " But the question of the relation of God to theexistence of evil would remain, and the best a parent could do would beto illustrate the necessities of freedom of choice and will in life bysimilar freedom in the family. 

It must be remembered that children's curious questions are only theirattempt to discover their world, that they have no peculiar religioussignificance, but that they afford the parent a vital opportunity fordirect religious instruction. These questions must be treated seriously;something is missing in parental consciousness when the child'squestions furnish only material for jesting relation to the familyfriends. 

§ 7. MORAL TEACHING

_Questions on conduct_: Scores of times in the day the children come infrom play or from school and tell of what has happened. Their more orless breathless recitals very often include vigorous accounts of"cheating, " "naughtiness, " unfair play, unkind words, discourtesies, all dependent as to their character on the age of the children and allopening doors for free conversation on duties and conduct. Here lies oneof the large opportunities for moral instruction. There is no need toattempt to make formal occasions for this; so long as children play andlive with others they are under the experience of learning the art ofliving with one another; this is the simple essence of morality. Theparent's answers to their questions on conduct, the comments on theircriticisms, and the conversation that may easily be directed on thesesubjects count tremendously with the child in establishing his idealsand modes of conduct. Returning to his play, there is no mightierauthority he can quote than to say, "My mother says--, " or "My fathersays--. "

Let no one say that instruction in moral living is not religious, forthere can be no adequate guidance in morals without religion, nor canthe religious quality of the life find expression adequately exceptthrough conduct in social living. Children need more than the rules forliving; they must feel motives and see ideals. They do not live by rulesany more than we do. Besides the rule that is known there must be areason for following it and a strong desire to do so. All ethicalteaching needs this imperative and motivation of religion, thequickening of loyalty to high ideals, the doing of the right forreasons of love as well as of duty and profit. 

The father's opportunity comes especially with the boys. They are sureto bring to him their ethical questions on games and sport; he knowsmore about boys' fights and struggles than does the mother. When theboys begin to discuss their games the father cannot afford to lackinterest. Trivial as the question may seem to be, it is the mostimportant one of the day to the boy and, for the interests of hischaracter, it may be the most important for many a day to the father. Ifhe answers with sympathy and interest this question on a "foul ball" oron marbles or peg-tops, he has opened a door that will always stay openso long as he approaches it with sincerity; if he slights it, if he istoo busy with those lesser things that seem great to him, he has closeda door into the boy's life; it may never be opened again. Children learnlife through the life they are now living. Real preparation for theworld of business and larger responsibilities comes by the child'sexperiences of his present world of play and schooling and familyliving. To help him to live this present life aright is the besttraining that can be given for the right living of all life. 

_Questions on organized religion_: As children grow up, the church comesinto their range of interests. Just as they often make the day schoolfocal for conversation, as they recount their day's work there, so theyretain impressions of the church school, of the services of the church, and will always ask many questions about this institution and itsobservances. Here is the opportunity, in free conversation, to tell thechild the meaning of the church, the significance of membership therein, and to lead him to conscious relationship to the society of thefollowers of Jesus. (See chap. Xvii, "The Family and the Church. ")

 I. References for Study

 Alice E. Fitts, "Consciousness of God in Children, " _The Aims of Religious Education_, pp. 330-38. Religious Education Association, $1. 00. 

 W. G. Koons, _Child's Religious Life_, sec. II. Eaton & Mains, $1. 00. 

 J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, chap. Vi. Appleton, $1. 25. 

 II. Further Reading

 George Hodges, _The Training of Children in Religion_, chaps. I-vi. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 George E. Dawson, _The Child and His Religion_, chap. Ii. The University of Chicago Press, $0. 75. 

 Edward Lyttleton, _The Corner-Stone of Education_, chap. Viii. Putnam, $1. 50. 

 T. Stephens (ed. ), _The Child and Religion_. Putnam, $1. 50. 

 C. W. Richell, _The Child as God's Child_. Eaton & Mains, $0. 75. 

 W. G. Koons, _The Child's Religious Nature_. Eaton & Mains, $1. 00. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the special difficulties which you feel about introducing the topic of religion to children? Describe any methods or modes of approach which have seemed successful?

 2. Would you regard it as a fault if a child seems unwilling to talk about religion? What do you think "religion" means to the child-mind?

 3. In what ways do children's aptitudes differ and what factors probably determine the difference? What was your own childish conception of God? Did you love God or fear him? Why?

 4. Is it ever right to teach the child those conceptions which we have outgrown? What about Santa Claus and fairies? How can you use childish figures of speech as an avenue to more exact truth?

 5. Does the child learn more through ears or eyes? Through which agency do we seek to convey religious ideas?

 6. Is it possible to make the child see the intimate relation between conduct and religion? How would you do this?

 7. Give some of the characteristics of a religious child of seven years, of ten. 

CHAPTER VII

DIRECTED ACTIVITY

Probably all parents find themselves at some time thinking that thereal, fundamental problem of training their children lies in dealingwith their superabundant energy. "He is such an active child!" motherscomplain. Were he otherwise a physician might properly be consulted. Butthe child's activity does seriously interfere with parental peace. Ittakes us all a long time to learn that we are not, after all, in ourhomes in order to enjoy peaceful rest, but in order to train childreninto fulness of life. That does not mean that the home should be withoutquiet and rest, but that we must not hope to repress the energy ofchildhood. One might as well hope to plug up a spring in the hillside. Our work is to direct that activity into glad, useful service. 

§ 1. VALUE OF ACTIVITY

The things we do not only indicate character, they determine it. Ourthoughts have value and power as they get into action. To bend ourenergies toward an ideal is to make it more real, to make it a part ofourselves. Children learn by doing--learn not only that which they aredoing but life itself. 

It may be doubted whether a child ever grew who did not plead to have ashare in the work he saw going on about him. That desire to help is partof that fundamental virtue of loyalty of which we have spoken above; itis his desire to be true to the tendency of the home, to give himself tothe realization of its purposes. Of course he does not think this out atall. But this desire on the part of the child to have a hand in theday's work is the parent's fine opportunity for a most valuable andinfluential form of character direction. 

One of the tests of a worthy character is whether the life iscontributory or parasitic, whether one carries his load, does his work, makes his contribution, or simply waits on the world for what he canget. A religious interpretation of and attitude toward life isessentially that of self-giving in service. "My Father worketh hithertoand I work. " "I must be about my Father's business. " How noticeable isthe child's interest in the vivid word-picture of One who "went aboutdoing good"!

§ 2. THE BLESSING OF LABOR

The home is the first place for life's habituation to service. The childis greatly to be pitied who has no duties, no share in the work. Wherethe hands are unsoiled the heart is the easier sullied. It is the heightof mistaken kindness, one of the common errors of an unthinking, superficial affection, to protect our children from work. This is aworld of the moral order and of the glory of work. 

When the child is very small it must learn this by having committed toit very simple duties. As soon as it is able to handle things it maylearn to do that which is most helpful with those things, to care forits toys, to put them away neatly. A child can learn while very young totake care of its spoon, of certain clothes, of chair, and pencil andpaper. True, it is much easier to "pick up" after the child; but to doso is to yield to our own sloth. The more tedious way is the one we mustfollow if we would train the child. 

Besides the care of his possessions the child will gladly take a sharein the general work of the home. Let some daily duty be assigned to eachone; such simple responsibilities as picking up all papers and magazinesand seeing that they are properly stacked or disposed of may be given toone; another may sweep the stairs every day with a whisk broom (in oneinstance a boy of eight did this daily); another may be "librarian, "caring for all books; each one, after eight years of age, should makeher own bed; each one should be entirely responsible for his own tablein his room. Many homes permit of many other "chores, " such as keepingup the supply of small kindling, caring for a pet or even a largeranimal, keeping a little personal garden or vegetable plot. Under thosenormal conditions of living, which some day we may reach, where eachfamily, or all families, have trees and flowers and ample space, theopportunities are increased for joyous child activities whichconsciously contribute to social well-being as a whole. 

§ 3. RELIGION IN ACTION

Perhaps some will say, this is not religious education, it is everydaytraining. Yes, it is "everyday training, " but it is the training of areligious person with the religious purpose of habituating the child togive his life in service to his world. That is precisely what weneed--_religion in everyday action_. The atmosphere and habitualattitude and conversation of the family must be depended on to give areally religious meaning to these everyday acts, to make them asreligious as going to church, perhaps more so, and so to make them atraining for the life that is religious, not in word only, but in deedand in truth. 

Whatever we may say to children on the subject of religion, whetherdirectly or in teaching by indirection through songs and worship, mustpass over somehow into action in order to have meaning and reality. Itmust be realized in order to be real. The difficulty that appears isthat of connecting the daily act with its spiritual significance. Yetthat is not as difficult as it seems. If the act has religioussignificance to us, if we form the habit of really worshiping God withour work, seeking in it to do his will, the child will know it. Wecannot keep that hidden. The spiritual life will never be more real tothe child than it is to us, and no amount of moralizing orspiritualizing about our acts or his will give them religioussignificance. 

At least one person will testify that, after being brought up in areally religious home, the most strikingly religious memory of that homeis an occasion when he delightedly carried a tray of food to a sickneighbor. It was doing the very thing that he longed to do, realizingthe aspiration that had been unable to find words or form before. So thelife of action can be steadily trained by acts of kindness. Habits areacts repeated until they pass from the volitional to the involuntary. The only process we can follow is steadily to train the children in thewilling and doing of the right, the good, and the kindly deed, until itbecomes habitual. Let the child prepare the tray of delicacies, pack theflowers we are sending, carry them over if possible, at least have ashare in all our ministries. [12]

The modern Sunday school recognizes the importance of activity informing religious character; therefore it plans and organizes socialactivities for students to carry out. [13] The parents ought to know whatis designed for each child in his respective grade and to plan toco-operate with the school. Where the family unites in the forms ofservice suggested for the children, these activities lose allperfunctoriness and take on a new reality. Social usefulness becomes anormal part of life. 

Do we remember the best times of our childhood? Were they not when wewere doing things? And were not the best of these best times when wewere doing the best things, those that seemed ideal, that gave us asense of helping someone or of putting into action the best of ourthoughts? That is the chance and the joy our children are longing for, and that joy will be their strength. 

§ 4. RELIGION IN SERVICE

The family has excellent opportunities for developing through its ownactivities and duties the habits of the religious life. Children mayacquire through daily acts the habit of thinking of life as just thechance to love and serve. Service may become perfectly normal to life. Our modern paupers, whether they tramp the highways or ride in privatecars, came usually out of homes where the moral standard interpretedlife as just the chance of graft, to gain without giving, to havewithout earning. Parental indulgence educates in pauperism. Let a boyremain the passive beneficiary of all the advantages of a home until heis sixteen or eighteen, and it will be exceedingly difficult to converthim from the pauper habit. 

The hard task before parents is to save their children from the snare ofpassive luxury. Perhaps, remembering our toilsome youth, we seek toshield them. It is a serious unkindness. It is a wrong to our world. Thereligious mind is the one that takes life in terms of service, sees thedays as doors to ways of usefulness, girds itself with the towel, andfinds honor in bending to do the little things for the least of men. Vain is all family worship, all prayer and praise and catechism, unlesswe train the feet to walk this way so that they may visit theimprisoned, clothe the naked, comfort the sad, and cheer the broken inheart. The family may make this the normal way to live. 

If the family would train boys and girls who shall be true followers ofthe great Servant, it must stand among men as a servant, it must seeitself as set in the community to serve, and by habits of service andhelpfulness, by its whole social tone, it must quicken in its own peoplethe sense of social obligation and a realization of the delight inself-giving. A home that is selfish in relation to other homes, inrelation to its community, can have no other than selfish, antisocial, and therefore irreligious children. The first step in the welfare of achild is to see that the home which constitutes his personal atmosphereis steeped in the spirit of good-will toward men. 

The whole attitude of life is determined by the thought-atmosphere ofthe family. The greedy family makes the grafting citizen. The graspinghome makes the pugnacious disturber of the public peace. Greater thanthe question whether you are a good citizen in your relation to theballot box is the one whether you are a cultivator of good citizenshipin your home. No amount of Sunday-school teaching on the Beatitudes orweek-day teaching on civics is going to overcome the down-drag ofenvious, antisocial thought and feeling and conversation in the home. Home action and attitude count for more than all besides. 

It is equally true that no other influence can offset the salutary powerof a truly social home, that the easiest, most natural, and effectivemethod of teaching social duty and unselfishness is to do our wholesocial duty unselfishly. 

§ 5. FAMILY TRAINING FOR SOCIAL LIVING

The supreme test of the religious life here is ability to live among menas brothers and to cause the conditions of the divine family to berealized on earth. If we can realize that the purpose of Jesus was tobring men into the family of God, that the aim of all religious endeavoris the family character in men and women and the conditions of thatfamily in all society, we must surely appreciate the possibility of thehuman family as a training school for this larger family of humanity. 

The infant approaches social living by the pathway of the society of thefamily. We all go out into life through widening circles, first themother's arms, then the family, the neighborhood, the city, the state, the nation, the world-life. Each circle prepares for the next. Thefamily is the child's social order; its life is his training for thelarger life of nation and human brotherhood. 

Just how men and women will live in society is determined principally bythe bent of their characters in the social order of the family. Theirattitude to the world follows the attitude of the family, especially ofthe parents. They interpret the larger world by the lesser. The home isthe great school of citizenship and social living. 

All the moral and religious problems of the family find a focus in thepurpose of preparing persons for social living. The family justifies itscost to society in the contribution which it makes in trained andmotived lives. As a religious family its first duty is to prepare thecoming generation to live in a religious society, in one which willsteadily move toward the divine ideal of perfect family relationsthrough brotherhood and fatherhood. Its business is not to get childrenready for heaven, but to train them to make all life heavenly. Its aimis not alone children who will not tear down the parents' reputation, but men and women who will build up the actual worth and beauty of alllives. 

The realization, in the family, of the purpose of training youth tosocial living and service in the religious spirit depends on two things:a spirit and passion in the family for social justice and order, and thedirection of the activities of the family toward training in socialusefulness. 

Only the social spirit can give birth to the social spirit. True loversof men, who set the values of life and of the spirit first, who givetheir lives that all men may have freedom and means to find moreabundant life, come out of the families where the passion of human loveburns high. The selfish family, self-centered, caring not at all in anydeep sense for the well-being of others, existing to extract the juiceof life and let who will be nourished on the rind, becomes effective tomake the social highwayman, the oppressor. From such a family comes hewho breaks laws for his pocketbook and impedes the enactment of lawslest human rights should prevent his acquisition of wealth; he whohates his brother man--unless that brother has more than he has; the foeof the kingdom of goodness and peace and brotherhood. 

And goodness is as contagious as badness. Children catch the spirit ofsocial love and idealism in the family. Where men and women are deeplyconcerned with all that makes the world better for lives, better forbabies and mothers, for workers, and, above all, for the values of thespirit gained through leisure, opportunities, and higher incentives;where the family is more concerned with folks than with furniture; wherehabitually it thinks of people as Jesus did, as the objects most of allworth seeking, worth investing in, there children receive direction, habituation, and motivation for the life of religion, the life thatbinds them in glad love to the service of their fellows, and makes themthink of all their life as the one great chance to serve, to make abetter world, and to bring God's great family closer together here. 

 I. References for Study

 G. A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, pp. 142-50. Revell, $1. 35. 

 W. S. Athearn, _The Church School_, pp. 85-102. Pilgrim Press, $1. 00. 

 G. Johnson, _Education by Plays and Games_, Part I. Ginn & Co. , $0. 90. 

 II. Further Reading

 E. D. Angell, _Play_. Little, Brown & Co. , $1. 50. 

 Fisher, Gulick, _et al. _, "Ethical Significance of Play, " _Materials for Religious Education_, pp. 197-215. Religious Education Association, $0. 50. 

 Publications of the Play Ground Association. 

 III. Methods and Materials

 PLAY

 Forbush, _Manual of Play_. Jacobs, $1. 00. 

 A. Newton, _Graded Games_. Barnes, $1. 25. 

 Von Palm, _Rainy Day Pastimes_. Dana Estes, $1. 00. 

 Johnson, _When Mother Lets Us Help_. Moffat, Yard & Co. , $0. 75. 

 WORK

 Canfield, _What Shall We Do Now?_ Stokes, $1. 50. 

 Beard, _Jack of All Trades_. Scribner, $2. 00. 

 Beard, _Things Worth Doing_. Scribner, $2. 00. 

 Bailey, _Garden Making_. Macmillan, $1. 50. 

 Bailey (ed. ), _Something to Do_ (magazine). School Arts Publishing Co. 

 IV. Topics for Discussion

 1. Is the quiet child an ideal child? How far should we go in restraining activity?

 2. The relative advantages of work and leisure for children. What of the value of chores to you; did you do them? Describe any forms of children's service in the home which have come under your observation. 

 3. What forms of community service can be done by children and by young people?

 4. Recall any lessons learned by activity in your early home life. 

 5. Give in their order, according to your judgment, the potencies for religious character in the home. 

FOOTNOTES:

[12] A short list of books on child activity in the home is appended atthe end of this chapter; a fairly complete list, long enough for anyfamily, will be found on p. 117 of _The Church School_, by W. S. Athearn. 

[13] See W. N. Hutchins, _Graded Social Service for the Sunday School_. 

CHAPTER VIII

THE HOME AS A SCHOOL[14]

The home is so mighty as a school because, requiring little time forformal instruction, it enlists its scholars so largely in informalactivities. It trains for life by living; it trains as an institution, by a group of activities, a series of duties, a set of habits. If thehome is to prepare for social living it will be most of all and best ofall by its organization and conduct as a social institution. 

§ 1. AN IDEAL COMMUNITY

For the purposes of society homes must be social-training centers; theymust be conducted as communities if their members are to be fitted forcommunal living. No boy is likely to be ready for the responsibilitiesof free citizenship who has spent his years in a home under an absolutemonarchy; or, as is today perhaps more frequently the case, in acondition of unmitigated anarchy. A free society cannot consist of unitsnot free. The problems of parental discipline arise and appear aspersistently irritating and perplexing stumbling-blocks in many a homesimply because that home is organized altogether out of harmony andrelation with the normal life in which it is set. Society environing thehome gives its members the habits of twentieth-century autonomy, individual initiative and responsibility, together with collectiveliving and working, while the home often seeks to perpetuatethirteenth-century absolutism, serfdom, and subjection. In social livingoutside the home we learn to do the will of all; in the home we attemptto compel children to do the will of one. 

§ 2. COMMUNITY INTERESTS

The home organized as a social community will give to every member, according to his ability, a share in its guidance and will expect fromevery member the free contribution of his powers. Its rules will be madeby the will of all, and its affairs governed, not by an executive boardcomposed of the parents, but by the free participation and choice ofall. The young will learn to choose by choosing; will learn both how torule and to be ruled by a share in ruling. 

To be explicit, suppose a piece of furniture is desired for the home. Two plans at least are possible: first, the "head of the home" may goforth and purchase it without consulting anyone, or after advising withthe other "head"; or, second, before a purchase is made, the wisdom ofsuch an addition to the furniture may be suggested in the open councilof the whole family and the purchase discussed and determined by all. Such councils, usually coming at or after the principal meal, freelyparticipated in by all, give even to the youngest a sense of the cost ofa home, of the care that goes into it, with, what is more important, asense of a share in these cares and costs; they cultivate habits ofprudence, of consideration of a matter, of steady judgments, ofdeference to the wishes and wisdom of others. Of still greaterimportance is another practical issue of such a plan--that every memberof the household has a new sense of proprietorship with deepenedresponsibility. Instead of thinking of any household possession asfather's or mother's, or even mine, it becomes _ours_. The parents nolonger need to say, "Children, do not mar the furniture; it costs moneyto replace it. " The children know that already, and they have the samepride in the home possessions and the same desire to preserve them asthey have in that which is peculiarly their own. A habit of mind resultsfrom such a course so that, by thinking in terms of common possession ofthe best things of life, there is cultivated that respect for the rightsof others which is simply right social thinking. 

The same plan could be pursued in relation to almost every interest ofthe family--as the planning of the annual vacation and outing, theholidays, picnics, and birthday celebrations, the church and religiousexercises. Above all, in the last mentioned, this social spirit may becultivated. The father may cease to be the "high priest" for his familyand become a worshiper along with the other members. The effect will bethat his children are more likely to stay as worshipers with him than ifthey gazed on him as on some lonely elevation, unrelated to them in hisreligious exercises. The reading, the song, the prayers, the comment anddiscussion, the story-telling, and all that may make up the regularspecific religious activities of the family should be such that all mayhave a share in them. Nothing could be finer, diviner, and bring largerhelpfulness for social living than the attempt of the least littlelisping child to throw herself into the unified family act of prayer, aswhen one little tot, unable to say the Lord's Prayer, united in worshipat the time of that act by saying, as reverently as possible, "One, two, three, four, five, " etc. , up to ten. The ability to count was her latestaccomplishment; counting to ten was bringing the very best thing shethen had and, in the act of family worship, offering her part to theMost High. A fine sense of worship and a desire to be one with theothers in this united, communal service prompted the participation. 

§ 3. COMMUNITY SERVICE

Community service may be cultivated in the home. Here is the idealsocial community, where there are neither parasites nor paupers, whereall give of their best for the best of all. No one doubts that the babygives its full share of happiness and cheer, and the aged their offeringof consolation and experience; but the difficulty is supposed to be withthe lad and the girl who would rather play than work. Usually this isbecause the habits of co-operation in the life of this community havebeen too long neglected. The small boy or girl had no share in its work. Parents are too busy to think through the matter of finding suitableduties for all. It is so much easier to do things one's self, eventhough the child misses the benefits of participation. More frequentlythe blame lies in the fact that parents desire to shield children fromlabor. Some would have them grow up without knowing what they count asthe degradation of toil. But a boy who knows nothing of the "chores" hasmissed half the joys of boyhood, and has a terribly hard lesson ahead ofhim when he goes out to relate himself to life. No matter what one'sstation may be, there is a part to be played, and one's piece of work tobe done. The greatest unkindness we can do our children is to train themto lives that do not play their part. The home is our chance to train aman to harmonious usefulness in his world. Not only should the familytrain to social co-operation and service, but it should train toefficiency therein. Do not let your child's duties become a farce; letthem exact as much of him as the world will exact also; that is, efficiency, accuracy, thoroughness, and fidelity. 

§ 4. A SCHOOL OF SOCIAL MINISTRY

The family trains lives for social ministry. The unsocial lives come outof unsocial homes. The home that exists for itself alone trains livesthat exist only for themselves; these are the homes that throw the sandof selfishness into the wheels of society; they ultimately effect socialsuicide through selfishness. The attitude and atmosphere of the home areof first importance here. As we think, so will our children act. If thehome is to us a place without responsibilities for the neighborhood, without duties to neighbors, without social roots, then it is a schoolfor industrial, commercial, and social greed and warfare. As we think inour hearts and talk at our table, so are we educating those who sitthereat. 

If we would have our homes really efficient and worthy agencies foreducation in social living, the first thing to do is to seek the socialatmosphere, to cultivate all those influences which young livesunconsciously absorb. We all know that character comes throughenvironment in large measure, and that the mental and spiritualenvironment is by far the most potent. Here is something that affects usmore than the finest or poorest furniture and that gives the real zestand flavor to any meal. The choice of our own reading enters here, notonly the matter of reading in sociology, but of all reading, as towhether it blinds with class prejudices, intensifies caste feeling, oratrophies social sympathy by pandering to selfishness and sensuousness. The control of our own feelings and judgment enters here. Do wesedulously cultivate charity for others? Do we stifle impatience, bitterness, class feeling? Do we guide the conversation of visitors andthe family group so that antisocial passions are subdued and a spirit ofbrotherly love and compassion for all is cultivated? Here men and womenhave opportunity to give evidence of a change of heart; here they needthat awakening to social consciousness which is a new birth, aregeneration into the life of the Son of Man who came to give his life. 

By its active ministry the family is training for social living. When achild carries a bowl of soup to some sick or needy one, he learns alesson never to be forgotten. The memories of hours of planning andpreparation for some neighborly service--the making of bread, thepacking of a box, the preserves for the sick--shine out like sunshinespots along childhood's ways; they direct manhood's steps. 

We are gradually learning that social duties are not learned savethrough social deeds; that even the most carefully prepared andperfectly pedagogical systems of instruction fail, standing alone. Thecollege student uses the laboratory method in his sociology--though weknow that sociology may be as far from social living as the poles areapart. The Social Service Association of the Young Men's ChristianAssociation has given up attempts to teach social duty in favor of theplan of undertaking specific pieces of social activity. The home mustadopt the laboratory method. The important thing is, not what the fatheror mother may systematically teach about the social duties of thechildren, but what kinds of service, of ministry and normal activitythey may lead the children to; that is, in what ways they may alltogether discharge their functions in society. 

§ 5. FAMILIES AS COMMUNITY FACTORS

Each family must clearly see its normal relations to its community, tothe social whole; first, as an association of social beings havingsocial duties, obligations, and privileges; then, to see that theordering of the daily life is the largest single factor in determiningthe value of the family to the development of the community, fittingharmoniously into the larger community, and rendering its share ofservice. 

The disorderly home spreads its immoral contagion beyond its walls, outinto the front yard, out and up and down the street, and all through thevillage and city. The City Beautiful cannot come until we have the HomeBeautiful. Training each one to play his part in keeping the house inorder, picking up and setting in place his own tools and playthings, preventing and removing litter, scraps, and elements of disorder anddiscomfort, acquiring habits of neatness based on social motives--thesethings make more for the city of beauty and health than all our lectureson clean cities. 

No family lives to itself. Young people need to see clearly how theirhomes and their habits in the home impinge on other homes and lives. This is impressed upon us in an accentuated and acute degree in cityliving. One can hardly imagine a finer discipline of grace thanapartment living, though one may well question whether it is not morallyand hygienically flying in the face of the natural order. We may nothave for a long time municipal ordinances forbidding boiled dinners, limburger, and phonographs in city apartments; but if, unfortunately, weare compelled to live in these modern abominations, we ought tocultivate a conscience that will not inflict our idiosyncrasies, eitherin culinary aromas or in musical taste, on our neighbors. But there arematters greater than these by which the home trains for socialthoughtfulness. No man has a right to grow weeds at home, because theseeds never stay there. A howling dog, a disease-breeding sty, afly-harboring stable, must be viewed, not from the point of the family'sconvenience, but from that of others' welfare. 

§ 6. TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP

The family has a duty to train children for Christian citizenship. Noother institution can take its place even here. Courses of lectures inchurches and settlements effect excellent results, and the study ofcivics from the moral and ideal viewpoint should be encouraged in theschools; but the home is the place where, after all, citizens aretrained and the value or menace of their citizenship determined. If westop long enough to get a clear understanding of what we mean bycitizenship this will be the more evident. 

Citizenship is the condition of full communal, social living in ademocracy. It is not a special department or activity of a man's lifewhich he exercises once in a while, as at the primary or at the polls orthrough the political campaign; it is a permanent condition, thecondition of his social living in a democracy. It seems to be worthwhile to think of this enough to be quite sure of it, for we havethought too long of citizenship as a special aspect of one's life or asan occasional duty; we have called for good citizenship at times ofelection and have been content with dormant citizenship at other times;we have said that one was exercising his citizenship when he voted, andhave forgotten that he was exercising it or abusing or neglecting it ashe walked the streets, talked with his neighbors, or in any way livedthe life that has relations to other lives. 

Matters of citizenship are simply matters of social living, as socialliving expresses itself through what we call government; that is, through communal, civic, national administration and regulation. Citizenship is social control in action, not through political activityalone, but through all that concerns civic and communal life. In view ofthis it may be worth while to look a little more closely into therelations of family life to this matter of the determination of thecharacter of our citizenship. 

The family is an agency for religious training in citizenship. Thefamily is the first, smallest, and still the most common and potentsocial group. It is the community in which we nearly all learn communalliving. At first it is a child's world, then comes his city, and thenhis nation, but ere long again the family is his own kingdom. Itsideals, constantly interpreted in action, determine our ideals. Wherethe father is greedy, self-centered, regarding the home as solely forhis convenience as his private boarding-house, where he is a despoticboss, why should not the son at least tolerate bossism in his city if hedoes not himself pattern after his father on a wider scale and regardthe city or the state as his private boarding-house and the treasury ashis private manger? Where the mother is a petty parasite, what wonderthe children regard with indifference, if not even with admiration, thewhole system of civic and social barnacles, leeches, and otherparasites?

The very organization of the home must prepare for civic duty by layingupon all appropriate duties and activities. It ought to be an ideal typeof community. But that can never be until we take the training ofparents seriously in hand; until we cease to delegate the pedagogy ofcourtship, marriage, and home-founding to the comic supplements of theSunday papers and to the joke columns. Parents must themselves betrained for the business of the organization of homes as educationalagencies. 

The life and work of the home ought to train religiously forcitizenship, by causing each to bear his due share of the burdens ofall. Where the child has been forced to do the indolent parent's share, to support the slothful father, he can only look forward to the timewhen he will be free to support only himself, and have no other thanpurely egoistic obligations; this is an utterly immoral conception, andone squarely opposed to good citizenship. Where the boy or the girl hasbeen trained to regard all toil as dishonorable, where each has beentaught scrupulously to avoid every burden, they come into social livingwith habits set against bearing their share and toward making otherscarry them. The indolent parent makes the tax-dodging citizen, as theindulgent parent often makes the place-hunting citizen who becomes a taxon the public. 

The ideals of the family determine the needs of citizens. Itsconversation, its reading, its customs, set the standard of socialneeds. Where the father laughs at the smartness of the artful dodge inpolitics, where the mother sighs after the tinsel and toys that sheknows others have bought with corrupt cash, where the conversation atthe meal-table steadily, though often unconsciously, lifts up and laudsthose who are out after the "real thing, " the eager ears about thatboard drink it in and childish hearts resolve what they will do whenthey have a chance. Where no voice speaks for high things, where no tideof indignation against wrong sweeps into language, where the childrennever feel that the parents have great moral convictions--where novision is, the people perish. 

Yet to realize this civic responsibility of the home would be, in thegreater number of instances, to remedy it. In those other instanceswhere there are no civic ideals, where the domestic conscience is dead, there rests upon the state, upon society, for its own sake, theresponsibility to train those children so that, at any rate, they willnot perpetuate homes of this type. We may do very much by thestimulation and direction of parents. Men need but to be reminded oftheir duty to make it a part of their business to train their childrenin social duty. 

 I. References for Study

 Taylor, _Religion in Social Action_, chaps. Vii, viii. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $1. 25. 

 E. J. Ward, _The Social Center_, chap. V. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 Lofthouse, _Ethics in the Family_. Hodder & Stoughton, $1. 50. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What is the special social importance of the family?

 2. How do children acquire their social ideals from the home?

 3. What are the advantages which the home has as a school?

 4. How do homes train for the responsibilities of citizenship?

 5. Can you describe any plans of community councils in the home?

 6. How would you promote community service in the family?

 7. What are the dangers of unsocial and selfish lives growing in the home?

FOOTNOTES:

[14] This chapter is, with the publisher's kind permission, taken, withsundry minor changes, from the author's pamphlet, _The Home as a Schoolfor Social Living_, published by the American Baptist PublicationSociety in the "Social Service Series. "

CHAPTER IX

THE CHILD'S IDEAL LIFE

The modern child is likely to miss one of the great character enrichingswhich his parents had, in that he is in danger of growing up entirelyignorant of the poetic setting of religious thought in historic anddignified hymns. The great hymns have done more for religious thoughtand character than all the sermons that have ever been preached. Even inthe adult of the purely intellectual cast the hymn, aided by rhythm, music, repetition, and emotion, is likely to become a more permanentpart of the mental substratum than any formal logical presentation ofideas. How much more will this be the case with the child who feels morethan he reasons, who delights in cadence and rhythm, and who loves aworld of imagery!

§ 1. SONG AND STORY

Very early life's ideals are presented in poetic form; plays, school-life, love of country, friendships, all take or are given metricexpression. So, for children, hymns have a perfectly natural place. Thechild sings as he plays, sings as he works, sings in school, and, aslong as life and memory hold, these words of song will be hispossession; in declining years, when eyes are failing and otherinterests may wane, fragments of childhood's songs and youth's poemswill sing themselves over in his memory; while in the years between howoften will some stanza or line spring into the focus of thought just atthe moment when it can give brave and helpful direction!

Those years of facile memorization should be like the ant's summer, aperiod of steady storing in mind of the world's treasures of thought. Noman ever had too many good and beautiful thoughts in his memory. Fewhave failed to recall with gratitude some apparently long-forgotten wordof cheer, light, and inspiration stored in childhood. The special virtueof the hymn, among all poetic forms of great thoughts, is that memory isstrengthened by the music and the thought further idealized by it, whilefrequent repetition fixes it the more firmly and repetition incongregational song adds the high value of emotional association. 

But what kinds of memory treasures are being given to the modern childin the realm of religion? In by far the greater number of instances inthe United States neither church nor Sunday school nor home brings tohim any knowledge of the great hymns of religion. [15] In the churchesthat use these hymns the child is frequently not in the Sundayservices; he is in the children's service or the school, while in themajority of churches a weak-minded endeavor for amusement hassubstituted meaningless rag-time trivialities for rich and dignifiedhymns. Perhaps the custom of encouraging congregations to jig, dance, cavort, or drone through the frivolities of "popular" gospel songs isonly a passing craze, but it is a most unfortunate one; it tends todivorce worship and thought, to make worship a matter of purelysuperficial emotions, and to form the habit of expressing religion, thehighest experience of life, in language, often irreverent and almostalways trivial, slangy, or ridiculous. It is an insult to theintelligence of children to ask them to sing

 We're pilgrims o'er the sands of time, We have not long to stay, The lifeboat soon is coming, To carry the pilgrims away. 

It is the duty of parents to know what their children are learning inthe Sunday school. Not only are they often missing the opportunity tolay up the treasure of elevating, inspiring thoughts; they are acquiringcrude, mistaken, misleading theological concepts in the hideous, revolting figures of "evangelistic songs"; they are storing their mindswith atrocities in English and in figures of speech; they are acquiringthe habits of sentimentality in religion and inhibiting the finer, higher feelings. They are blunting their higher feelings by repeatingincongruous and nauseating figures of being "washed in blood, " or theyare carelessly singing sentiments they do not understand. 

What can the family do about this? It ought to assert its rights in thechurch. It ought to protest and rebel against the debauching of mind andthe degrading of religion (all for the sake of selling trashy books at$25 per hundred). A parent would do better to keep his child from churchand Sunday school than to permit his mind to be filled with thesanguinary pictures of God, the mediaeval theology of the modernsongbook, and its offenses against truth in thought and form. But thefamily can work positively and more effectively by providing good hymnsfor children in the home. 

§ 2. TRAINING IN SONG

Almost without exception all children will sing if encouraged early inlife. In the family group one has only to start a familiar song and soonall will be singing. It is just as natural to sing "Abide with Me" whenthe family sits together in the evening as it is to start "My AlabamaChoo-choo. " Children like the swing of "Onward, Christian Soldiers" justas much as in the northern states they like "Marching through Georgia. "If they do not know the hymns the home is the best of all places inwhich to learn them. 

A large section of real family life is missing in families that do notsing together. A home without song lacks one of the strongest bonds offamily unity, and the after-years will be deprived of a memory dearindeed to many others. Days often come when the wheels of family lifeseem to develop friction, when little rifts seem to throw the membersfar apart, but the evening song brings them together. The unity ofaction, of feeling, the development of emotions above the day'sirritation and strife, all help to new joys in family living. 

We may well think of the fine songs and the great hymns together. Thereis no fixed wall between "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, " and "The Sonof God Goes Forth, " nor between "My Old Kentucky Home" and "Jerusalemthe Golden. " The modern home has the musical instruments to lead insong--though they are not always essential--and lacks only the planningand forethought to develop the joys of song. It must provide the thoughtthat applies the simpler forms of musical expression to the sweeteningand enriching of life. 

Let no one say, "My family is not musical. " That simply means that yourfamily does not take time for music and song. Build on the training inpatriotic and folk-songs given in the schools; sing these same songsover in the home and then associate with the best of them the best ofthe hymns. Cultivate the habit of binding the whole realm of feeling inmusic together, the hymns and the songs, to make religion mean beautyand devotion and to make the finer sentiments of life truly religious. 

This costs time and thought. Someone must plan that the books of songsand hymns are provided, that the opportunity is given, and that wise, unobtrusive leadership is there. Have ready several copies of the bookcontaining the best hymns. Think out your plan of procedure in advance, selecting the songs, or at least the first one. Then at the right timesimply begin to play that song and you will scarcely need to invite thechildren to sing with you. 

Should anyone doubt whether children will enjoy singing good hymns, hemay purchase a few records for the phonograph, for example, "O Come AllYe Faithful, " "Hark the Herald Angels Sing, " "O Zion Haste, " "Holy, Holy, Holy, " "Abide with Me. " These will suit those of from ten upward;younger children will enjoy "Can a Little Child Like Me, " "BrightlyGleams Our Banner, " "Jesus Loves Me. " "I Think When I Read That SweetStory, " and "For the Beauty of the Earth, " though they will join gladlyin the other hymns. Or, instead of using the phonograph, sit downquietly at the piano and play these hymns, with just enough emphasis forthe children to catch the rhythm, and they will soon be standing at thepiano singing with you. [16]

§ 3. PLAY ACTIVITY

The child is a playing animal. Play is not an invention of the devil, designed to plague parents and to lead children to waste their time. Itis nature's best method of education, for when a child plays he issimply reaching forward in his activities to the realization of hisideals. Play is idealized experiences. There is always a significance ofwider and maturer experience in children's play. Therefore the familymust find space and time and adaptation of organization to the child'sneed of spontaneous, free activity in play. 

The special religious value of play lies in the fact that the child inhis games is experimenting with life, learning its lessons; especiallyis he learning the art of living with other lives. It is our religiousduty to see to it that our children become used to living in society byplaying in social groups. Scarcely anyone is more to be pitied than thelonely child standing in the corner of the playground, able only towatch the games, because parental prohibition has already made him asolitary and unsocial creature. 

The educational potencies of play are so great that we dare not leaveits activities to chance. Parents must study the power of play, itspsychological and educational values, in order to direct its activity tothe highest good. 

The adequate care of a child's play-life will involve, in addition tothe trained intelligence of the parents, provision for space in thehouse and also outdoors, willingness to subordinate our peace and ourpleasure to the child's play at times, a reasonable though notnecessarily expensive provision of play materials, attention to thecharacter of the plays and playmates. The home will not lose its harmonyand beauty if it is filled with playing children. Its function has to dowith their development rather than with the preservation of chairs. 

 I. References for Study

 H. F. Cope, _Hymns You Ought to Know_, Introduction. Revell, $1. 50. 

 W. F. Pratt, _Musical Ministries_. Revell, $1. 00. 

 H. W. Hulbert, _The Church and Her Children_, chap. X. Revell, $1. 00. 

 II. Further Reading

 For a list of great hymns see _Hymns You Ought to Know_, edited by Henry F. Cope, and mentioned above. It contains one hundred standard hymns with a brief account of each hymn and of each author. 

 E. D. Eaton, "Hymns for Youth, " _Religious Education_, December, 1912, VII, 509. 

 See report of the Commission on Worship in the Sunday School, in _Religious Education_, October, 1914. 

 Read especially the chapter on this subject in H. H. Hartshorne, _Worship in the Sunday School_. Columbia University, $1. 25. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What special advantages do songs and hymns have in their pedagogical power?

 2. What hymns do you remember from childhood? In what way are these hymns valuable to you?

 3. What changes would you like to see in the hymns the children learn today?

 4. What difficulties do you find in training children to sing in the home?

 5. Is it worth while to teach children to play? What games have special educational value? What games have religious significance or value? Give reasons for your opinions. 

FOOTNOTES:

[15] One of the best collections of suitable religious songs is _Worshipand Song_. Pilgrim Press, $0. 40. 

[16] An excellent plan is worked out in _The Children's Hour of Storyand Song_ by Moffat and Hidden, Unitarian Sunday School Society, inwhich children's stories are given and following them suitable songs andhymns with the music for each. 

CHAPTER X

STORIES AND READING

If we would teach religion to our children we must adopt the method ofJesus; that of telling stories. The story has the advantage, first, ofits natural interest, and, then, of the indirect manner of itspresentation of the truth, together with the fact that that truth isembodied in a statement of life and experience. Besides, story-tellingto any person of active interests is one of the easiest and moststimulating methods of teaching. 

§ 1. STORY-TELLING

So much has already been written on the art of telling stories that onlya few suggestions are needed here. First, understand why you tell thestory. Normally a double motive enters in, namely, the conveyance oftruth in life, at the same time affording real pleasure to thelisteners. Either motive alone will be inadequate. You cannot convey thetruth without the desire to give pleasure; you cannot make the pleasureworth while without the truth. But this is the place to insist that thetruth which you desire to convey must find its way to the conviction ofthe child through the story and not through any moral or preface orparticular statement which you may make. The moral or lesson must beclear to you but carefully held in reserve to direct the matter andmanner of the story. 

Secondly, be prepared to pay the price of this most effective method ofinstruction. It will cost the reservation of a certain amount of timeboth for acquiring the story and for relating it. It will requirecareful thought and planning, especially to be sure that the story istold in sympathy with the child's world. People who are too busy to telltheir children stories are, perhaps fortunately, coming to realize thatthey are too busy to have children. If it looks like a waste of time toturn off the lights and sit by the firelight for from twenty to thirtyminutes, we shall need to revise our estimates of the value ofchild-character. Nor must we shrink from the investment of time inpreparation for the narration of the story; if it is worth telling, itis worth telling well. 

Thirdly, keep a record of sources of stories. This may be preserved in anotebook. One parent used a card-index for this purpose. There are a fewbooks published containing good collections. [17] You will find mostvaluable your own little book in which you have noted down the fugitivestories and short selections which are to be found in generalliterature. [18]

Fourthly, do not tell a story so as to close the child's interest in thenarrative. Stories ought to lead to inquiry and further reading in thebook or other source from which they have been drawn; indeed, story-telling is one excellent method of quickening an interest inreading. 

Fifthly, allow the children to retell the stories to one another. Oftenthe whole family will be entertained and helped by the explanation whicha small child will give of the story he has learned by hearing itrepeated a few times from his mother's lips. 

Sixthly, telling Bible stories to children in the quiet hour is the bestof all methods to stimulate their interest in the Bible itself. It ismuch better to tell the story in your own language than to read iteither in the Bible or in a paraphrase. For one reason, you will nevertell it twice the same way, and children will watch with interestchanges in the narration. As soon as they can read, secure some of thesimple Bible narratives and put these in their hands. [19]

§ 2. BOOKS AND READING

A home without books is like a house with only one window; it can lookout in only one direction, in that of the present. It knows only alimited world; its children have a short measure of the joy of life, they can know here only those whom they see today, their friends must befew, their world narrow and confined. 

If the books are not in your home the children will find them elsewhere. Unless the school kills the taste for reading, as it sometimes does, theyoung folks will open ways somehow into the ideal realm of books. Asthey grow up, the book takes the place of the story. The printed page isthe child's key to all routes of travel, routes that lead to other timesand lands, routes that lead to other people and into their hearts andminds. The child sees conduct and feels it as it is in action in livesbefore him, but he begins to discriminate and to analyze it only throughreading; souls are revealed where the purpose of the writer is that thereader may see the springs of action in the character portrayed. Fiction, biography, travel, and adventure soon pass from the merelyexterior happenings to the discovery of meanings in character. 

§ 3. DANGERS OF READING

Since the book needs only one for its enjoyment, while the storyrequires two, there is less control over reading. There is only one wayto be sure that children are not devouring vicious books and that is tomake sure that they have an ample supply of healthful, helpful ones. This is especially necessary in a day that caters to sloth in reading. The tendency is for reading to take the facile decline from book tocheap magazine, from magazine to newspaper, and from the newspaper toskimming the headlines and the "funnies. " The cheaper papers appeal tothe lowest intelligence and strike at the line of least moral and mentalresistance. Reading enriches the life but little and may impoverish itgreatly unless there is developed the habit of drawing on the world'sgreat treasures of thought and feeling. Open windows in your children'ssouls by giving them books; keep them open by encouraging the readinghabit. Great souls wait for them, willing to converse and become theirfriends and teachers if they will but take down these books from theshelves and open them with an eager mind. 

§ 4. DEVELOPING GOOD TASTE

_What can be done to quicken a love of good reading in children?_Recognize that not all children develop this appetite at the same age, that girls read more than boys, that boys usually have a period ofdecline in reading interest from seventeen to twenty-one or even later. But everything really depends on whether we ourselves love good booksand keep them on hand. One of the life-centers of a family should be thebookshelf, while the picture of the evening lamp and the reading groupwill constitute one of its best memories. Where books are at hand andwhere they are used daily, the children need little urging to read. Nowthis does not mean that yards of choice editions make a book-lovingfamily. There is a difference between bindings and books. It means booksknown and loved, familiar friends for daily converse, books on handyshelves and fit to be used as common food. 

_Do you know what your children read?_ Do you watch as carefully thefood of mind and spirit as you do that of the body? Do you show aninterest in the books they plan to draw from the public library? Can youguide them intelligently when they ask for suggestions of interestingbooks? Do you know the healthful, suitable ones?

§ 5. PROMOTION OF THE READING INTEREST

The Sunday school might aid greatly in promoting the habit of selectingand reading good books. Children often come home from day schoolclamoring for some book which the teacher has recommended as interestingand valuable. The Sunday-school teacher's recommendation would alsocarry weight. In every church, whether there exists a Sunday-schoollibrary or not, there ought to be a library or book committee whichwould watch for the right reading for the different grades and wouldcause the titles of good books to be placed on a bulletin board. Further, such a committee might very well place a copy of the bookselected in the teacher's hand in order that the teacher might call theattention of the class directly to it. Of course the range of selectionshould be as wide as the world of books and should include fiction, romance, song, and story. [20] Parents could do the same sort of thing. Why not talk up the best books we remember? As to those old-time books, we need to realize that tastes change. Perhaps they owed much of theirinterest to their vivid descriptions of contemporary life. Therefore wemust commend the new books, those that belong to the children's owndays, too. This can be done, provided we really know the books, not bysaying, "We should like you to read _Sandford and Merton_, " but rather, "There is a capital story in _Captains Courageous_; have any of you readit?" Leave the matter there, or, at most, go only far enough tostimulate interest. 

 I. References for Study

 St. John, _Stories and Story Telling_, chaps. I-v. Eaton & Mains, $0. 50. 

 Forbush, _The Coming Generation_, chap. Viii. Appleton, $1. 50

 Winchester, "Good and Bad Books in the Home, " in _The Bible in Practical Life_, p. 38. Religious Education Association, $2. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 Partridge, _Story Telling in School and Home_. Sturgis & Walton, $1. 25. 

 H. W. Mabie, _Books and Culture_. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $1. 25. 

 III. Methods and Materials

 ON STORY-TELLING

 E. P. St. John, _Stories and Story Telling_. Eaton & Mains, $0. 50. 

 Wyche, _Some Great Stories and How to Tell Them_. Newson & Co. , $1. 00. 

 L. S. Houghton, _Telling Bible Stories_. Scribner, $1. 25. 

 Bryant, _How to Tell Stories for Children_. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. 

 E. M. And G. E. Partridge, _Story Telling in School and Home_. Sturgis & Walton, $1. 25. 

 DIRECTING CHILDREN'S READING IN THE HOME

 Macy, _A Children's Guide to Reading_. Baker & Taylor Co. , $1. 25. 

 Field, _Finger Posts to Children's Reading_. McClurg, $1. 00. 

 Arnold, _A Mother's List of Books for Children_. McClurg, $1. 00. 

 For a short practical list see the different lists classified under Sunday-School Departments in W. S. Athearn, _The Church School_, particularly pp. 54, 83, 118, 169. Pilgrim Press, $1. 00. 

 IV. Topics for Discussion

 1. Do you remember any stories which especially impressed you as a child? What were their qualities? What were the qualities of their narration?

 2. What are your difficulties in story-telling to children?

 3. Is the habit of reading books passing among children? If so, what are the reasons?

 4. What responsibility has the public library toward the child's selection of books? toward promoting book reading?

 5. How many families co-operate with the library?

 6. How might the church co-operate?

 7. Does the reading of newspapers by children affect their general habits of reading? In what ways?

 8. What personal difference is there, if any, between the effect of a borrowed book and of one the child owns?

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Laura E. Cragin, _Kindergarten Bible Stories_. Fifty-six of the OldTestament stories. There is also a companion volume of New Testamentstories. 

James Baldwin, _Old Stories of the East_. Fresh and interesting versionsof the familiar Old Testament stories. 

Kate Douglas Wiggin, _The Story Hour_. Good stories and a suggestiveintroduction on story-telling. 

_Half a Hundred Stories for the Little People_, by various authors. 

[18] _A List of Good Stories to Tell to Children under Twelve Years ofAge_, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, $0. 05. There are references tobooks in which the stories may be found, including 25 Bible stories, 16fables, 14 myths, 14 Christmas stories, 7 Thanksgiving stories, etc. 

[19] Such as O'Shea, _Old World Wonder Stories_; George Hodges, _TheGarden of Eden_; Cragin, _Old Testament Stories_; Mary Stewart, _Tell Mea True Story_. 

[20] The H. W. Wilson Co. , White Plains, New York, publishes a list of_Children's Books for Sunday-School Libraries_. 

CHAPTER XI

THE USE OF THE BIBLE IN THE HOME

If we keep clearly in mind the aim of religious education in the familyas that of the development of the lives of religious persons, the placeand value of the Bible will be evident. It will be used as a means ofdeveloping and directing lives. This will be quite different from aperfunctory use because our fathers used it or a use under thecompulsion of the fear lest some strange evil should befall us, somevisitation of an offended deity. 

§ 1. THE CHILD'S NEED

Children need the Bible as a part of their social heritage. Just as theyget a larger life, inspired and stimulated by the realization of theirconnection with the past of their family and their country, so the Biblebrings them into connection with the religious history of the race. General history brings heroic forefathers into the stream ofconsciousness; we feel the push of their lives. So the Bible reveals thestream farther back and makes us part of the process of life in unitywith great characters and great movements. 

The child has a right to the Bible as his literary heritage. Here in theBible is the precipitation of the ideals of a people unique in theplace which religion held in their lives. Here is a literature which isthe source of much of the best in the language and reading of thechild's life. Its phrases are beautiful and convenient embodiments ofreligious ideals; they will have a steadily developing richness ofmeaning as life opens out to the child. [21]

§ 2. DIFFICULTIES

The difficulties in the way of the use of the Bible in the home are: thecrowded programs, or a lack of time due to the absence of any programfor the days; a feeling of unnaturalness in the special reading of thisbook; the decay of the custom of reading aloud; parental ignorance ofthe Bible and especially of its beauties for the young; and theexcessive amount of task-reading frequently required by the schools. TheSunday school also sometimes offends in this respect by overemphasis onacademic tasks for home work. 

§ 3. METHODS

First, let parents use the Bible themselves. Use the books as you wishchildren to use them. This will be the longest step you can take towardthe solution of the problem. 

Secondly, use the Bible naturally. When children have an aversion to theBible it is due usually to two causes: the peculiar place and use ofthe book which makes it a thing apart from life, and often an object ofdread; and the practice of using it as a task-book, to be opened only inorder to prepare Sunday-school lessons. Just as it takes years toovercome the aversion set up against English literature by itsanalytical study in the schools, so that the child becomes a man beforehe voluntarily reads Dickens, Thackeray, the poets, and essayists, inthe same manner we have succeeded in making the Bible undesirable toyouth. If you read passages aloud, use the tone of voice which would beappropriate if this was a new book not bound in leather. Read it forpleasure as one would read a literary masterpiece--not because opinionmight frown on you if you had not read the classic. Does someone objectthat that would be to degrade the Bible to the level of secularwritings? You cannot degrade a literature; it makes its own level andour labels do not affect it. Certain it is that a pious tone of voicewill not protect the Bible from the secular level. But to use itunnaturally will degrade it in the opinion of those who hear us. 

Thirdly, make its use a pleasure. All children enjoy story-telling andlistening to reading. Many parents practice the children's hour, someperiod in the day when they will, alone with the children, read and talkwith them. Let the Bible story be the reward of a good day, somethingpromised as an incentive to good behavior. Children delight, not alonein the story itself, but in rhythmic passages, in the poetic flights ofIsaiah and the beautiful imagery of the Psalms. To them it is naturaland pleasant to think of the hills that skipped and the stars that sangand the trees that gave forth praise. They know the song of nature andare happy to find it put into words. 

Fourthly, use the Bible as a book of life. How many times a day doquestions of conduct arise in the family! How often do children ask whatis right, and freely discuss the question! Here is a book rich inprecept and example on at least many of the questions. There arepictures of actual lives meeting real temptations; there are theepigrammatic precepts of Proverbs and of the teachings of Jesus. Callattention to them, not as settling the question out of hand, but astestimony to the point. Accustom children to getting the light of theBible on their lives, remembering that this book is a light and not afence nor a code of laws. 

Fifthly, use the Bible in worship. This does not conflict with the pleafor its use naturally, for worship should be as natural as any of thesocial pleasures of the family. Here select those passages for readingwhich count most for the spirit of worship. It is a good plan to read ashort passage, suitable for memorizing, so frequently that childrenlearn it and are able to repeat it in concert. Be sure that all thepassages read or recited are short. It will often be wise to preface thereading with a brief account of its original circumstances, so that allmay hear the words as the actual utterances of a real man living in reallife. 

Sixthly, provide material which helps to make the Bible interesting, andwhich helps children to see its pictures through the eyes of geographyand history. [22]

Seventhly, make the use of the Bible possible at all times for all. Seethat as soon as the child can read he has his own Bible, that it is inlarge, readable type, as much like any other book as possible. It is noevidence of grace to ruin the eyes over diamond-text Bibles. Ifpossible, also provide separate books of the Bible, in modern literaryform and some in the idiom of our day. [23]

§ 4. DOUBTFUL METHODS

It is doubtful whether good comes from the use of the Bible as ariddle-book, nor do the "Bible games" tend to develop a naturalappreciation of the book. There is no new light but rather a confusingshadow thrown on the character of Joseph by the foolish conundrumconcerning Pharaoh making a ruler out of him. Sending a child to theBible to discover the shortest verse, the longest, the middle one, etc. , trains him to regard it as an odd kind of book, to think of it as adictionary, and to use it less. 

We assume too readily that a knowledge of the separate details ofbiblical information, such as the date of the Flood, the age ofMethuselah, the names of the twelve tribes, the twelve apostles, thebooks of the two Testaments, is the desired end. But one might know allthese things and many more and be not one whit the better. For the childsurely the desirable end is that he may feel deeply the attractivenessof the character of Joseph or of Jesus, may say within himself, "What afine man; I want to be like him. " Be sure the persons are real, that yousee them living their lives in their times, just as you live your lifenow. 

 I. References for Study

 T. G. Soares, "Making the Bible Real to Boys, " in _Boy Training_, pp. 117-40. Association Press, $0. 75. 

 W. T. Lhamon, "Bible in the Home, " _Religious Education_, December, 1912, p. 486. 

 G. Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. X. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 _The Bible in Practical Life. _ Religious Education Association. Numerous references to the use of the Bible in the home in this volume. 

 Patterson Dubois, _The Natural Way_, sec. Iv. Revell, $1. 25. 

 III. Methods and Materials

 "Passages of Bible for Memorization, " _Religious Education_, August, 1906. 

 Louise S. Houghton, _Telling Bible Stories_. Scribner, $1. 25. 

 Johnson, _The Narrative Bible_. Baker & Taylor Co. , $1. 50. 

 Hall and Wood, _The Bible Story_, 5 vols. King, $2. 00 by subscription. 

 Courtney, _The Literary Man's Bible_. Crowell, $1. 25. 

 The above are but a few of the many collections of biblical material. 

 IV. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the conditions which seem to make the reading of the Bible different from other reading? Is there a sense of unreality about it as a book? What are the causes?

 2. Try the experiment of reading the story of Joseph at one sitting. Try to retell this to children. 

 3. What biblical material stands out in your memory of childhood? In what degree is this due to the art of the story-teller or the reader? to the character of the material?

FOOTNOTES:

[21] See M. J. C. Foster, _The Mother the Child's First Bible Teacher_. 

[22] Mackie, _Bible Manners and Customs_. 

Chamberlin, _Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children_. 

Worcester, _On Holy Ground_, 2 vols. 

[23] For example, Moulton, _Modern Reader's Bible_. The new Jewishrenderings of Old Testament books are good, especially the Psalms. 

CHAPTER XII

FAMILY WORSHIP

Family worship has declined until, at least in the United States, thepercentage of families practicing daily worship in the home is so smallas to be negligible. If this meant that a general institution ofreligion had passed out of existence the fact would be highlysignificant. But it is well to remember that family worship has neverbeen a general institution. We have generalized the picture of the"Cotter's Saturday Night" so eloquently drawn by Burns; it has beenapplied to every night and to every fireside. Daily family worship wasobserved in practically all the Puritan homes of New England; but thereis no evidence for it as a uniform custom, either in other parts of thiscountry or in other parts of the world, save perhaps in sections ofScotland. True, there were many families which observed the custom; butthere were also many families of church members and doubtless of trulyreligious people in which family worship as a regular institution wasunknown. This has been especially true in the type of family life whichhas developed under modern social conditions. Further, even so simple anexercise as grace at meals has not always been a general custom. 

§ 1. PAST CUSTOMS

But the fact today is that family worship is so rare as to be countedphenomenal wherever found. The instances, though not general, werecommon a generation ago. Many are living to whom family worship affordedthe largest part of their conscious and formal religious education. Following the morning meal, or, occasionally, the evening meal, thefamily waited while the father, or the mother in his absence, read aportion of the Scriptures and offered prayer. In other families the actof worship would be the closing one of the day, perhaps participated inby the older members only, the younger children having repeated theirprayers at bedside on retiring. A thousand happy and sacred associationsgather about the memories of these occasions: the sense of reverence, the feeling that the home was a sacred place, the impression of noblewords and elevating thoughts, the reflex influence of the prayer thatcommitted all to the keeping and guidance of God. [24]

§ 2. WHY FAMILY WORSHIP?

Parents need to see the values in family worship. We have been insistingon the primary importance of the religious interpretation of the familyas an institution, on the power of the religious motive, and theatmosphere of religion. But wherever there is a truly religious motiveand a permanent religious atmosphere these will find definite expressionin acts easily recognized as religious. Love is the motive andatmosphere of the true home, but love blossoms into words and bearsfruit in a thousand deeds. The life of love dies without reality in act. Ideals are precipitated in expressive acts. So is it with religion inthe home; it must not only be real in its sincerity, it must berealized, must pass over into conduct and action, as suggested above inchaps. Vii and viii. And it must do this in ways so sharply defined andreadily recognized as to leave no doubt as to their meaning. True, allacts may be religious and thus full of worship--this is most importantof all--but worship expressly unites all such acts in a spirit ofloyalty and aspiration. 

Worship is a necessity for the sake of the ideal unity of the familylife. Just as the individual must not only feel the religious emotionbut must also do the thing called for, so must this united personalityof the family give expression to its faith and aspiration, its motivesand emotions, in such a manner that, acting as a social unit, all cantogether put the inner life into the outer form. The social value offamily worship is the strongest reason for its maintenance. It is theunited act of the family group, the one in which group consciousness isexpressly directed to the highest possible aims. Every period of worshipbrings the family into unity at an ideal level. 

The expression of religion in definite forms is necessary for children, too, as furnishing a means by which they can manifest their feeling ofthe higher meaning of family life. The reality of that feeling isstimulated in the daily, common life of the right family; the hour ofworship is one out of many definite forms of its concrete expression. Itis the form which gathers up the totality of feeling and aspiration intoan act of worship and praise toward God, the Father of all families. Itis evident there cannot be true worship in the family that isirreligious in its essential qualities, in its character, in its idealsand atmosphere. 

§ 3. ADVANTAGES

The period of worship is a necessity in interpreting to all the spiritand meaning of a religious family. It objectifies the inner life. Itmakes definite, tangible, and easily remembered the general impressionsof religion. It precipitates the atmosphere of religion intodefiniteness. In the chemical laboratory of a university there isusually a decided atmosphere of chemistry, but no one expects to becomea chemical engineer by absorbing that atmosphere, nor even to attain asimple working knowledge by merely general impressions. Definitenessaids in gathering up our knowledge, our impressions. 

The reading of the Bible in the home will give, when the passages arewisely chosen, forms of language into which the often chaotic butnevertheless valuable and potential emotions of youth fall as into abeautiful mold; they become remembered forms of beauty thereafter. 

Family worship furnishes opportunity for direct religious instruction. When the home life has its regular institution, as regular as meals andplay, the formality, the apparent abnormality of conversation aboutreligion, is absent. Children expect and look forward to the period whenthe family will lay other things aside to think on the eternal values. Their questions in the breathing-space that always ought to followworship become perfectly natural and sincere. 

Family worship lifts the whole level of family life. Ideally conceived, it simply means the family unity consciously coming into its highestplace. Children may not understand all the reading nor enter into themotives for all parts of the petition, but they do feel that this momentis the one in which the family enters a holy place. They feel that Godis real and that their family life is a part of his whole care and ofhis life. One short period of natural reverence sends light and calmall through the day. Where the home is the place where true prayer isoffered, the family is the group which meets in an act of worship; hereand into this group there cannot easily enter strife, bickerings, orbaseness. One short period, five minutes or even less, of quietness, ofunited turning toward the eternal, gives tone to the day and fineratmosphere to the home. 

What our community life might be like without the churches, faulty orincompetent as we may know some of them to be, what that life would loseand miss without them is precisely, and perhaps in larger degree, whatthe family life misses without its own institution of regular devotionand worship. 

§ 4. THE DIFFICULTIES

We can always afford to do that which is most worth while doing; ouressential difficulty is to shake off the delusion of the lesser values, the lower prizes, to realize that, of all the good of life, thecharacters of our children, the gain we can all make in the eternalvalues of the spirit, in love and joy and truth and goodness, is thegain most worth while. We tend to set the making of a living before themaking of lives. We need to see the development of the powers ofpersonality, the riches of character, as the ultimate, dominant purposeof all being. Once grasp that, and hold to it, and we shall not allowlesser considerations, such as the pressure of business, the desire forgain, for ease, for pleasure, for social life, to come before this firstand highest good; we shall make time for definite conscious religion inthe life of the family. [25]

§ 5. TYPES OF WORSHIP

There are three simple forms which worship takes in the family: first, grace offered at the meals; secondly, the prayers of children onretiring and, occasionally, on rising; thirdly, the daily gathering ofthe family for an act of the spirit. The statement of the three formsreads so as to give them a formal character, but the most importantpoint to remember is that wherever they are true acts of worship theyare formal only in that they occur at definite, determined times andplaces. The acts have no merit in themselves. Merely to institute theirobservance will not secure religious feeling and life in the home. Thesethree observances have arisen because at these times there is the bestand most natural opportunity for the expression of aspiration, desire, and feeling. 

§ 6. METHODS OF FAMILY WORSHIP

1. _Grace at meals. _--Shall we say grace at meals? To assent because itis the custom, or because it was so done in our childhood's home, maymake an irreligious mockery of the act. Perhaps, too, there are some whoeven hesitate to omit the grace from an unspoken fear that the foodmight harm them without it. All have heard grace so muttered, orhurriedly and carelessly spoken, void of all feeling and thought, thatthe act was almost unconscious, a species of "vain repetition. "

There are two outstanding aspects of the asking of a blessing--thedesire to express gratitude for the common benefits of life, and theexpression of a wish, with the recognition of its realization, that ateach meal the family group might include the Unseen Guest, the InfiniteSpirit of God. That wish lifts the meal above the dull level ofsatisfying appetites. Just as, in good society, we seek to make the mealmuch more than an eating of food, "a feast of reason and a flow ofsoul, " so does this act make each meal a social occasion lifted towardthe spiritual. The one thought at the beginning, the thought of thereality of the presence of God, and of the nearness of the divine to usin our daily pleasures, gives a new level to all our thinking. 

How shall we say grace, or "ask a blessing"? First, with simplicity andsincerity. Avoid long, elaborate, ornate phrases. It is better to errin rhetoric than in feeling and reality. The sonorous grace may soonbecome stilted and offensive. It is better to say in your own words justwhat you mean, for that will help all, even to the youngest, to meanwhat they say with you. 

Vary the form of petition. Sometimes let it be the silent grace of theQuakers; sometimes children will enjoy singing one of the old four-linestanzas, as

 Be present at our table, Lord, Be here and everywhere adored; These mercies bless and grant that we May feast in Paradise with thee. 

One might use the first three of the following lines for breakfast andthe last three at another meal:

 For the new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, We thank the heavenly Father. 

 For rest and food, for love and friends, For everything his goodness sends, We thank the heavenly Father. [26]

or

 When early in the morning the birds lift up their songs, We bring our praise to Jesus to whom all praise belongs. 

One especially needs to guard against the purely dietetic grace, the onethat only asks that the deity will aid digestion, as that form so oftenheard, "Bless these mercies to our use. "[27]

Should we say grace on all occasions of meals? What shall we do at thesocial dinner in the home? The answer depends on the purpose of thegrace. Is it not that in our own group we may have the consciousness ofthe presence of God? When the meal is that of our own group with afriend or two, we bring the friends into the group and the act of familyworship is maintained. Usually this is the case. So it will be when thegroup is entirely at one in this desire: the asking of grace will beperfectly natural. But when the group is a large one, when the sense offamily unity is lost, or when the observance would seem unnatural, it isbetter to omit it. Grace in large gatherings often seems an uncoveringof the sacred aspects of the home life. 

2. _Bedtime prayers. _--What of children's bedtime prayers? Many canremember them. To many the most natural, helpful time for formal periodsof prayer is in the quiet of the bedroom just before retiring. But thereis a grave danger in establishing a regular custom of bedside prayersfor children, a danger manifest in the very form of certain of theseprayers, as

 Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. 

It is as though the child were saying, "The day is ended during which Ihave been able to take care of myself, the hours of helpless sleepbegin, and I ask God to take care of me through the terrors of thenight. " For some children, at least, the night has been made terrible bythat thought; they have been led to feel that the day was safe andbeautiful, but that the night was so dangerous and fearful that only thegreat God could keep them through it, and it was an open questionwhether their prayer for that keeping would be heard. 

One must avoid also the notion that such prayers are part of a pricepaid, a system of daily taxation in return for which heaven furnishes uspolice protection. 

The best plan seems to be to encourage children to pray, to establish inthem the habit of closing the day with quiet, grateful thoughts, towatch especially that the prayers learned in early life do not distortthe child's thoughts of God, and to make the evening prayer anopportunity for the child to express his desires to God his Father andFriend. Having done this, as the children grow up it is best to leavethem free to pray when and where they will. One may properly encouragethe evening, private prayer; but the child ought to have the feelingthat it is not obligatory, that it must grow out of his desire to talkwith God, and, above all, that it has no special connection with thehour and act of retiring for sleep but rather, so far as time isconcerned, with the closing of the day. Mothers must see far beyond thecharm of the picture formed by the little white-robed figure at herknee. There is no hour so rich in possibilities for this growing life. It is one of the great opportunities to guide its consciousness ofGod. [28]

3. _General family prayers. _--It is true that, in many homes, undermodern conditions of business, it is almost impossible for the family tobe united at the hour when worship used to be customary, followingbreakfast. However, that is not the only hour available. In manyrespects it is a poor one for the purpose of social worship; it lacksthe sense of leisure. But there are few families where the members donot all gather for the evening meal. It is not difficult to plan at itsclose for ten minutes in which all shall remain. Without leaving thetable it is possible to spend a short time in united, social worship. Or, by establishing the custom and steadily following it, it is possibleto leave the table and in less than ten minutes find ample time forworship in another room. 

Really everything depends at first on how much we desire to have familyworship, whether we see its beauty and value in the knitting of hometies, in the elevation of the family spirit, and in the quickening ofthe religious ideas. We find time to eat simply because we must; whenthe necessity of the spirit is upon us we shall find time also toworship and to pray. 

Next to the will to make time comes the question of method. First, determine to be simple, natural, and informal. A stilted exercise soonbecomes a burden and a source of pain to all. In whatever you do, seekto make it possible for all to have a share by seeing that every thoughtis expressed within the intelligence of even the younger members, thatis, of those who desire to have a share. This does not mean descendingto "baby-talk. " Just read the Twenty-third Psalm; that is not baby talk, but a child of seven can understand what is meant up to the measure ofhis experience; the language is essentially simple though the ideas aresublime. 

Secondly, insure brevity. For that part of worship in which all areexpected regularly to unite, ten minutes should be ample. Some excellentprograms will not take more than half this time. Family worship is not adiminutive facsimile of church worship. Doubtless the experiment hasfailed in many families because the father has attempted to preach to acongregation which could not escape. Keep in mind the thought that thisis to be a high moment in each day in which every member will have anequal share. 

Thirdly, plan for the largest possible amount of common participation. This is to be the expression of the unity of the family life. Childrenenjoy doing things co-operatively and in concert. 

Fourthly, treat the occasion naturally in relation to other affairs. Proceed to the worship without formal notice, without change of voice, and without apology to visitors. Take this for granted. At the closemove on into other duties without the sense of coming back into theworld. You have not been out of it; you have only recognized the eternallife and love everywhere in it. 

4. _Suggestions of plans. _--There are given below seven outlines ofplans of worship. They are plans which have been in use and have beentried for years. Their only merit is simplicity and practicability; butthey are at least worthy of trial. There is no special significance inthe arrangement of the days and this may be changed in any waydesirable. Further, all plans should be elastic; there will come specialdays, such as festivals and birthdays, when the program should bevaried. For example, on a birthday the child whose anniversary thenoccurs should have the privilege of making the choice of recitation orreading or of determining the order of all the parts of this briefperiod of worship. 

 MONDAY

 1. A short psalm repeated in concert. 

 2. A brief, informal petition by father or mother. 

 3. The Lord's Prayer, in which all join. 

 Before attempting even this simple plan, prepare for it by first selecting several suitable psalms. The following should be included: the 1st, 19th, 23d, 24th, 100th, 117th, 121st, and a part of the 103d. You would do well to memorize one of these yourself, so as to be able to lead without reading from the book. Next, think over with some care the things for which you may pray, the aspirations which your children can share with you. Few things are more difficult than this, so to pray that all can make the prayer their own. Let it also be a prayer of love and joy, not a craven begging off from punishments, nor a cowardly plea for protection and provision. We can pray over all these things with gratitude and with confidence toward the God of love. Do not try to preach in your prayers. Many prayers have been ruined by preaching, just as some preaching has been spoiled by praying to the people. Usually four or five sentences will do for the one day. Better a single thought simply expressed than the most brilliant attempt to inform the Almighty on all the events of the world that day. 

 A prayer in which all can join is always desirable. The Lord's Prayer never wearies us nor grows old. Children enter into it with some new meaning every day; it covers all our great, common, daily needs. 

 TUESDAY

 1. A few favorite memory verses repeated by all (from either the Bible or other literature). 

 2. Read a very brief passage from the Bible. 

 3. Prayer, ending with the Lord's Prayer. 

 Many excellent selections will be found in Dr. Dole's book mentioned at the end of this chapter. Encourage children, however, to make their selections from the poems and passages they already know. 

 The passage of the Bible selected to be read should be one which first of all incites to worship, and should be chosen for its inspiration and literary beauty. A few lines from the great chapters of Isaiah (e. G. , chaps. 35 and 55), from the Psalms (e. G. , Pss. 61, 65, 145), from the Sermon on the Mount, from 1 Cor. , chap. 13, from the parables of Jesus, will be suitable. 

 The closing prayer may be extemporaneous or may be read from one of the books of prayers. Many of the prayers in the Episcopal Prayer Book are especially beautiful and quite suitable. Of course in families of the Episcopal church the collect for the day would be the right prayer to use. It is sometimes necessary to use prayers prepared beforehand; some persons never acquire the ability to pray aloud, even in their own families. But halting sentences that are your own, that your children recognize as yours, may mean more to them than the finest flowing phrases from a book. Use the prayers from the book, not as a substitute, but as an addition. 

 WEDNESDAY

 1. A good poem from general literature. 

 2. Prayer. 

 There are so many good collections of the great and inspiring poems that one hesitates to recommend any collection. Remember that a poem may be religious and imbued with the spirit of worship, helpful to the purpose of this occasion, even though it contains no allusions to Scripture and makes no direct references to religious belief. "A House by the Side of the Road"[29] is thoroughly human, popular, and could not even be accused of being a classic; but it has a helpful motive and is likely to lead the will toward the life of service and brotherhood. Some would prefer to read a part of one of the great hymns. 

 THURSDAY

 1. A brief reading or recitation from the New Testament. 

 2. A few moments' conversation on the reading. 

 3. A very brief prayer followed by a song. 

 The only apparent difficulty here is in starting the conversation. Do not ask formal questions; rather put them something like this: "I wonder whether people would do just the same on our street today. " Make the conversation as general as possible; do not slight, nor scoff at, the contribution of even the least in the group. 

 FRIDAY

 1. A few verses in concert. 

 2. Read a parable or very brief narrative. 

 3. The Lord's Prayer. 

 The reading had better be from one of the paraphrases if it is a narrative from the Old Testament. [30] Even in reading the New Testament one can at times use with advantage the _Twentieth-Century Bible_ or the _Modern Reader's Bible_. 

 SATURDAY

 1. A period of song. 

 2. Closing prayer, with the Lord's Prayer. 

 Perhaps only one song can be sung. It need not be a hymn; that should depend on the choice of the children. Help them to put together all the good songs, including the hymns, in one category in their minds. 

 SUNDAY

 1. Ask: "What has been the best we have read or repeated in our worship this week?"

 2. Ask: "What shall we learn for memory repetition this week, what psalm or other passage for our concerted worship?"

 3. Read the psalm selected. 

 4. Closing prayer. 

 5. Period of song, lasting as long as desired. 

 This exercise evidently permits of extension in time and should be arranged in accordance with the program for the day. 

 I. References for Study

 George Hodges, _The Training of Children in Religion_, chaps. Viii, ix. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 _The Improvement of Religious Education_, pp. 108 to 123. Religious Education Association, $0. 50. 

 Mrs. B. S. Winchester, "Methods and Materials Available, " _Religious Education_, October, 1911. $0. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 Koons, _The Child's Religious Life_. Eaton & Mains, $1. 00. 

 Hartshorne, _Worship in the Sunday School_. Columbia University, $1. 25. 

 III. Methods and Materials

 A. R. Wells, _Grace before Meat_. U. S. C. E. , $0. 25. 

 C. F. Dole, _Choice Verses_. Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts. Privately printed. 

 F. A. Hinckley (ed. ), _Readings for Sunday School and Home_. American Unitarian Association, $0. 35. 

 J. Martin, _Prayers for Little Men and Women_. Harper, $1. 25. 

 S. Hart (ed. ), _Short Daily Prayers for Families_. Longmans, $0. 60. 

 G. A. Miller, _Some Out-Door Prayers_. Crowell, $0. 35. 

 Oxenden, _Family Prayers_. Longmans, $1. 50. 

 George Skene, _Morning Prayers for Home Worship_. Methodist Book Concern, $1. 50. 

 W. E. Barton, _Four Weeks of Family Prayer_. Puritan Press, Oak Park, Ill. 

 Abbott, _Family Prayers_. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $0. 50. 

 _Prayers for Parents and Children. _ Young Churchman Co. , Milwaukee, Wisconsin, $0. 15. 

 IV. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the causes for the decay of the custom of family worship?

 2. What influences us most: public opinion, popular custom, economic pressure?

 3. How have the changes affected the religious influence of the home?

 4. What features of the older customs are most worth preserving?

 5. Recall any of childhood's prayers which you remember. How many maintain the custom of bedtime prayers in mature life?

 6. What should be the central motive of "grace" at meals?

 7. Would there be advantage in occasionally omitting the "grace"?

 8. Give reasons for and against "grace. "

 9. Criticize the proposed plan of evening family prayers. 

 10. Describe any plans which have been tried. 

 11. Why is it desirable to maintain family worship?

FOOTNOTES:

[24] For a study of children's worship see H. H. Hartshorne, _Worship inthe Sunday School_; "Report of Commission on Graded Worship, " _ReligiousEducation_, October, 1914. 

[25] "Parents who give up such a practice as family prayers mainlybecause they know of many other people who have done the same arejust as much the slaves of public opinion and ignorant cant as thenarrowest Lowlander who forbids his children secular history onSunday. "--Lyttleton, _Corner-Stone of Education_, pp. 207-8. 

[26] Quoted by W. S. Athearn, _The Church School_. 

[27] A number of good poems are given in A. R. Wells, _Grace beforeMeat_. 

[28] W. B. Forbush gives a number of poetic forms of prayer for childrenin _The Religious Nurture of a Little Child_, pp. 12, 13. 

[29] By Samuel Walter Foss. 

[30] One handy form is _The Heart of the Bible_, prepared by E. A. Broadus; another, _The Children's Bible_. 

CHAPTER XIII

SUNDAY IN THE HOME

Almost every family finds Sunday a problem. Other days are well occupiedwith full programs; this one has a program for only part of its time. Other days are rich with the liberty of happy action, but this one isfrequently marked by inaction, repression, and limitations. As soon asthe evanescent pleasure of Sunday clothes has passed, for those for whomit existed at all, the children settle down to endure the day. 

§ 1. THE MEANING OF THE DAY

Fathers and mothers who vent a sigh of relief when Sunday is over mustmarvel at the strains of "O day of joy and gladness. " Yet this daydefeats its purpose when it is of any other character. We have no rightto rob it of its joy and its healing balm. On the day made for man, sacred to his highest good, whatever hinders the real happiness of thechild ought to be set aside. 

Instead of accepting traditions regarding the method of observing theSunday, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, For what use ofthe day can we properly be held responsible? Here are so many--fifty-twoa year--days of special opportunity. To us who complain that businessinterferes with the personal education of our children through the week, what ought this day to mean? To us who lament the little time we canspend with our families, what ought this day to mean? And what ought weto try to make it mean to children?

We call this God's day; what must some children think of a God who robshis day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then howunattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we haveour best opportunity to show them what God is like, to interpret hisworld and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, andlove. 

It ought to be the day reserved for the best in life, for the treasuresof affection, for the uses of the spirit. Whatever is done this day mustcome to this test, Is this a ministry to the life of goodness, truth, and loving service? Does this enrich lives? In other words, we may putthe broad educational test to the day and its program and determine allby ministry to growing lives. 

§ 2. CONSERVING THE VALUES

The family faces the problem of the opposition between the rights of manon this day and the greed of commerce, the fight between a day of restand a day of work. Man's right to rest is assured, legally, butcommerce in the name of amusement and in the guise of petty andunnecessary trading constantly maintains its fight to invade the day ofrest, to turn it from ministry to man as a person to the dull level ofthe week of ministry to things. The home has much at stake in thisstruggle. It needs one day free from the life that tears its membersapart, free from the toil that engrosses thought, free for its membersto live together as spiritual beings. 

In the need for one day, free from the things that hinder and devoted tothe life of the spirit, the home finds the guiding principle for the useof the day; all members are to be trained to use it as a gloriousopportunity, a welcome period, a day of the best things of life. It isdevoted to personality, to man's rights as a religious being. 

Surely one of the best things of life will be that we shall meet oneanother, shall look into faces of friends and companions! And thisopportunity of social mingling is lifted to a high level when it is anact of the larger family life, the life that brings God and man into onefamily. That is what the church meeting and service ought to be: ourFather's larger family getting together on the day of the life thatmakes them one. For the child the church school and the children'sservice of worship are their immediate points of vital touch with thechurch family. If we think of the day as affording us the pleasure ofsocial mingling with friends and members of that family, Sunday morningwill cease to be a period of unwilling observance of empty duties. Ofcourse that will depend, too, on the measure in which the church andschool grasp their opportunity to make this the best of days. [31]

Further, let the home keep this day as the one of personal values allthe way through, sacred to that life of love, friendship, and joy in thepresence of one another which is the essential life of the family. Ithas always been a good custom for friends to visit on this day, forfamilies grown up and established around their own hearths to gatheragain for a few hours. It is the day when we have time to discover howmuch greater are the riches of friendship than aught besides, when, looking into the eyes of those we love, we see "the light that never wason sea or land, " the ultimate good!

The hours of being together are the hours of real education. Childrencannot be with good and great people and remain the same. Their livesneed other lives. Above all, they need us. This should be the day forreal mothering and fathering. Nothing ought to be permitted to interferewith this, neither our social pleasures nor the demands of the church. 

§ 3. THE PROBLEM OF PLAY

What shall we do with the child who wants to play on Sunday? Is thereany other kind of child? They all want to. It is as natural for a childto play as it is for a man to rest; it is as necessary. A child is agrowing person learning life by play. Because play seems trivial to uswe assume it is so to them; we would banish the trivial from the daydevoted to the higher life. In some families play is forbidden becausechildren find pleasure in it, and adults find it impossible to associatepiety and pleasure. 

Shall we then throw down all barriers and make this day the same as allothers? No, rather make the day different by throwing down barriers thatstand on other days. Let this be the day when the barriers betweenfather and sons, parents and children, are let down and all can enterinto the joy of living. 

Play is to a child the idealization of life's experiences and therealization of its ideals. That is why he plays at school, idealizingthe everyday life; that is why he plays at housekeeping, at being inchurch, at being a railway engineer, even a highwayman or an outlaw. Thetraditional games are the game of life itself in terms of childhood. Play as idealized experience and realized ideals is to the child whatthe church, worship, and the reading of fiction and essays are to theadult. Play is the child's method of reaching forward into life'smeaning. Some games as old as history carry a weight of human traditionand experience as rich for a child as the adult obtains from historicalreview and from association with the past. There is a sense in which thechild playing these games opens the Bible of the race. [32]

We cannot make children over into our pattern; we have to learn fromthem. Indeed, we come to life through their ways. We must become aslittle children. Before we settle the question of play on Sunday we dowell to be sure that we know what play means to children, that we reallygrasp something of its educational value and its religious potency. Thenwe can proceed to a family policy in Sunday play. 

§ 4. A POLICY ON PLAY

_Keep the day as one of family unity. _ Help the child to think of it asa day protected for the sake of family togetherness. You can play thatfor this day the ideal is already realized of a family lifeuninterrupted by the demands of labor and business. 

_Maintain the unity by doing the ideal things together. _ Go to the placeof worship together, provided it is the place where the child can findexpression for spiritual ideals. If the Sunday school does not reallylift the child-life and really teach the child, if it is not honest withhim and makes no suitable provision for his developing nature, he willbe better off in a quiet hour of family conversation and reading athome. That means the application of parents to this hour. [33] Itbanishes the monstrous Sunday supplement with its hideous, debasingpictures. It substitutes conversation in the whole group, reading aloudof stories and poems, biblical and otherwise, and songs, hymns, or attimes the walk in the fields or parks. Fortunately the better type ofSunday school is more and more to be found; children are more and morereceiving a ministry actually determined by their needs. So far as thechurch service is concerned the ideal situation is found when a parallelservice is provided for children, based on their needs and capacities. As to attendance, under other circumstances, in the family pew, thatdepends on whether the child is gaining an aversion to the church by thetorture and tedium often involved. Without doubt many adults acquiredthe settled habit of sleeping in church because that was the onlypossible relief in childhood. [34]

_Maintain the family unity by stepping into the child's ideal life. Expect activity and use it. _ Why should we assume that because the adultfinds a Sunday nap enjoyable the child will be blessed by enforcedsilence? I would rather see a father playing catch with his boys onSunday than see the boys cowed into silence while he slept a Sabbathsleep. Children will play. Their play is innocent; more, it may behelpful and educative; we can insure these values in it by ourparticipation. That is the parent's opportunity for a closer sympathywith his children. Playing together is the closest living, thinking, andfeeling together. Where games are shared, confidences, secrets, andaspirations are shared, too. Besides, the participation of the adult maytend to tone up the game and to moderate boisterousness. 

_Seek the beautiful. _ Speaking as one who has been under both thepuritanical regulation and the so-called "continental" freedom of Sundayobservance, nothing seems much more beautiful than the sight of anentire family playing at home, in the park, or off in the woods or thefields of the country. Life is strengthened, ideals are lifted, familyties knit closer, gratitude is quickened, and courage stimulated by playof this kind. 

§ 5. POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

But because it is evidently most important that this day should bedifferent from other days, it is well to mark that difference in ourplays and pleasures and to follow some simple principles for Sundayplay. 

First, make it the day of the _best_ plays. The participation of parentswill tend to have this effect. Sometimes some forms of play may bereserved for this day. 

Secondly, our play should never interfere with the rights of those whodesire to be quiet or to observe the day in ways differing from ours. Wemust respect the rights of all. 

Thirdly, our play must not cause additional or unnecessary labor. 

Fourthly, our play must not interfere with the pleasures of others. Forinstance, in the city children who can use the public tennis courtsevery day should keep off them on Sunday in order to give opportunity tothose who can use them only on that day. 

Having said so much on play on Sundays, we must not leave the impressionthat play is the principal thing. It would be the principal thing forchildren compelled to work or confined in crowded tenements on all otherdays. This is a day of rest. Play should not be carried beyond the restand refreshment stage. 

Nor must we assume that a recognition of play involves neglect ofworship and instruction. Both should be cherished among the delights ofthe day. Every attempt to make the day a happy one, by normal play, associates the emphasis on worship with increased happiness in thechild's mind. 

§ 6. THE SUNDAY AFTERNOON PROBLEM

"What shall we do?" the children ask restlessly on Sunday afternoons, and it is by no means a strange question. All the week they have theirschool work, on Saturdays their play. No wonder Sunday afternoon seemsdull. Yet if we older ones use it aright this is our opportunity to givethem the best time of all the week. We can make this part of the dayreally a holiday if we just take time to plan it right. There issomething wrong in the home in which the child, as he grows up, does notlook forward happily to his Sunday afternoons. 

Sunday afternoon should be a family festival time. Keep it sacred to thefamily. Business and social life claim us all the week, and the churchclaims its share of this day; but these afternoon hours we can, if wewill, reserve for our own home life, for the closer drawing together ofchildren and parents. To hold this time sacred for the children andtheir interests will help to solve "the Sunday afternoon problem. "

1. _The child's question, "What shall I do next?"_--Children aredynamic, perpetually active. They grow in the direction toward whichtheir activities are turned. Repression is impossible. We must eitherfind the best things for them to do, or let them chance on things goodor bad. The following outline for Sunday afternoon is given in the hopethat it may help to answer the "what next. "

 1. Begin to make _The Family Book_. 

 2. Give "festival name" to the day, and take an excursion in honor of the one for whom the day is named. 

 3. Organize an exploring party to discover peoples and scenes of long, long ago. 

 4. Get acquainted with some beautiful home thoughts. 

 5. Enjoy an evening hour of song and praise. 

2. _"The Family Book. "_--To start _The Family Book_, mother or fatherraises the question at dinner: "What was the best Sunday of all lastyear, and why was it the best?" Everyone, from the oldest down to theleast, should have a chance to tell. The statements of the older oneswill encourage the younger. 

That question will start another: What is the very best thing we canremember about the year past? Let everyone take a pencil and paper andin just ten minutes decide on and write down the one thing best worthremembering. Perhaps the baby cannot write yet, but he or she will wantpaper and pencil, too. Now, instead of making our answers known to oneanother, we fold the papers and keep them till the evening meal. We willopen them then and talk it all over. Afterward we are going to copy theanswers into a new book we are going to make. 

This new book is to be called _The Family Book_, and we expect to putinto it all the pleasant things we wish to record about our home andfamily. Any blank book with ruled lines will do. Some time today we willelect a keeper of the book, and before we go to bed we will see thefirst entry in that book under the title, "Happy Memories of 1915. " Thatwill make a good beginning for _The Family Book_. Next Sunday we willdiscuss and set down in the book the happy memories of the interveningweek. 

3. _The festival name. _--Now, we have been sitting, talking, and writingas long as the children will care to be still. Suppose we all gooutdoors together, every one of us. What if the weather is bad? It isseldom truly bad, and there is so much real happiness in going out inall weathers together. 

But where shall we go? There is no fun in walking simply for exercise orhealth. Well, says father, we can decide where to go by naming the day. How? We will find the most interesting birthday or anniversary thatfalls today or during the next week. If one of the family has a birthdaythen, that one shall choose our walk for us. If not, then when we havechosen the national hero or heroine whose birthday falls near this time, or the event the anniversary of which comes nearest, we will go, ifpossible, where something will remind us of that person or event. 

So we fall to discussing the possibilities. We search through almanacsuntil we find the anniversary that suits us all. Perhaps one of theparents has anticipated all this by looking up the matter, and has agood name to suggest. Or the older ones may consult a dictionary ofdates. It may turn out to be the birthday of a national hero. In thecity he may have a statue; in the country may be found the kinds ofwoods, flowers, or animals he loved. 

4. _The exploring party. _--But even after the walk it will not be longbefore the little ones are asking, "What can we do next?" So we organizethe exploring party. Our object is to discover the countries, scenes, strange peoples, and most interesting persons we have heard of in theBible. We are to find them in the advertising sections of old magazines. Let each one take a magazine and go through it, looking for orientalscenes, for pictures of incidents and of men and women that will remindhim of Bible scenes and characters. These are to be cut out, explained, and arranged in the order of time, as they happened, every member of thefamily helping. The same plan may be applied to scenes of missionarywork, using blank books for stories of heroism which children willillustrate with the magazine pictures. 

5. _Home thoughts. _--"Home, sweet home, " is just a corner of theafternoon saved for the discovery and reading of selections that areworth keeping in our memories and are also likely to help us hold ourhomes in some measure of the love and reverence they deserve. There aresongs of home that ought never to be forgotten. 

6. _Religious reading and songs close the day happily. _--Children lovereligious reading and songs, provided they are offered for their worthand not as an exercise, or to be learned as an empty duty. Take downyour Bible and read Psalm 100, "Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, allye lands"; see whether they do not all enjoy the music and majesty ofthose lines. You will not find it difficult to secure their co-operationin learning that by heart. 

Then close the day with an hour of song. The children will remembersongs learned thus all their lives; therefore those worth rememberingshould be chosen. For one, there is that dear old song many of uslearned at mother's knee, "Jesus loves me, this I know. " That and othersthat are appropriate can be found in almost every hymnbook. Many booksof school songs also have a few hymns and Sunday songs that childrenlike. 

Parents are puzzled, perhaps most of all, to choose appropriate storiesto read to the children on Sunday. Youngsters prefer, of course, thetold story to the read one, but if you wish to read you will make nomistake in selecting _Christie's Old Organ_; _Aunt Abbey's Neighbors_, by Annie T. Slosson; _The Book of Golden Deeds_, by Charlotte M. Yonge;and _Telling Bible Stories_, by Louise S. Houghton. _Some Great Storiesand How to Tell Them_, by Richard Wyche, and _Story Telling_, by EdnaLyman, will serve as good guides to what to tell, and how to tell it. 

7. _Naming the day. _--From week to week variety should enter into theSunday program. On the Sunday following the one described above we canbegin at the dinner table the happy task of "naming the day. " We candecide whether it shall be called after one of our own number, whosebirthday falls near this date, or after one of the anniversaries of theweek following. 

Perhaps someone suggests calling it after the feast day of the churchyear observed by certain churches. That should lead to discussion andinvestigation of the meaning of the day. 

When all are agreed on a name, write it under its date on your wallcalendar. It will be a convenient suggestion for next year, unless thedecision is for a different name when the day again comes round. It willalso call to mind some of the interesting discussions which it aroused. 

After this we might call for _The Family Book_, which now contains, youwill recall, the family's decision as to the best Sunday and thehappiest occurrences of the year before. The keeper, appointed lastweek, must bring it out. We can read what we wrote a week ago and decideon the things worth entering this week. Records of birthdays, specialhappenings to each of the family, the bright sayings of little ones, andthe visits of friends and relatives all should go in. 

8. _"I remember" stories. _--While _The Family Book_ is open is thepsychological moment for father and mother to tell stories of theirchildhood. Every child likes to hear the story that begins, "Iremember, " and feels a thrill of pride in belonging to something thatgoes back and has a history. The old family album is a never-failingsource of delight, not so much because of the pictures as because ofwhat they suggest of family traditions. 

Now is a good time to select some certain thing which shall be used onlyon this day, such as a festival lamp or candlestick, some festivalplates or dishes--just one thing or set of things toward the use ofwhich we can look forward during the week. This helps to make Sundaywhat we used to call "a treat. "

9. _Golden deeds. _--Last week we started _The Family Book_ in which tokeep a record of all the happy experiences that belong to our family. This week we begin another book. In it we expect to place every weekjust one splendid story, the account of a golden deed, some piece ofeveryday kindness or heroism of which we have read or heard or which wehave witnessed. Everyone is to have a chance to contribute to this book, all the family deciding by vote each week as to which story should beplaced on its pages. 

Did you read in the paper this week of some brave or kindly deed done bya boy or a girl, a man or a woman? Did you see someone do an act ofkindness? Cut out the account or write out the story and have it readyfor your own _Golden Deed Book_. Everyone must watch all the week forthe right kind of stories. It is wonderful how much good you will findin the world when you are looking for it. 

Sunday afternoons all the family can hear each story and talk over itsfine points of virtue and goodness. Thus may be developed anappreciation of the human qualities that are really admirable. We candiscuss also the probability of certain of the stories and therighteousness of the deeds. 

Any blank book will do, or even a composition book. It will help to keephands happily occupied if you make your own covers and cut out giltletters for the title. Often you can find pictures to illustrate thestories chosen; sometimes you may prefer to draw the illustrations. Keep_The Golden Deed Book_ in a safe and convenient place, because thereought to be something to go into it every week. For instance, did youread the other day of the young man who jumped in front of a train tosave a young girl? He lost his life, but he saved hers. Can you findthat story and put it in the book? Perhaps you have found one that seemseven more fitting. 

10. _Various plans. _--Giving happiness creates it. Plan something everySunday for the happiness of others. Occasionally go in a body to call onsomeone who will be made happy by the visit. 

If you walk in the park or elsewhere, see how many things you candiscover that you have read about in the Bible or know to be mentionedthere. 

Try the game of "guessing hymns. " While someone plays the familiartunes, each takes a turn at identifying them and the hymns to which theybelong. 

Set aside twenty minutes for each one to write a letter to send to thebrother or sister, relative or friend, at a distance. Even the baby canscratch something which he thinks is a "real enough" letter in penciledscribbles. 

Close the day with quiet reading and song, or with the memory exercisein which all endeavor to repeat some simple psalm or a few verses, likethe Beatitudes. All children like to repeat the Lord's Prayer in familyconcert. 

 I. References for Study

 Emilie Poulsson, _Love and Law in Child Training_, chaps. I-iv. Milton Bradley, $1. 00. 

 _Happy Sundays for Children_ and _Sunday in the Home_. Pamphlets. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 II. Further Reading

 _Sunday Play. _ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. Xiii. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 III. Methods and Materials

 _A Year of Good Sundays. _ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 IV. Topics for Discussion

 1. What is the real problem of Sunday in the family? Is it that of securing quiet or of wisely directing the action of the young?

 2. Recall your childhood's Sundays. Were they for good or ill?

 3. What are the arguments against children playing on Sunday? Is there any essential relation between the play of children and the wide-open Sunday of commercialized amusements?

 4. Can you describe forms of play in which practically all the family might unite?

 5. What characteristics should distinguish play on Sundays from other days? Is it wise to attempt thus to distinguish this day?

 6. Criticize the suggestions on occupations for Sunday afternoons. 

 7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in your childhood, or coming under your observation. 

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See chap. Xvii, "The Family and the Church. "

[32] See chap. Vii on "Directed Activity, " and the references for studyat its end. 

[33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sundayschool. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. Vi. 

[34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education inthe family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of thequestion of children in church services in _Efficiency in the SundaySchool_, chap. Xv. 

CHAPTER XIV

THE MINISTRY OF THE TABLE

Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in themhappy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answerdepends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough orthe scene of constant mental and character development. In some memoriesthe meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes andfragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through alllife pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gainedand ideals created in the glow of conversation. 

§ 1. THE OPPORTUNITY

The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywherebesides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasuresof social eating, is one of the most influential means of education. Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than byteacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the otheroccasions, but here the moral lessons throw out no warning; they meet noopposition; they are--or ought to be, if they would be effective--anatural part of ordinary conversation and, by being part and parcel ofeveryday affairs, they become normally related to life. The table is thebest opportunity for informal, indirect teaching, and this is forchildren the natural and only really effective form of moralinstruction. 

The child comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well aswith an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive--even more so thanhis stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with himmuch longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy andhelpful conversation; nothing will aid digestion more than good cheer ofthe spirit; it stimulates the organs and, by diverting attention fromthe mere mechanics of eating, it tends to that most desirable end, aleisurely consumption of food. 

The general conversation of the family group has more to do withcharacter development in children than we are likely to realize, and thetable is peculiarly the opportunity for general conversation. Here, mostof all, we need to watch its character and consider its teachingeffects. Where father scolds or mother complains the children growfretful and quarrelsome. Where father spends the time in reciting thesharp dealing of the market or the political ring, where motherdelights in dilating on the tinsel splendors of her social rivalries, they teach the children that life's object is either gain at any cost orsocial glory. But it is just as easy to do precisely the opposite, tospeak of the pleasures found in simpler ways, to glory in goodness andkindness, and to teach, by relating the worthy things of the day, theworth of love and truth and high ideals. The news of the day may bediscussed so as to make this world a game of grab, inviting youth tocast conscience and honor to the winds and to plunge into the greedystruggle, or so as to make each day a book of beautiful pictures oflife's best pleasures and enduring prizes. 

§ 2. DIRECTING TABLE-TALK

But table-talk, helpful, cheerful, and educative, does not occur byaccident. It comes, first, from our own constant and habitual thought ofthe meals in social and spiritual, as well as in physical, terms. And itreaches its possibilities as we endeavor to create and direct the kindof conversation that is desired. "Let all your speech be seasoned withsalt, " wrote the apostle, and we might add, let your salt be seasonedwith good speech. That is the quality we must seek, the seasoning ofhealthful, saving, and not insipid, speech. 

One of the great advantages of "grace before meat" lies in this: itgives a tone to the occasion. Its chief meaning is surely that weremind ourselves of the ever-present guest who is also the giver of allgood. Where the grace is not a perfunctory act, but rather the welcomingof such a guest, the meal has started on a high level. We cannot dobetter than so to act and speak as those who take the divine presencefor granted. We need not preach about it; we need only to assume it andmove on the level of that friendship. Children will feel it; they willseek to answer to it, and will find pleasure in the very thought whichthey have perhaps never expressed in words. 

The central idea of the grace suggests another means of helpfulinfluences at the table, by bringing into our homes, for the meals, thefriends whose lives will lift these younger ones. It is worth everythingto live even for an hour with good and broadening lives. There areobligations to our guests to be considered, and their wishes should beconsulted, but one always feels that children are being cheated whenthey are sent to eat at another table and deprived of the peculiarintimate touch with lives that bring the benefits of travel andexperience. Ask your own memory what some persons who ate at the tablewith you in childhood meant to you. 

The wise hostess knows that even when she brings together the group ofmature folks, and even when they are wise and witty, she must beprepared adroitly to inspire the conversation or it may flag at times. How much more does the conversation need direction where we have thesame group every day composed largely of immature persons! When you havethought of all the portions and all the plates, have you thought of thefood for the spirit?

Before suggesting methods of selection and direction, let a word ofexplanation be said: food for the spirit is not confined to theology, tohymns and the Bible; it is whatever will help us to feel and think oflife as an affair of the spirit. And this must come in very simpleterms, by the elementary steps, for young folks. It will be whateverwill in any way help us to live more kindly, more cheerfully, more asthough this really were God's world and all folks his family. Whateverdoes this is truly religious. 

§ 3. METHODS

Plan for the food of the spirit as seriously at least as for the food ofthe body. Learn to recognize poisons and also indigestibles. The firstare subjects of scandal, bitterness of spirit, malice, impatience, tale-bearing, unkindly criticism, and discontent. The second aresubjects too heavy for children: your formal theology would be one ofthem, your judgments on some intricate subjects may be among them. It isseldom wise to announce negative injunctions, but we can make up ourown minds to avoid the conversational poisons and, when they appear, itis always easy to push them out. Even when the unpleasant subject is socommon to all and has been so impressive in the day's experience that itthreatens to become the sole, absorbing topic, we can say, "We won'ttalk of it at table! Let's find something better. " But we must then haveready the something better; that will be possible only by forethought. 

First, save up during the day, or between the meals, the best thoughts, the cheering, kind, ideal, and amusing incidents. Cultivate the habit ofsaying to yourself, "This is something for us all to enjoy tonight atthe table. "

Secondly, expect the other members to bring their best. Ask for "thebest news of the day" from one and another. Encourage them to tell ofgood things seen and done and of pleasant and ideal things heard andspoken. 

Thirdly, use the incidents as the basis of discussion. Let children tellwhat they think of moral situations. Often they will quote the opinionsof teachers and others. Always you will secure under these circumstancesthe unreserved expression of what they actually think. A free, informalconversation of this sort where opinions are kindly examined andcompared is the finest kind of teaching. 

Fourthly, do not forget the grace of humor. To see the odd, whimsical, startling side of the incident or experience trains one to see theinterplay of life, to catch a ray of light from all things, and tomoderate our tendency to permit our tragedies to pull the heavens down. 

Fifthly, use this period to strengthen the consciousness of family unityby recounting past happy experiences and discussing plans of familylife. In one family there are few meals from October to Christmas thatdo not include reminiscences of the summer in the woods and by thewater, or from Christmas to June without plans for the next summer inthe same place. Then, too, if you are contemplating something new, apiano, a chair, an automobile, talk it all over here. Let each one havehis share in the planning. The effect is most important for character;the children acquire the sense of a share in the family community life. They get their first lessons in citizenship in this group, and they thuslearn social living. Then when the chair, or what not, is bought, it isnot alone the parents' possession; it belongs to all and all treat it asthe property of all. 

Sixthly, introduce great guests who cannot come in person. It is finefun to say, "We have with us tonight a man who loved bees and wrotebooks. " Let them guess who it was; help, if necessary, by an allusionto _The Life of the Bee_ and _The Blue Bird_. They will want to knowmore about Maeterlinck and they will joyously imagine what they wouldsay to him and how he would answer, what he would eat and how he wouldbehave. In this way we may enjoy knowing better Lincoln, Whittier, Florence Nightingale, and an innumerable company. 

Seventhly, this is the place to remind ourselves that table-manners areno small part of the moral life. By the habituation of custom we canestablish lives in attitudes of everyday thoughtfulness for others, inthe underlying consideration of others which is the basis of allcourtesy. Children's questions on table-etiquette must be met, not onlyby the formal rules, but also by their explanation in the intent ofevery gentle life to give pleasure and not pain to others, so to live inall things as to find helpful harmony with other lives and to help themto find and be the best. It is not only impolite to grab and guzzle, itis unsocial and so unmoral, because it is both a bad example and adistressing sight to others. It is irreligious, because whatever tendsto make this life less beautiful must be offensive to the God who madeall things good. 

If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in theconduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes forbeauty and order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little thingsof life. A clean tablecloth may be a means of grace. You have to try tolive up to it. Order and quietness in eating are not separable from therest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the wholelevel. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift upthe level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of theentire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convertit into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should bein all things worthy of the unseen guest. 

How near we all come together at the table! In its freedom how clearlyare we seen by our children! Here they know us for what we are and solearn to interpret life. 

 I. Reference for Study

 _Table Talk. _ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 II. Topics Tor Discussion

 1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion. 

 2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits. 

 3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character. 

 4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table. 

 5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why?

CHAPTER XV

THE BOY AND GIRL IN THE FAMILY

Much that has been said so far has had in mind only the problems ofdealing with younger children in the life of the home. Indeed, almostall literature on education in the family is devoted to the years priorto adolescence. But older boys and girls need the family and the familyneeds them. Many of the more serious problems of youth with whichsociety is attempting to deal are due to the fact that from the age ofthirteen on boys have no home life and girls, especially in the cities, are deprived of the home influences. 

§ 1. THE GROWING BOY

The life of the family must have a place for the growing boy. It mustmake provision for his physical needs; these are food, activity, rest, and shelter. Youth is a period of physical crisis. Health is the basisof a sound moral life. Many of the lad's apparently strange propensitiesare due to the physical changes taking place in his body and, often, tothe fact that it is assumed that his rugged frame needs no care orattention. [35]

It will take more than tearful pleading to hold him to his home; he canbe held only by its ministry to him; he will be there if it is the mostattractive place for him. Some parents who are praying for wanderingboys would know why they wandered if they looked calmly at the crowdedquarters given to the boy, the comfortless room, the makeshift bed, andthe general home organization which long ago assumed that a boy could beleft out of the reckoning. 

The boy needs a part in the family activities. He can belong only tothat to which he can give himself. It will be his home in the degreethat he has a share in its business. Begin early to confer with himabout your plans; make him feel that he is a partner. See that he has achance to do part of the work, not only its "chores, " but also its formsof service. But even a boy's attitude to the "chores" will depend onwhether they are a responsibility with a degree of dignity or a form ofunpaid drudgery. His room should be his own room, and he should beresponsible for its neatness and its adorning. Services which he doesregularly for all should receive regular compensation. In all serviceswhich the home renders for others he should have a share; this is histraining for the larger citizenship and society of service. [36]

The boy is a playing animal. Not all homes can be fully equipped withplay apparatus. But no parents have a right to choose family quarters asthough children needed nothing but meals and beds. The shame of themodern apartment building is that its conveniences are all for passiveadults. To attempt to train an active, growing, vigorous, playing humancreature in one of these immense filing-cases, where all persons areshot up elevators and filed away in pigeonholes called rooms, is toforce him out to the life of the streets. The thoughtlessself-indulgence of modern parents, seeking only to live without physicaleffort, is the cause of much juvenile delinquency. [37]

But play for the boy is more than shouting and running in the grass andamong trees; he needs books and opportunities for indoor recreation. Forthe sake of the lad we had better sacrifice the guest-room if necessary, and make way for the punching-bag and the home billiard-table orpool-table; here is a magnet of innocent skilful play to draw him offthe street and to bring the boy and his friends under his own roof. Ifpossible his room ought to be the place that is his own, where hisfriends may come, where he may taste the beginnings of the joys ofhome-living in receiving them and entertaining them. [38]

A workbench in the attic or basement has saved many a boy from thestreet. Such apparatus truly interferes with the symmetrical plan of ahome that is designed for the entertainment of the neighbors; butfamilies must some time choose between chairs and children, between thehome for the purpose of the lives in it and the household for thepurpose of a salon. [39]

§ 2. RELIGIOUS SERVICE

In the religious family there is valuable opportunity to train youth toone form of participation in the religious life. Whatever the familygives or does for social service, for philanthropic enterprises, for thesupport of the church or religious work, ought to be, not the gift ofone member or of the heads alone, but of the whole family, extendingitself in service through the community, the nation, and the world. Theform and the amount of the gifts ought to be a matter of familyconference and each member ought early to have the opportunity and themeans of determining his share in such extension. The child's gifts tothe church should not be pennies thrust into his hand as he crosses thethreshold of home for the Sunday school, but his own money, from his ownaccount--partly his own direct earnings--appropriated for this or forother purposes by himself and with the advice of his parents. Familycouncils on forms of participation in ideal activities, by gifts and byservice, bind the whole life together and form occasions in which thechild is learning life in terms of loving, self-giving service. [40]

The boy needs friendship. Not all his needs can be met by the schoolboyswhom he may bring into his room, nor can they all be met by his mother'saffection. He needs a father. The most serious obstacle to the religiouseducation of boys is that most of them are half-orphans; intellectuallyand spiritually they have no fathers. The American ideal seems to bethat the man shall be the money-maker, the woman the social organizer, and the children shall be committed to hired shepherds or left to shiftfor themselves. 

§ 3. THE FATHER AND THE BOY

No one else can be quite the teacher for the boy that his father oughtto be. No man can ever commit to another, still less to some tract orbook, the duty of guiding his boy to sanity and consecration in thematter of the sex problems. 

The first word that needs to be said on this subject is that suchproblems receive safe and sufficient guidance only in the atmosphere ofaffection and reverence. Do not attempt to teach this boy of yours asthough you were dealing with a class in physiology. The largest thingyou can do for him is to quicken a reverence for the body and for thefunctions of life. By your own attitude, by your own expressions andopinions, lead him to a hatred and abhorrence of the base, filthy, andbestial, to a healthy fear and detestation of all that despoils anddegrades manhood, and to a reverence for purity, beauty, and life. [41]

Be prepared to give him, on the basis of reverence, the clean, clearfacts. Be sure you have the facts. Do not think he is ignorant; he is ina world seething with conversation, stories, pictures, and experiencesof evil. The trouble is that his facts are partial, distorted, andunbalanced by positive errors; his knowledge is gained from the streetand the school-yard. Only a personal teacher can help him unravel thegood from the bad, the true from the false. Do not trust to your owngeneral knowledge; take time to read one of the simple and sane books onthis subject. [42] Be ready to lead him aright. Remember this subject hasprovoked a large number of books, many of which are foolish and othersunwholesome. Do not try to deputize your duty to some doubtful book. 

§ 4. FATHERING THE BOY

But the boy needs more than instruction on a special subject; he needspersonality, he needs the time and thought of, and _personal contact_with, his father. Men who do not live with boys never know what theylose. And alas, see what the boy misses! He has been his mother's boy upto school age when school takes him and gives him a woman's guidance, while the Sunday school is likely to keep him--for a while only--underthe eye of some dear sister who "just loves boys. " The system is avicious one. The lad needs developed masculinity. If he gets it neitherin school nor in the home he will find it on the street corner, throughthe vicious boy-leader of the degrading poolroom or the alleys. 

The boy who finds his father eager to talk over the game, to discuss themerits of peg-tops, to walk, row, play, and work with him, finds it assimple and natural to talk with him over his moral and religiousquestionings as it is to talk over the daily happenings. To live withthe boy is to find the youth with you. But it is hard work discoveringyour young men if you lost your boys. [43]

§ 5. THE GROWING GIRL

Almost all that has been said about the boy applies to the girl of thesame years. Let _a special plea_ be entered here against the notion thatgirls are favored when sheltered from a share in the activities of thehome. They desire to express their ideals as much as do boys. Much ofthe so-called craze for amusements is due to the fact that the family isso organized that there is no vent to the ideals there, no chance tohave a share in the business of life. Young folks with the sense that"this is our home, " not "our parents', but _ours_" bend their energiesto its adorning, and find in it the chance to realize some of theirpassion for beauty and for service. [44]

Mothers usually do better than do fathers in the matter of sexinstruction. Yet they usually begin too late, long after the little girlhas acquired much misleading information in the school. Here, too, thefirst aim must be to quicken reverence for life, to set up theconception of the beauty and dignity of sex functions before the basermind of the street has had an opportunity to interpret them in terms ofthe dirt. [45]

Above all, with boys and girls, the whole subject, including marriageand the founding of a family, must ever be treated with dignity andreverence. Foolish parents jest with their girls about their beaux andboast that their little ones are playing at courtship. If they couldrealize the wonder awakened, followed by pain and then by hardenedsensibilities and coarsened ideals, they would sacrifice their jests forthe sake of the child's soul. We wonder that youth treats lightly thematter of social purity when we have treated the sacred relations oflife as a jest. If this family in which they now live is to be a placeof sacred associations, of real religious life, the whole matter ofmarriage and the family must be treated with reverence. Their practicewill not rise above our everyday ideals as expressed in casualconversation and in our own practice. 

 I. References for Study

 THE BOY

 W. A. McKeever, _Training the Boy_, Part III. Macmillan, $1. 50. 

 _Boy Training_, Part IV. A Symposium. Associated Press. 

 Johnson, _The Problems of Boyhood_. The University of Chicago Press, $1. 00. 

 THE GIRL

 Margaret Slattery, _The Girl in Her Teens_, chaps. Iv, vii. Sunday School Times Co. , $0. 50. 

 Wayne, _Building Your Girl_. McClurg, $0. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 W. B. Forbush, _The Coming Generation_. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 Puffer, _The Boy and His Gang_. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. 

 Irving King, _The High School Age_. Bobbs-Merrill, $1. 00. 

 _Building Childhood_, A Symposium. Sunday School Times Co. , $1. 00. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the special needs of the growing boy?

 2. What are the things that a boy enjoys in his home?

 3. In what way does city life interfere with the natural development of the child?

 4. What are some of the natural expressions of religion for a boy?

 5. How early should the sex instruction begin?

 6. What does a father owe to the boy, and what are the best methods of meeting the duty?

 7. What are the normal activities for girls in the home?

 8. What are their especial needs?

FOOTNOTES:

[35] A good brief book on the problem of the adolescent is E. T. Swift, _Youth and the Race_; another, from the school point of view, is IrvingKing, _The High-School Age_, which has much material of great value toparents. 

[36] On the various activities of boys see W. A. McKeever, _Training theBoy_. 

[37] See the notable report by Breckinridge and Abbott, _The DelinquentChild and the Home_. 

[38] On the gregarious instincts see J. A. Puffer, _The Boy and HisGang_. 

[39] See the books on manual work given in chap. Vii, "DirectedActivity. "

[40] On the religious life of the boy in relation to society and thechurch see Allan Hoben, _The Minister and the Boy_, and the author'streatment of boys and the Sunday school in _Efficiency in the SundaySchool_, chap. Xiv; also J. Alexander _et al. _, _Training the Boy_, asymposium. 

[41] On the attitude of reverence in this question read Dr. Cabot's fineessay, _The Christian Approach to Social Morality_. 

[42] The works of Dr. W. S. Hall, _From Boyhood to Manhood_, for parents'guidance with boys of thirteen to eighteen; E. Lyttleton, _Training ofthe Young in Laws of Sex_, is excellent for fathers; _Reproduction andSexual Hygiene_ is a text for older youth to be recommended; also, forreading, N. E. Richardson, _Sex Culture Talks_, D. S. Jordan, _TheStrength of Being Clean_. 

[43] For further studies of the problem of the boy parents would do wellto read: _Building Boyhood_, a symposium; W. A. McKeever, _Training theBoy;_ W. B. Forbush, _The Coming Generation;_ W. D. Hyde, _The Quest ofthe Best_. 

[44] On activities see W. A. McKeever, _Training the Girl_. 

[45] On the problem with young children see M. Morley, _The Renewal ofLife_; in connection with older girls see K. H. Wayne, _Building YourGirl_. 

CHAPTER XVI

THE NEEDS OF YOUTH

Families are for the spiritual development of youth as well as ofchildhood. The home is for the young people as well as for the youngerones. But the very period when they slip from church school is also theperiod when they are often lost to the real life of the family. In somemeasure this is due to the natural development of the social life. Theyouths go out to work, move forward into enlarging social groups whichdemand more of their free time. They are learning the life of the largerworld of which they are now a part. 

§ 1. THE SCHOOL OF YOUTH

But the family is still the home of these young people; normally it isstill the most vital educational influence for them. Yet there is noproblem more baffling than that of family ministry for, and leadershipof, the higher life of youth. 

It is a short-measure interpretation of the home which thinks of it asonly for young children and old folks. The young men and women fromsixteen to twenty and over still need training and direction; they needclose touch with other lives in affection and in an ideal atmosphere. Ina few years they, too, will be home-makers, and here in the home theyare very directly learning the art of family life. 

For youth there are few effective schools, outside the home, other thanthe streets and the places of commercialized amusement. Even where theother agencies of training are used, such as college, classes, andassociations (such as the Y. M. C. A. And the Y. W. C. A. ), life, at thatperiod, needs the restraints on selfishness that come from family life, the refining and socializing power of the family group. 

§ 2. SPECIAL NEEDS OF YOUTH

What are the special needs of youth upon which the family may base areasonable program for their higher needs?

First, the need of sound physical health. This is a period of physicaladjustment. Rapid bodily growth is nearly or quite at an end; newfunctions are asserting themselves. The new demands for directedactivity may, under the ambitious impulses of youth, make undue draftson the energies. The apparent moodiness that at times characterizes thisperiod may be due to poor health. The moral strain of the period willneed sound muscles and good health. Parents who would sit up allnight--perhaps involuntarily--when the baby has the colic treat withindifference sickness in youth and too readily assume that the youngman or the young woman will outgrow these physical ills. But bodilymaladjustment or incapacity has most serious character effects. To livethe right life and render high service one needs to be a whole person, with opportunity to give undivided attention and undiminished powers tothe struggle of life. 

Secondly, this is peculiarly the period of the joy of friendships. Thesocial nature must have its food. This young man has discovered that theworld consists of something besides things; it is full of people. He isjust learning that they are all persons like himself. He enters the eraof conscious personal relationships. He would explore the realm ofpersonality. He touches great heights of happiness as other lives areopened to him. It is all new and wonderful, this realm of personality, with its aspects of feeling, thinking, willing, and longing. 

§ 3. MAINTAINING FRIENDSHIP WITH YOUTH

Do parents know how hungry their older children are for theirfriendship? They will never tell us, for this world is too new andstrange for facile description; they are always bashful about theirhunger for persons until they find the same hunger and joy in us. Weimagine that they are indifferent to us; the trouble is we are hiddenfrom them. We seldom give them a chance to talk as friend to friend, not about trifling things, but about life itself and what it means. Perhaps at no point do parents exhibit less ability for sympatheticreconstruction and interpretation of their own lives than here. Theyrecall the pleasures of childhood and provide those pleasures for thechildren. Why not recall the hunger of eighteen years of age and givethese youths the very bread of our own inner selves? Or do we, when theyask this bread, give them the stone of mere provision for their physicalneeds or the scorpion of careless indulgence in things that debase thetastes?

One perplexing phenomenon must not be overlooked: it will often happenthat young people pass through a period of what appears to be parentalaversion. There will sometimes seem to be suspicion, violent opposition, and even hatred of parents. This is no occasion for despair. It is astage of development. It is due to the attempt of a will now realizingits freedom under social conditions to adapt itself to the will that hashitherto directed it. To some degree the sex consciousness, which leadsto viewing the parents in a new light, may enter in. It may be easilymade permanent, however, if parents do not do two things: first, adjustthemselves and their methods to the new social freedom of the youth, and, secondly, fling open the doors into their true selves now fullyunderstandable by these men and women. 

But the family life must make provision for the wider friendships ofyouth. Somewhere this insatiable appetite for the reality of lives willfeed. Groups of friends your young man and woman will find somewhere. Ifthey cannot bring them into your home they will go elsewhere. You canscarce pay any price too high for the opportunity that comes when theyare perfectly free to have their friends with them and with you, whenhome becomes the natural place of the social meetings of youth. If youare afraid of the wear on the furniture you may keep your furniture, butyou will lose a life or lives. Here is the opportunity of the home toenter a wider ministry, to be a place of the joy of friendships to manylives. 

§ 4. AT THE DOOR OF A NEW WORLD

As through friendships the youth enters and explores this wonderfulrealm of personality he will find some persons more wonderful thanothers. Those instincts of which he is largely unconscious will impelhim to make a selection. The same law is operative with the young woman. Mating is normally always first on the higher levels of personalities;it first calls itself friendship, nor does it think farther. But fatherand mother, if they have the least spiritual vision, stand in awe asthey see their children taking their first evident steps towardhome-making. What an opportunity is theirs!

Yet here, as the home faces its duty toward a family yet to be, is justwhere some of the most serious mistakes are made. This is no time forteasing and jesting, still less for mocking ridicule. If you treat thisessentially sacred step as a joke it will not be strange if the youngpeople follow suit and take marriage as a yet larger joke. The home isthe place where the home is treated most irreverently. Of course onemust not take too seriously those "calf" courtships, prematurelyfostered by boys and girls, under the pressure of the high-schooltendency to anticipate all of life's riper experiences. But even herejesting and teasing will only tend to confirm and make permanent whatwould be but a temporary aberration. In that case either silence orkindly, simple advice will help most of all. 

To young people who think at all courtship has its times of vision, whenthey stand trembling before the unknown future, when they, with youth'sidealism, make high vows and stand on high places. Give them at leastthe opportunity to enter your inmost self, to find there all the lightyou can give them and all the memory of your own joys and hopes. Makethem feel, though you need not say it, that they are at the threshold ofa temple. If to you this is an affair of the spirit it will be a matterof religion to them. 

Approached in such a temper, many of the practical problems of courtshipsettle themselves. Take the case of the young man at home. If he knowsthat you think with him of the high meaning of this experience he willnot hesitate to bring the young woman to the home. She will feel yourattitude. Upon this level questions of times and seasons, hours in theparlor, and all the matters of their relations will settle themselves. If you treat courtship as a matter of the spirit he will do just what hemost of all wants to do, treat this woman who is to be his mate as aperson, a spirit, with reverence and love that lifts itself above lust. This is the only ground upon which you can appeal to either in mattersof conduct at this time. The conventions of society they will despise;but the inner law speaks to them when the outer letter has no meaning. 

§ 5. THE SOCIAL LIFE

We must expect our children to go out into their larger world. Thebeginning of adolescence is the normal time of their social awakening, their conversion from a nature that turns in upon itself to one thatmoves out into a world of persons. For them, now, the home group oughtto be seen as a society as well as a family, as the social groupgathering about a definite ideal and mission into which they shoulddelight to project themselves. The appeal of religion is peculiarlyvivid just now, for it involves a recognition of one's self as a personwith the power of personal choices and with the opportunity to findassociation with other persons. The family must aid its young people tosee the opportunity which the church offers for ideal socialrelationships which direct themselves to high and attractive service. 

§ 6. AMUSEMENTS

What should the family do about the question of the amusements of youngpeople?

Healthy young persons must have recreation. They will seek it on itshighest level first and find their way down the facile descent ofcommercialized amusements only as the higher opportunities are deniedthem. They would always rather play than be played to; they wouldrather, where early labor has not sapped vitality, play outdoors thansit in a fetid atmosphere watching tawdry spectacles. But play, theidealization of life's experiences, they will find somewhere. To thisneed the home must minister by the provision of space, time, opportunity, and the means of play. If through either sloth, selfishness, preoccupation, or a mistaken idea of an empty innocence oflife you make recreation and social intercourse impossible in thefamily, the young people will find it on the street or in the crowd. Inthe family that plans for recreation and provides facilities and timefor young people to play the problem is a minor one. 

But young people will naturally desire to project themselves into thesocial amusements of the larger groups. Then we ought to know what thoseamusements are; we must be able to advise, from actual knowledge, notfrom hearsay or prejudice, as to the healthful and worth while. The homemust insist on the provision in the community for the safe socializationof amusements. The thousands of young girls in the cities, who tramp thepavements down to dance halls, primarily are only seeking thesatisfaction of a normal craving; and they, on their way to the dancehalls, pass the splendid plants of the schools and the churches, standing dark and idle. Families must develop a public opinion that willdemand, for the sake of their young people, a provision for amusementand recreation that, instead of poisoning the life, shall strengthen, dignify, and elevate it. If the demand for clean drinking-water is aproper one, is the demand for healthful food for the life of ideals lessso?

There can be no doubt of the attitude of any home with the leastconscience for character toward all forms of public amusements in whichyoung people are herded promiscuously for the mere purpose of killingtime in trivialities. The "white cities" with their glittering lightsand baubles are often moral plague colonies. The amusements debase theintellect, blunt the moral sensibilities, and appeal to the baserpassions. They are the low-water mark, we may hope, of commercializedamusement. But they remind us that young people demand company andchange from the monotony of the day's toil. They ask us as to theprovision we are making for young people and challenge us to use theirinclinations for good. 

But besides these "shows" there are many dignified forms of socialrecreation. Good music is to be heard and good plays are to be seen. 

The theater, whether of the regular drama or of the motion-picture type, offers a perplexing problem, principally because, in the first place, American people have been too busy conquering a new soil and making aliving to give careful thought to the social side of aesthetics andrecreation, and, secondly, because the ministry of social recreation hasfallen almost entirely under the dominance of the same trend; it hasbeen thoroughly commercialized. We cannot cut the puzzling knot bysimply prohibiting all forms of public theatrical entertainment. For onereason, these forms shade off imperceptibly from the church service tothe extremes of the vaudeville. But the simple fact is that we no longerindiscriminately class all theaters as baneful and immoral; we arecoming to see their potentialities for good. If the young will go, asthey will--and ought--to the theater, and if the theater can lift theirideals, parents would do well to guide their children in this matter andto enlist the aid of the theater. 

It is worth while to come to a sympathetic understanding of the place ofthe drama and the opera, to see what they have meant in the education ofthe race and what is the significance, to us, of the fact of the strongdramatic instinct in childhood. Naturally the subject can only bementioned here and the suggestion be offered that parents take time tocultivate an appreciation of good orchestral and concert music and ofthe drama. 

The social life will find outlet in other directions. Young people needour aid to find social groups which will inspire and develop them, especially groups that are serviceful. 

§ 7. THE CALL TO SERVICE

This is the period when ideals begin to give direction to the hithertoundirected activity of childhood and youth. Young people are idealists. They see no height too giddy, no task too hard, no dream too roseate, and no hope unattainable. If the times are out of joint they believethey were "born to set them right. " Whatever is wrong or imperfect theywould take a hand in setting it right. We know we felt that way, but weare loath to believe our children also cherish their high hopes. And sothe tendency of the adult is to treat with cynicism the dreams of youth. Often we sedulously endeavor to pervert him to our blasé view of theworld; we would have him believe it is a fated heap of cinders insteadof an almost new thing to be formed and made perfect. In the home thoseideals must be nourished and guided. See that at hand there are thesongs and essays of the idealists. Give them Emerson and forget yourNietzsche. Renew your own youth. Get some of Isaiah's passion and let itbreathe its fervor on them. Feed by poem, song, story, essay, andconversation the life of ideals. 

Stop long enough to see the life that like an engine with steam up issurely going somewhere and help it to find an engineer. We call this theperiod of sowing wild oats. Wild oats are simply energies invested inthe wrong places. The dynamic of youth must go somewhere and dosomething. Fundamentally it would rather go to the good than the bad. Weknow that this was true of us at that time; why should we assume less ofothers? Hold to your faith in youth. Fathers who with open eyes andactive minds--not with sleepy fatalism--believe in their boys, have boyswho believe in them. 

They wait for leadership. If you have dropped into the easy slippers ofindifference to social reform and other types of ideal service, getback into the fight again beside this new man of yours. 

They wait for friendship in this matter of their ideals and theirservice. At any cost keep open house of the heart. 

They wait for a life-task. This is the period of vocational choice. Itwill make a tremendous difference to this life whether his work shall bemerely a matter of making a living or shall be his chance to invest lifein accordance with his new ideals. Shall he go out to be merely one ofthe many wage-earners or salary-winners to whom life is a great orangefrom which he will get all the juice if he can, regardless of who elsegoes thirsty? Or shall he see an occupation as his chance to pay back totoday and tomorrow that which he owes to yesterday? as his chance togive the world himself? He need not be a minister or a missionary tomake his life a ministry; he will find life, he will be a religiousperson in no other way than as his dominating motive shall be to findthe fulness of life in order to have a full life to give to God's world. The answer will depend on what life means to you, how you areinterpreting it, and how you aid him in thinking of it and making hishigh choice. You will have abundant opportunity to show what it is toyou--as you have been doing all along--by your daily attitude; you willhave abundant opportunity to talk it all over, for he will certainlydiscuss his trade or profession with you. The family must give to thelife of the new day makers of families to whom life means a chance torealize the God-vision of the world. 

 I. References for Study

 H. C. King, _Personal and Ideal Elements in Education_, pp. 105-27. Macmillan, $1. 50. 

 E. D. Starbuck, _The Psychology of Religion_, chaps. , xvi-xxi. Scribner, $1. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 1. ON YOUTH

 C. R. Brown, _The Young Man's Affairs_. Crowell, $1. 00. 

 Wayne, _Building the Young Man_. McClurg, $0. 50. 

 Swift, _Youth and the Race_. Scribner, $1. 50. 

 Wilson, _Making the Most of Ourselves_. McClurg, $1. 00. 

 2. ON RECREATIONS

 L. C. Lillie, _The Story of Music and the Musicians_. Harper, $0. 60. 

 Gustav Kobbe, _How to Appreciate Music_. Moffat, $1. 50. 

 P. Chubb, _Festivals and Plays_. Harper, $2. 00. 

 _Dramatics in the Home, Children in the Theater, Problems of Dramatic Plays_, monographs published by the American Institute of Child Life. Philadelphia, Pa. 

 L. H. Gulick, _Popular Recreation and Public Morality_. American Unitarian Association. Free. 

 M. Fowler, _Morality of Social Pleasures_. Longmans, $1. 00. 

 Addams, _The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets_. Macmillan, $1. 25. 

 The moving-picture or cinema presents a problem to parents; see Herbert A. Jump, _The Religious Possibilities of the Motion Picture_ (a pamphlet) and _Vaudeville and Moving Pictures_, a report of an investigation in Portland, Ore. _Reed College Record, No. 16. _

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the reasons why young people leave home?

 2. Where do the young men and young women whom you know spend their evenings? Why is this the case?

 3. Mention the special needs of young people in the family. 

 4. What are the difficulties in maintaining the friendship of our young people?

 5. Have you ever seen evidences of the phase mentioned as aversion to parents?

 6. What are some common mistakes of treating the subject of courtship?

 7. What are the special social needs of young people?

 8. What is the religious significance of the period of social awakening?

 9. What are the special dangerous tendencies in public amusements?

 10. How does the social instinct express itself in social service?

 11. What of the relation of "wild oats" to directed work?

 12. What may be done for vocational direction in the family?

CHAPTER XVII

THE FAMILY AND THE CHURCH

If the family is engaged in the development of religious characterthrough its life and organization, it ought somehow to find very closerelations with the other great social institution engaged in preciselythe same work, the church. Both churches and homes are agencies ofreligious education. In a state which separates the ecclesiastical andthe civil functions, where freedom of conscience is fully maintained, these two are the only religious agencies engaged in education. 

As the family is the child's first society, so the local church shouldbe the child's second, larger, wider society. The home constitutes thefirst social organization for life, the one in which growing livesprepare for the wider social living. Then should come the next forms ofsocial organization, the school and the church, each grouping livestogether and preparing them, by actual living, for wider circles oflife. 

§ 1. RELATIONS OF CHURCH AND HOME

Many of the perplexing problems which arise in the family, as aninstitution, in respect to its relations to the church, and as to thedeveloping relations of children to the church, would be largely solvedif we could get an understanding of the fundamental relations of thesetwo institutions. The institutional difficulties occur because theserelations appear to be competitive. Here is the family with itsinterests in bread-winning, comforts, recreations, and pleasures, and onthe opposite side, making apparently competing claims for money, time, interest, and service, stands the church. That is the pictureunconsciously forming in many minds. There is more or less feeling thatmoney given to the church is taken from the family and impoverishes itto that degree, that time given to the church is grudgingly spared fromthe pleasures of the home, that it is always a moot question which ofthe two institutions shall win in the conflict of interests. 

But the family must take for granted the church as its next of kin. Thehome must not by its attitude and conversation assume that the problemsof the relationship of children to the church arise largely from theopposite concept, as though these were rival institutions. We carelesslythink of the children as those who, now belonging to us, are to bepersuaded to give their allegiance to another institution, the interestsof which are in a different sphere. We think of the church as anindependent thing and therefore feel quite free to discuss its merits orshortcomings and to criticize it if it fails to meet our standards, just as we would criticize the baker for soggy or short-weight bread; toour minds, the church is something set off in society, separate from thehomes, as much so as the schools or the library or a fraternal lodge. 

This thought of the church as a separate something, having an existenceindependent of ourselves and our families, leads us farther astray andmakes yet more difficult the development of right relations between thechurch and the children. If the church is a thing apart we can analyzeits imperfections as we might stand and ridicule a regiment of rawrecruits. It marches by while we stand on the curb. But here, surely, isone of the simplest and most easily forgotten truisms: the church is nomore than our own selves associated for certain purposes. If the churchfails in an adequate ministry for children, shall we condemn it as wewould a bridge that failed to carry a reasonable load? We do but condemnourselves. If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I musthelp to make it fit. Before falling back on the lazy man's salve ofcaustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before settingin the child's mind an aversion to this institution, based on myopinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to betterit. True, I am only one; but surely, where so many family tables areeach Sunday devoted to finding fault with the church and its services, I can find many others who will aid in at least stimulating a sense ofpersonal responsibility for any incompleteness in the church. 

The family cannot afford to take the attitude of hostile criticism, forit is thus fighting its first and most natural ally, the one otherinstitution engaged in its own special work. If the forces for spiritualcharacter be divided, how easily do the opposing forces enter in andoccupy! The family needs the support of the wider public opinion of thechurch, insisting on the supremacy of righteousness. The family needsthe co-operation of the church in its task of developing religiouslives. The family needs the power of this larger social body controllingsocial conditions and making them contributory to character purposes. The family needs the stimulus which a larger group can give to childrenand young people. 

This does not mean that we must never criticize the church. It is notset off in a niche protected from the acid of secular tongues and minds. Ministers of the gospel are unduly resentful of criticism, perhapsbecause, after they leave the seminary, no one has a fair opportunity tocontrovert their publicly stated opinions. But the church needs thecleansing powers of kindly, wise, creative criticism. Anyone can findfault, but he is wise who can show us a better way. This church is thefamily's ally; it is our business to aid her to greater effectiveness. The new church for our own day awaits the services of the men of today. 

The purpose of the family is the basis of alliance with the church. Asin every other relation and purpose of the home, so here: the dominantfactor is the conscious function of the home and family. If the home isreally a religious institution it will seek natural alliance with allother truly religious institutions. Ideally, what is a church but agroup of families associated for religious purposes? Is not the churchsimply a number of families co-operating in the ideal purposes of eachfamily, the development of the lives of religious persons and thecontrol of social conditions for the sake of that purpose? Withoutentering into disputation as to the relationship of little children tothe church, is there not just this relation to the human society calledthe church, that it is a grouping of families for the purpose of thedivine family?

§ 2. THE FAMILY IDEAL IN THE CHURCH

Would there be any question as to the naturalness of the relation of ourchildren to the church if the family ideal so controlled our thinking asto saturate theirs? Is not this the present need, that both family andchurch shall conceive the latter in family terms? By this is meant, notsimply that we shall think of what is called "a family church, " a churchinto which we succeed in projecting our families in a fair degree ofintegrity, but that we shall think of the organization and mission ofthe church in terms of family life and of the ideal of the divinefamily. Keeping in mind the general definition already given of a familyas persons associated for the development of spiritual persons, let ushold the church to that same ideal; the lives of persons associated inthe broadest fellowship that includes both God and man for the purposesof spiritual personality. The church then should be the expression ofthat family of which Jesus often spoke, the family that calls God Fatherand man brother. 

Closer and more helpful relations between family and church follow wherethe principles of the family prevail in the latter. The family is anideal democracy because it exists primarily for persons. It places thevalue of persons first of all. So with the true church; it will exist togrow lives to spiritual fulness, and to this end all buildings, adornments, exercises, teachings, and organizations will be but astools, as means serving that purpose. As the family sees its house, table, and activities designed to personal ends, so will the church. Inan institution existing to grow lives, the great principle of democracyand of the family will prevail, viz. , that to the least we owe the most. Just as the home gives its best to the little child, so will the churchplace the child in the midst. Just as the home exists for the child andthus holds to itself all other lives, so will the church some day existfor the little ones and so hold and use all other lives. 

The prime difficulty of relating the children in our families to theaverage church lies in the fact that they are children, while the churchis an adult institution. Its buildings are designed for adults--save inrare and happy exceptions;[46] its services are designed for adults; ithas a more or less extraneous institution called a school for thechildren. The church spends its money for adults; it compasses sea andland to make one proselyte and coerce him back in old age, and allowsthe many that already as children are its own to drift away. It oftenfails to see that if it is to grow lives it must grow them in thegrowing period. There still remain many churches that must be convertedfrom the selfishness of adult ministry and entertainment to self-givingservice for the development of spiritual lives and, especially, for thedevelopment of such lives through childhood and youth. They must hearagain the Master's voice regarding "these little ones, " regarding thesignificance of the child. And all must be loyal to his picture of hisKingdom as a family and must, therefore, do what all true families do, become child-centric. A church in which children occupy the same placethat they hold in an ideal family will have no difficulty in finding aplace for the children. It will be a natural and unnoticed transitionfrom the family life in the home to the family life in the church. 

§ 3. A PLACE FOR ALL IN THE CHURCH

The family may help directly toward the realization of this ideal by aninsistence on the family conception and the family program in thechurch. Bring the children with you to the church and seek to find therea place for each as natural as the place he occupies in the home. If thechurch makes no such provision, if it has no place for children, in thename of our wider spiritual family relationships we must demand it. Letthe voice of the family be heard insisting on suitable buildings andspecially designed worship for child-life--suitable forms of service andactivity. Let the thought that goes to furnish these in the home becarried over to provide them in the church. 

Parents may help their children to find right relations with the churchby their attitude toward it as the larger family group. To think and acttoward this institution as our home, the wider home of the families, isto establish similar habits of thought in children. Such a concept isnot always easy to maintain; the church includes many of differenthabits of thought from ourselves, divergent tastes and habits of generallife. Here one must exercise the family principle of responsibilitytoward the weaker and immature. This family, the church, just like ourown family, exists, not to minister to our tastes, but that we may allminister to others. 

The principal service which the family may render to the church is, then, to foster an interpretation and view of the latter which willrelate it more closely to the home and will make it evidently naturalfor child-life to move out into this wider social organization forreligious culture and service. Surely this should be the attitude towardmembership in the church, whether that membership begins theoreticallyin infancy or in maturer years; the child is trained to see the churchas his normal society, the group into which he naturally moves and inwhich he finds his opportunity for fellowship and service. The familymay well hold that relationship steadily before its members. Inchildhood the child is in the church in the fellowship of those wholearn. The Sunday school is the spiritual family in groups discoveringthe way of the religious life and the art of its service. The fellowshipgrows closer and the sense of unity deepens as the child's relationshippasses over from the passive to the active, from the involuntary to thevoluntary--just as it does in the home--and develops, as the child comesinto social consciousness, into a recognition of himself as belonging toa social organization for specific purposes. 

§ 4. CHILD UNITY WITH THE CHURCH

At some time every child of church-attending parents will want to knowwhether he "belongs to the church. " One must be very careful here, regardless of the ecclesiastical practice, to show the child that he isessentially one with this body, this religious family. He may be tooyoung to subscribe his name to its roll, but he belongs at least to thefull measure of unity appreciable by his mind. He must not be permittedto think of himself as an outsider. Indeed, no matter what our theologymay hold, every religious parent believes that his children belong toGod. Do they not also belong to the church in at least the sense thatthe church is responsible for their spiritual welfare?

The sense of unity must be developed. Writing the child's name on the"Cradle Roll" of the church school may help. Assuming, as he develops, that he is a part of this spiritual family, naturally expecting that hewill have an increasing share in its life, will help more. Parents whodedicate their children to God pass on to them the stimulus of thatdedication. A church service of dedication is likely to impress themwith a feeling of unity with the church; seeing other children sodedicated they know that a similar occasion occurred in their own earlylives. 

The forms of relationship must develop with the nature of the child. Thechurch needs not only a graded curriculum of instruction but a gradedseries of relationships by which children, step by step, come intocloser conscious social unity, each step determined by their developingneeds and capacities. 

It is easy to say that the responsibility lies with the church toprovide these methods of attachment. But the church we have beensketching is a congeries of families, after all, and it will do justwhat these families, particularly the parents in them, stimulate it todo. 

§ 5. INCIDENTAL DIFFICULTIES

But what of those instances in which parents are convinced that thechurch does not furnish a normal and healthy atmosphere for the child'sspiritual life? There are churches where the Sunday school is simply atraining school in insubordination, confusion, and irreverence, or wherereligion is so taught as to cultivate superstition and to leadeventually either to a painful intellectual reconstruction or to abarren denial of all faith. There are churches of one type so devotedto the entertainment of adults, to the ministry to the pride of theflesh and the lust of things, that a child is likely to be trained topious pride and greed, or of another type, in which religion is a matterof verbiage, tradition, and unethical subterfuge. 

Parents must be true to their responsibilities. The family is thechild's first religious institution. Fathers and mothers are not onlythe first and most potent quickeners and guides in the religious life, but they are primarily responsible for the selection of all otherstimuli to that life. Under the drag of our own indifference we must notwithhold from the child the good he would get even from the church we donot particularly enjoy; neither dare we, for fear of criticism orostracism, force the child under influences which, in the name ofreligion, would chill and prevent his spiritual development, wouldtwist, dwarf, or distort it. Responsibility to the spiritual purpose ofthe family is far higher than any responsibility to a church. Thechurches are ordered for the souls of men. 

What shall we do in the family when the sermon is always tediously dull?Don't try to force children to go to sleep in church; they will neverget over the habit. Insist that there shall be a service suitable forthem parallel to the adult service of worship. [47] Next, try toovercome the present popular obsession regarding the sermon. The churchis more than an oratory station. The sermon is only one incident. Manycriticisms of the sermon indicate that the critic measures the preacherby ability to entertain, that he attends church to be entertained. Ifthat is essentially your attitude, you cannot complain if your childrenare dissatisfied unless they too are entertained according to theirchildish appetites. When the sermon is poor, put it where it belongsproportionately and enlarge on the many good features of churchfellowship and service. 

In a word, let the church be to the family that larger home wherefamilies live together their life of fellowship and service in thespirit and purpose of religion and where there is a natural place foreveryone. 

 I. References for Study

 H. W. Hulbert, _The Church and Her Children_, chaps. I-v. Revell, $1. 00. 

 H. F. Cope, _Efficiency in the Sunday School_, chaps. Xiv-xvi. Doran, $1. 00. 

 George Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. Xiv. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 II. Further Reading

 A. Hoben, _The Minister and the Boy_. The University of Chicago Press, $1. 00. 

 E. C. Foster, _The Boy and the Church_. Sunday School Times Co. , $0. 75. 

 G. A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_, Part II. Revell, $1. 35. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What are the special common interests of church and family?

 2. What are the fundamental relationships of the two?

 3. What conception of the church ought to be fostered in the children's minds?

 4. When is criticism of the church unwise?

 5. What changes might be made in church life for the sake of the children?

 6. What changes would bring the church and the home closer together?

 7. What should be the children's conception of unity with the church?

 8. Should children attend, in family groups, the church service of worship?

 9. Does the plan of a short service for children meet the need?

FOOTNOTES:

[46] See a pamphlet on _Church School Buildings_ (free) published by theReligious Education Association; also H. F. Evans, _The Sunday-SchoolBuilding and Its Equipment_. 

[47] See the author's suggestion for the Sunday school in _Efficiency inthe Sunday School_, chap. Xv. 

CHAPTER XVIII

CHILDREN AND THE SCHOOL

Wise parents will know the character of the influences affecting theirchildren at all times. At no time can their responsibility be delegatedto others. There is a tendency to think that when children go to schoolthe family has a release from responsibility. But the school is simplythe community--the group of families--syndicating its efforts for theformal training of the young. Every family ought to know what thecommunity is doing with its children. The school belongs to all; it isnot the property of a board, nor a private machine belonging to theteaching force; it belongs to us and we owe a social duty as well as afamily obligation to understand its work and its influence on thechildren. 

Parents ought to visit the school. Wise principals and teachers willwelcome them, setting times when visits can best be made. The visitorscome, not as critics, but as citizens and parents. The principalbenefits will be an acquaintance with the teachers of our children and abetter understanding of the conditions under which the children work forthe greater part of the day. By far the larger number of teachers mostearnestly desire character results from their work. It will help themto know that we are interested in what they are doing. 

§ 1. HOME AND SCHOOL CO-OPERATION

Parents and teachers, both desiring spiritual results, can find means ofco-operation. Parent-teacher clubs and associations have done much tobring the home and the school together. Meeting regularly in theevening, so that fathers, too, can attend, gives opportunity to work outa common understanding to raise the spiritual aims of the school, and todiscover means by which the families may aid in securing betterconditions for school work. 

One of the most important considerations relates to the moral effect ofthe school life and environment. We are committed in this country to theprinciple that the public school cannot teach religion, but this by nomeans relieves it of responsibility for moral character. The familyneeds this ally. Children expect instruction in the school and they feelkeenly the power of its ideals and the standards established by itsmethods and requirements. The family and the school greatly need toco-ordinate their efforts here to the end that there may be under way inboth an orderly program for the moral training of children. 

§ 2. THE SCHOOL TEACHING PARENTS

The school may help the home if arrangements are made for parents tomeet regularly and receive instruction in those forms of moral trainingwhich can best be given at home. This is one method of solving the vexedquestion of sex instruction. Many hesitate as to the wisdom of suchinstruction in schools; but no one doubts that it ought to be and couldbe given in families but for the fact that parents are both ignorant ofwhat to tell and indifferent to the matter. It may be that some day thestate will not only say that the child must go to school, but also thatevery parent intrusted with children must either prove ability to trainand instruct in these and other matters or go to school to obtain thenecessary training. The state would not go beyond its province if itrequired ignorant parents--and that means most of us in matters of moraltraining--to go to school and learn our business. And without waitingfor such compulsion the school may now offer opportunity for all parentsto obtain the desired information. Teachers are especially trained to anunderstanding of child-nature and to methods of pedagogy; they areprepared to teach many things we ought to know; why should not thefamily obtain the advantage of such expert knowledge?

The school would also be within its province if it undertook tostimulate the indifferent parents, both rich and poor, to anappreciation of the educational task and opportunity of the home. Eachinstitution greatly needs the other. The school reaches all the childrenof all the people; might it not be made a larger means of helping allthe parents of all the children to quickened moral responsibility and togreater educational efficiency?

§ 3. CONTROLLING SCHOOL CONDITIONS

The family ought to know the conditions at the school outside therecitation or working hours. Few parents have any conception of thepower of the playground over moral character. Perhaps a smaller numberrealize how dangerous are some of the elements at work there. Play ofitself is immensely valuable, but play means playfellows, and some ofthese are simply purveyors of indecency and moral contagion inconversation and act. We are required to send our children to school; wehave a right to demand freedom from moral contagion. Do you know whatgoes on in secret places on the grounds? Do you know that the vilestideas and phrases are current in pictures, cards, on scraps of paper, and in handwriting on walls, not only in the high schools, but oftenamong children of from six to twelve years of age? This is too large asubject to be developed properly here. It is one familiar to allwide-awake school men and women and ought to be equally so to theparents of children. Where the school combats this evil the home shouldintelligently aid; where the school is indifferent the family dare notrest until either the indifference is quite dispelled or the indifferentdismissed. 

Do not expect to get the facts concerning these suggested conditions byinquiry among your children. They are reticent, naturally, on suchmatters when talking with adults; besides, the sense of school honorholds them to silence. If they tell you voluntarily, you are happy intheir free confidence. Do not betray it; simply let it lead you to makefurther inquiry at the school from the authorities and stimulate you toinsist that, for the sake of the spiritual good of the young, the schoolmust furnish conditions of moral health. 

 I. References for Study

 Ella Lyman Cabot, _Voluntary Help to the Schools_, chaps. Vii, viii. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $0. 60. 

 W. A. Baldwin, "The Home and the Public Schools, " _Religious Education_, February, 1912. $0. 65. 

 II. Further Reading

 M. Sadler, _Moral Instruction and Training in Schools_. 2 vols. Longmans. 

 John Dewey, _The School and Society_. The University of Chicago Press, $1. 00. 

 Smith, _All the Children of All the People_. Macmillan, $1. 50. 

 G. A. Coe, "Virtue and the Virtues, " _Religious Education_, February, 1912. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What ought parents to know about public-school life?

 2. In visiting a school what may the parent do to acquire information in the proper way?

 3. How may the home co-operate with the school?

 4. What degree of instruction in morals ought the school to give?

 5. In what way does the school best help in moral training?

 6. What do you know about the conditions on the playgrounds of your own school?

CHAPTER XIX

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES

Moral crises arise in every family. Deeply as we may desire to maintainan even tenor of character-development, in harmony and quietness, occasions will bring either our own imperfections or those of ourchildren--or of our neighbors' children--to a focus and throw them inhigh relief on the screen. Progress comes not alone in perpetualplacidity. When temper slips from control, when angry passions rule, when the spirit under discipline rebels, when a course of pettywrongdoing comes to a head, when secret sins are discovered, and when wesuddenly find ourselves confronted with a tragic problem in the higherlife, it is still important to remember that the crisis is just as trulya part of the educational process as is the orderly, gradual method ofdevelopment. 

A moral crisis is an experience in which our acts are such, or have suchresults, that they are thrown out in a white light that reveals theirinner meaning, so that they are sharply discerned for their spiritualand character values. Then in that light courses of conduct have to bevalued anew, reconsidered, and determined. 

Two courses are open in times of moral crisis in the family. One is tobend our efforts to settle the situation, to proceed on the policy ofgetting through with the crisis as quickly as possible, to seek toremove the pain rather than to cure the ill. The other is to regard thecrisis as a revealer of truth, to use it as a valuable opportunity, onein which moral qualities of acts are so easily evident, so keenly felt, as to make it a time of spiritual quickening, a chance for the best sortof training. 

§ 1. THE PROMISE OF IMPERFECTION

The perfect child is the one unborn; shortly after his birth he beginsto take after his father. The perfect character does not exist in achild. It is as unreasonable to expect it as it would be to look for theperfect tree in the sapling. _Character comes by development_; it is notborn full-blown. Childhood implies promise, development. Thereforeparents must not be surprised at evidences that their children arepretty much like their neighbors' children. Outside of the old-timeSunday-school-library book the child who never lied, lost his temper, sulked, or made a disturbance never existed and never will, except in apsychopathic ward in some hospital. Could anything be sadder than thepicture of the anemic, pulseless automaton who is always "good"?

When parents speak of the "natural depravity" of their children, theyare commonly using terms they do not understand. What they mean is thenatural immaturity of their children, a condition of imperfection inwhich they may rejoice, as it shows the possibility of development. Thechild is in the world to grow to the fulness of all his powers. Thepowers of the higher life are to develop as truly as those which we callphysical and mental. The family is the great human culture-bed for thedevelopment of those powers, their training-field and school. 

Does someone say, concerning a little child, "But we thought he had thegrace of God in his heart, that he had been born again and would no moredo wrong"? True, he may be born again, but there is a world ofdifference between being born and being grown up. From one to the other, in the realm of character, is a long and tedious process, with many astumble, many a fall, many a hard knock, and many a lesson to belearned. Every moral crisis is part of the struggle, the experience andtraining that may make toward the matured life. You have no more rightto expect your child to be a mature Christian than you had to expect himto be born six feet tall. 

A moral crisis is a lesson. The important consideration for the parent, then, is to see the wrongdoing of the child as an experience in hismoral upward climb; not as a fall alone, but as part of the acquisitionof the art of standing upright and walking forward. Dealing with such anoccasion one may well say to himself or herself, "This is my chance toguide, to make this experience a light that shines forward on the wayfor the child's weak feet and to strengthen him to walk in it. " For isit not true with us that practically all we really know has come by theorganizing of our different experiences? Think whether it is so or not. And is it not to be the same with the child?

We can study here only a few typical moral crises, perhaps those thatgive greatest perplexity to parents. They cannot be successfully met asisolated instances, but must be seen as a part of the whole educationalprocess. Those to whom the development of character is a reality willwatch tendencies and train them before they focalize in crises. 

§ 2. THE COLLISION OF WILLS

Parenthood presents tremendous moral strains; it is rife withtemptations. It offers a little world for autocracy to vaunt itself. Themartinets command, often totally blind to the changing nature of thesubjects as they pass from the submissive to the rebellious. One day theparents wake up to realize that they are not the only ones possessed ofwill. 

When to your Yes the child says No, while you may not applaud, you oughtto rejoice; you have discovered a will, you have found developing inyour child the central and essential quality of character. Forgivenesswill be hard to find and recovery still more difficult if you make themistake of attempting to crush that will. The child needs it and youwill need its co-operation. The power to see the possibility of choiceof action, to know one's self as a choosing, willing entity, able toelect and follow one among many courses of action, is a distinctive, Godlike quality. The opposition of wills is like the birth of a newpersonality, a new force thrown out into the world to meet and struggleand adjust itself with all other persons. 

When the collision comes, take a few long breaths before you move; taketime to think what it means. _Keep your temper. _ Do not break before theother will by an exhibition of chagrin that your authority is defied. From now on the basis of any real authority is being transformed fromforce and tradition to a moral plane. 

Therefore, first, be sure you are right in your direction or request. You cannot afford to make the child think that authority is moreimportant than justice, that might makes right in the social order ofthe home. If you do he will accept the lesson and practice it all hislife. 

Remember the right has many elements. There is the child's side toconsider. As soon as he can decide on courses of action his ideas ofjustice are developing. To do him an injustice is to help make him anunjust man. 

Secondly, help him to see the right. This will involve sympatheticexplanations of your reasons which you may have to give in the form ofsimple arguments or of a story, perhaps from your own experience, or byan appeal or reference to the wider knowledge of the older children. Itmay be necessary to let him learn in the effective school of experience. Other means failing, allow him to discover the pain and folly of his ownway when it is wrong. Of course this does not apply if he is minded, forinstance, to imbibe carbolic acid. But even in such circumstances itwould be better to prove his unwisdom by demonstration--as a drop ofacid on a finger tip--than to let the issue rest on blind authority. Onesuch demonstration gives a new, intelligible basis to your authority inother cases. 

Thirdly, help him to will the right. Help him to feel that he mustchoose for himself, to recognize the power of the will and the graveresponsibilities of its use. He is entering the realm of the freedom ofthe will. Every act of deliberate choice, with your aid, in a sense ofthe seriousness of choice, goes to establish the character that does notdrift, is not dragged, and will not go save with its whole selfhood offeeling, knowing, choosing, and willing. 

§ 3. ANGER

An angry child is a child in rebellion. Rebellion is sometimesjustifiable. Anger may be a virtue. You would not take this force out ofyour child any more than you would take the temper out of a knife or aspring. Anger manifested vocally or muscularly is the child's form ofprotest. But, established as a habit of the life, it is altogetherunlovely. Who does not know grown-up people who seem to be inflexiblyangry; either they are in perpetual eruption or the fires smoulder sonear the surface that a pin-prick sets them loose. Usually a study oftheir cases will show either that the attitude of angry opposition toeverything in life has been established and fostered from infancy orthat it was acquired in the adolescent period. 

The angry, antisocial person is most emphatically an irreligious person;there can be no love of his brother man where that spirit is. The homeis the place where this ill can best be met and cured, for it deals mostdirectly with the infant, and for the adolescent it is the best schoolof normal social living. 

Let no one think the angry demonstrations of little children arenegligible or that they have nothing to do with the religious characterof the child or the adult. They are important for at least two reasons, first, as furnishing the angry one opportunity to acquire self-control, to master his own spirit, and, secondly, because they disturb the peaceand interfere with the well-being of others. 

It is possible to set up habits of anger in the cradle. In the firstinstance the infant encountered opposition in the cradle and proceededto conquer it by yelling, and so, day after day, he found anger the onlyroute to the satisfaction of his desires. He grew to take all life interms of a bitter struggle and every person became his natural enemy. 

In the case of the adolescent it sometimes happens that a boy or a girlwill make a very tardy passage through the normal experience of socialaversion, the time when they seem to suspect all other people, to fleefrom social intercourse and to sulk, to want to be off in a corneralone. This is a normal phase of adolescent adjustment, coming atthirteen or fourteen, but it ought to pass quickly. A few allow thisperiod to become lengthened; they fail to regain social pleasure andsoon drift into habits of social enmity. This may be due to scolding atthis period, or to a lack of healthful friendships. 

§ 4. METHODS OF DEALING WITH ANGER

It is evident that talking, lecturing, or arguing with the angry infantwill not help the case. He may feel the emotion of your anger butmisses any shreds of your logic. Parents ought first to ask, Why is aninfant angry? With the infant, with whom there are no pretensions oraffections, there is commonly a simple cause of his rebellion. The babyyelling like an Indian and looking like a boiled lobster is neitherpossessed of an evil spirit nor giving an exhibition of naturaldepravity; he is lying on a pin, wearing the shackles of faddish infantfashions, or he is trying to tell you of disturbances in the departmentof the interior. Furnish physical relief at once and you put a period tothe display of what you call temper; try to subdue him by threats andyou only discover that his lungs are stronger than your patience; youyield at last and he has learned that temper properly displayed has itsreward, that the way to get what he wants is to upset the world withanger. That is one of life's early lessons; it is one of the firstexercises in training character. 

_Consider the future. _ Each family is a social unit, a little world. Within this world are in miniature nearly all the struggles andexperiences of the larger world of later life. It is a world whichprepares children for living by actually living. The qualities that areneeded in a world of men and women and affairs are developed here. Whenyoung children exhibit anger parents must ask, How would this quality, under similar circumstances, serve in the business of mature life?Anger is an essential quality of the good and forceful character. Somehow we have to learn to be angry and not sin. Anger is the emotionaleffect of extreme discontent and opposition. For the stern fight againstevil and wrong, life needs this emotional reinforcement. But it must bepurified, it must be controlled. Like the dynamic of steam, it must beconfined and guided. Love must free it from hatred; self-control mustguide it. 

When children are angry, help them to think out the causes for thefeeling. Instead of denouncing or deriding them, stop to analyze thesituation for yourself. It may be that they are entirely justified, thatnot to be angry would be an evidence of weakness, of base standards ofconduct or conditions, or of weak reactions to life's stimuli. Alwayshelp the child to see why he is angry. Perhaps the situation is one hemay remedy himself. Is he angry because the top-string is tangled? Staywith him until he has learned that he can remove the cause of his owntemper. 

Step by step, dealing with each excitement of anger, _train him inself-control_. Self-mastery is a matter of learning to direct and applyour own powers at will. It is developed by habitual practice. It is thelargest general element in character. The temper that smashes a toy isthe temper that kills a human being when it opposes our will, but it isthe same temper that, being controlled, patiently sets the great ills ofsociety right, fights and works to remove gigantic wrongs and to build abetter social order. That patience which is self-control saves theimmensely valuable dynamic of the emotions and harnesses them to Godlikeservice. And that patience is not learned at a single lesson, notacquired in a miraculous moment; it is learned in one little lessonafter another, in every act and all the daily discipline of home andschool and street. 

Children must learn to qualify and govern temper by love in order tosave it from hatred. When the irritating object is a personal one therights, the well-being, of that one must gain some consideration. Therewill be but little feeling of altruism in children under thirteen; wemust not expect it; but egoism is one way to an understanding of therights, the feelings, and needs of others. The child can put himself inthe other's place. He is capable of affection; he loves and is willingto sacrifice for those he loves, and when he is angry with them, or withstrangers, he must be helped to think of them as persons, as those heloves or may love. He also can be aided to see the pain of hatred, themisery of the life without friends, the joy of friendships. 

Anger against persons is the opportunity for learning the joy offorgiveness and, if the occasion warrants, the dignity and courage ofthe apology. The self-control, consideration, and social adjustmentinvolved must be learned early in life. It is part of that great lessonof the fine art of living with others. Little children must behabituated to acknowledging errors and acts of rudeness or temper withsuitable forms of apology. Above all, they must, by habit, learn howgreat is the victory of forgiveness. [48]

 I. References for Study

 _The Problem of Temper. _ Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 E. P. St. John, _Child Nature and Child Nurture_, chap. V. Pilgrim Press, $0. 50. 

 J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, chap. X. Appleton, $1. 25. 

 II. Further Reading

 Patterson Du Bois, _The Culture of Justice_, chaps. I-v. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $0. 75. 

 E. H. Abbott, _The Training of Parents_. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. 

 M. Wood-Allen, _Making the Best of Our Children_. 2 vols. McClurg, $1. 00 each. 

 H. Y. Campbell, _Practical Motherhood_. Longmans, $2. 50. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. What special opportunities are offered in the rise of moral crises?

 2. Do we tend to expect too high a development of character in children?

 3. How early in life do we have manifestations of a conscious will?

 4. What constitutes the importance of early crises of the will?

 5. What are probably the causes when children habitually defy authority?

 6. Is anger always a purely mental condition?

 7. What importance have the angry demonstrations of infants?

 8. What is the relation of the control of temper to the rightly developed life?

FOOTNOTES:

[48] See Gow, _Good Morals and Gentle Manners_, chap. Viii. 

CHAPTER XX

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Continued_)

§ 1. QUARRELS

A child who never quarrels probably needs to be examined by a physician;a child who is always quarreling equally needs the physician. In thefirst there is a lack of sufficient energy so to move as to meet andrealize some of life's oppositions; in the other there is probably someunderlying cause for nervous irritability. 

It is perfectly natural for healthy people to differ; in childhood'srealm, where the values and proportions of life are not clearly seen, where social adjustments have not been acquired, the differences inopinions, as in possessions, lead to the expression of feeling in sharpand emphatic terms. Rivalry and conflict are natural to the younganimal. Children do not wilfully enter into conflicts any more thanadults; they are only less diplomatic in their language, more direct, and more likely to follow the word with attempts at force. 

In few things do parents need more patience than in dealing withchildren's quarrels. First, seek to determine quietly the merits of thecause; but do not attempt to pronounce a verdict. It is seldom wise toact as judge unless you allow the children to act as a jury. Butascertain whether the quarrel is an expression somewhere of angeragainst injustice, wrong, or evil in some form. Sometimes their quarrelshave as much virtue as our crusades. It is a sad mistake to quench thefeeling of indignation against wrong or of hatred against evil. A boywill need that emotional backing in his fights against the base and thefoes of his kind. While rejoicing in his feeling, show him how to directit, train him to discriminate between hatred of wrong and bitternesstoward the wrongdoer. Help him to see the good that comes from lovingpeople, no matter what they do. 

Our methods of dealing with a quarrel will do more to develop theirsense of justice than all our decisions can. Be sure to get each one tostate all the facts; insist on some measure of calmness in the recital. Keep on sifting down the facts until by their own statements the quarrelis seen stripped of passion and standing clear in its own light. Usuallythat course, when kindly pursued and followed with sympathy for thegroup, with a saving sense of humor, will result in the voluntaryacknowledgment of wrong. The boys--or girls--have for the first timeseen their acts, their words, their course, in a light withoutprejudice. They are more ready to confess to being mistaken than are wewhen convinced against our wishes. 

When no acknowledgment of wrong is proffered voluntarily, we must stillnot offer a verdict. Put the case to the contestants and let them settleit. Listen, as a bystander, coming in only when absolutely necessary toinsist on exact statements of fact. That course should be excellenttraining in clear thinking, in the duty of seeing the other man's side, in the deliberation that saves from unwise accusations and the seriousquarrels of later life. Teach children to think through theirdifferences. 

The perpetually petulant child, bickering with all others, should betaken to a physician. Get him right nervously, physically, first. He isout of harmony with himself and so cannot find harmony with others. Whenthe condition of habitual bickering seems to afflict all the children inthe family, it cannot be settled by attributing it to a mysteriousdispensation of natural depravity. The probability is that the home lifeis without harmony and full of discord, that the parents are themselvespetulant and more anxious to assert their separate opinions than to findunity of action. Nothing is more effective to teach children peacefulliving than to see it constantly before them in their parents. Aharmonious home seldom has quarrelsome children. Such harmony is amatter of organization and management of affairs as much as of our ownattitude. 

Some children are educated to a life of quarrels by being trained in thefamily that spoils them. The single child is at a great disadvantage; heoccupies the throne alone. His home life becomes a mere series of spokesradiating from himself. When he finds the world ordered otherwise, hequarrels with it and tries to rearrange the spokes into a new, self-centric social order. Whatever the number of children may be, eachone must learn to live with other lives, to adjust himself to them. Neighboring social play and activities are the chance for this. Do nottry to keep Algernon in a glass case; he needs the world in which hewill have to live some day. 

§ 2. FIGHTING

The best of men are likely to have a secret satisfaction in their boys'fights, and the bravest of mothers will deplore them. The fathers knowhow hard are the knocks that life is going to give; the mothers hopethat the boys can be saved from blows. A man's life is often pretty muchof a fight, every day struggling in competition and rivalry; we have notyet learned the lesson of co-operation, and we still tend to think ofbusiness as a battlefield. Something in us calls for fighting; we haveto use the utmost strength at our command to fight the evil tendenciesof our own hearts; often we rejoice in life as a conflict. It feels goodto find causes worth fighting for. If all this is true of the man, itis not strange that the small boy, scarce more than a young savage, willfind opportunities for conflict. He is more dependent on the weapons offorce than is his father. He cannot cast out the enemy with a ballot, nor with a sneer or biting sarcasm, nor by some device or strategy ofbusiness or affairs. He can only hit back. Taken altogether, boys settletheir differences as honestly at least as do men. 

Moreover, children's fights are not as cruel as they seem to be; eventhe bloodshed means little either of pain or of injury. A boy may bebadly banged up today and in full trim tomorrow; it is quite differentwith the wounds bloodlessly inflicted by men in their conflicts. 

Does all this mean that boys should be encouraged to fight? No; but itdoes mean that when Billy comes home with one eye apparently retiredfrom business, we must not scold him as though he were the firstwanderer from Eden. That fight may have been precisely the same thing asa croquet game to his sister, or any test of skill to his big brother, or a business transaction to his father; it was a mere contest of twohealthy bodies at a time when the body was the outstanding fact of life. The fight may give us our chance, however, to aid him to a sense of thegreatness of life's conflict, to a sense of the qualities that make thetrue fighter. It may leave him open to the appeal of true heroism. Wemust make light of the victory of brute strength, just as we may makelight of his wounds and scars, and glorify the victory of the mind andwill. 

The boy who fights because he lacks control of temper needs carefultraining. He gets a good deal of discipline on the playground andstreet, but it is not always effective; the beatings may only furtherundermine control. But the lack of self-control will manifest itself inmany ways and must be remedied at all points. The discipline of dailyliving in the family must come into play here. 

§ 3. SELF-CONTROL

The matter of self-control is not separable into special features; onecannot learn control under one set of moral circumstances withoutlearning it for all. The boy who strikes without thinking is simply onewho acts without thinking. He tends to throw away the brakes of thewill. The regain of control comes only through training at every pointin deliberation of action. 

Probably there is no other point at which children so frequently andreadily learn control as in the matter of speech. The family where allspeak at once, where a babel of sounds leads to a rivalry of vocalorgans, is not only a nuisance to the neighbors, it is a school ofuncontrolled action to the children. Just to learn to wait, even afterthe thought is formed into words, until it shall be my turn or myopportunity to speak is a fine discipline of control. To do that everyday, year after year, tends to break up the hair-trigger process ofaction. 

Control is gained also by the acquisition of the habit of thoughtregarding general courses of action. We can hardly expect meditation onthe part of little children. But those who are older, those enteringtheir teens, may and should be able to think things out, to plan out theday's actions, to determine their own ways of conduct. Children who havethe custom of quiet, private prayer often develop ability to see theirconduct in the calm of those moments. They get a mental elevation overthe day and its deeds. 

§ 4. GOOD FIGHTS

The evident danger of undue deliberation of action must be met byanother cure of the personal-conflict spirit; that is, the substitutionof games of rivalry and skill for the unorganized rivalry and "game" offighting. The transition from the bloody arena to the excitement of agame is very easy and natural. But the game is the boy's great chance tolearn life as a game to be played according to the rules. All that thefight calls for--courage, endurance, skill, quickness of action, andgrim persistence--comes out in a good game. Here is a suitable youthfulrealization of the fight that is worth waging. Our participation in theyouths' games, our appreciation of their points, our joy in honestly wonsuccess, is the best possible way to lead up to their taking life interms of a good fight, a grand game, a real chance to call out theheroic qualities. Turn every fighting instinct into the good fight thatwill clarify and elevate them all. 

 I. References for Study

 W. L. Sheldon, _Ethics in the Home_, chaps. Xi, xii, xiii. Welch & Co. , $1. 25. 

 E. A. Abbott, _Training of Parents_, chap. V. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. 

 II. Further Reading

 Ella Lyman Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_. Holt, $1. 25. 

 M. Wood-Allen, _Making the Best of Our Children_. 2 vols. McClurg, $1. 00 each. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. Do all children quarrel? Should one punish for small quarrels?

 2. What are the facts which ought to be ascertained regarding any quarrel?

 3. What special opportunities do children's differences offer?

 4. What are the causes of habitual petulance? What are the dangers of this habit of mind?

 5. Is fighting necessarily wrong? What part does it play in the lives of men?

 6. What are the dangerous elements in boys' fights?

 7. What special quality of character needs development in this connection?

 8. What are the valuable possibilities in the fighting tendency?

CHAPTER XXI

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Continued_)

§ 1. LYING

Parents are likely to be wilfully blind to the faults of their children. But some faults cannot be ignored; they must surely quicken the mostindifferent parent to thought. We suffer a shock when our own childappears as a wilful liar. 

"What shall I do when I catch the child in an outright lie? Surely heknows that is wrong and that he is wilfully doing the wrong!"

First, be sure whether he is "lying. " Lying means a purposeful intent todeceive by word of mouth or written word. When Charles Dickens wrote_Oliver Twist_ he described a burglary that never happened, so far as heknew. He intended the reader to feel that it was true. Was he lying? No;because he simply used his imagination to paint a scene which was partof a great lesson he desired to teach the English public. Even had hehad no great moral purpose, it would still not have been a lie, just aswe do not accuse the writer of even the most frivolous novel of lying. He is simply creating, or imitating, in the field of imagination. 

Imagination is the child's native world. When the little girl says, "Mydolly is sick, " she is saying that which is not so, but instead ofreproving her for lying, you prepare an imaginary pill for the doll. Many children's lies are simply elaborations of their doll- andplaything-imaginings. When my little daughter told me, and insisted uponit, that she had seen seven bears, of varied colors, on the avenue, should I have reproved her for lying? Was it not better to humor herfancy, to draw it out, to give it free play, being careful gradually tolet her know that I knew it was fancy? I entered into the game with herand enjoyed it so long as we all understood it was only fancy. It is acrime to crush a child's power of creating a world by imagination, afair world, set in the midst of this world where things are imperfect, jarring, and disappointing, a world in which everything is always "justso. "

But one must also carefully aid the child in distinguishing between theworld of fancy and the world of fact. This takes time and patience. Wemust not rob the life of fancy nor must we allow the habits of freedomwith ideas to pass over into habits of carelessly handling realities. Along with the development of fancy we must train the powers of exactobservation and statement of facts. The child who saw seven bears, red, green, yellow, etc. , must go to see real bears and must tell me exactlytheir colors and forms. Daily training in exactitude of statements ofreal facts is the best antidote for a fancy that has run out of itsbounds. It establishes a habit of precision in thinking which is theessence of truth-telling. 

§ 2. PROTECTIVE LYING

But there is another form of lying which is frequently met in some form. It may be called protective lying. Ask the little fellow with thejam-smeared face, "Have you been in the pantry?" and he is likely to dothe same thing that nature does for the birds when she gives them a coatthat makes it easier to hide from their enemies. He valiantly answers"No, Mother. " He would protect himself from your reproof. There has beenawakened before this the desire to seem good in your eyes and he desiresyour approbation most of all. The moral struggle with him is very brief;he does not yet distinguish between being good and seeming good; if hisnegative answer will help him to seem good he will give it. 

What shall we do? First, stop long enough to remember that appetites forjam speak louder than your verbal prohibitions. The jam was there andyou were not. It can hardly be said that he deliberately chose to do awrong; he is still in the process of learning how to do thingsdeliberately, just as you still are, for that matter. Consider whetheryour training of the anti-jam habit has been really conscientious andsufficient to establish the habit in any degree. It were wiser to askthese things of yourself before putting the fateful question to him. Itwould be better not to ask a small child that question. It demands toomuch of him. Besides, you are losing a chance to establish a valuableidea in his mind, namely, that acts usually carry evidences along withthem. Better say, "I see you've been in the pantry. " That will help toestablish the habit of expecting our acts to be known. Then would followwith the little child the careful endeavor to train him to recognize theacts that are wrong because harmful, greedy, against the good of others, and against his own good. 

Just here parents, especially many religious parents, meet thetemptation thoughtlessly to use God as their ally by reminding the childthat, though they could not see him in the pantry, God was therewatching him. In the vivid memory of a childhood clouded by the thoughtof a police-detective Deity, may one protest against this act ofirreverence and blasphemy? True, God was there; but not as a spy, areporter of all that is bad, anxious to detect, but cowardly and cruelin silence at all other times! Let the child grow up with the happyfeeling that God is always with him, rejoicing in his play, hiswell-aimed ball, his successes in school, his constant friend, helper, and confidant. I like better the God to whom a little fellow in Montanaprayed the other day, "O God, I thank you for helping me to lick BillyJohnson!" The child of the pantry needs to know the God who will helphim to do and know the right. 

§ 3. OLDER CHILDREN

But protective lying presents a more serious problem with olderchildren. The school-teacher and parent meet it, just as the judge andthe employer meet it in adults. The cure lies early in life. Truth-telling is as much a habit as lying is. Perhaps it is more easilypracticed; its drafts are on the powers of observation and memory ratherthan on those of imagination. Along with the child's imaginative powersthere must be developed the powers of exact observation and description. Exact observation and description or relation are but parts of thelarger general virtue of precision. Help children at every turn of lifeto be right--right in doing things, right in thinking, in saying, and inexecution. Precision at any point in life helps lift the life's wholelevel. Truth-telling is not a separable virtue. You cannot make a boytruthful in word if you let him lie in deed. You cannot expect he willspeak the truth if you do not train him to do the truth, in his play, inordering his room, in thinking through his school problems, and inthinking through his religious difficulties. Truth-telling is the verbalreaction of the life which habitually holds that nothing is right untilit is just right. 

Two things would, ordinarily, make sure of a truthful statement, insteadof a protective lie, in answer to your question: first, that the youngperson has been trained to the habit of seeing and stating things asthey are--and that you really give him a chance so to state them, and, secondly, that to some degree there has been developed a recognition ofconsiderations or values that are higher than either escape frompunishment or the winning of your approbation. He will choose the coursethat offers what seems to him to be the greater good; he will choosebetween punishment, with rectitude, a good conscience, a sense of unitywith the higher good, of peace with God his friend, a greaterapproximation to your ideal, on the one side, and, on the other, escapefrom punishment. 

Everything in that crisis will depend on how real you have made the goodto be, how much the sense of the reality of God and his companionshiphas brought of joy and friendship, and how high are his values of theactual, the real, the true. 

§ 4. AT THE CRISIS

But what shall we do as we meet the lie on the lips of the child? First, as already suggested, do not wait until you meet it. Train the child tothe truthful life. Second, be sure you do not make too heavy moraldemands. Remember the instinct to protect himself from immediatepunishment or disapprobation is stronger than any other just then. Donot ask him to do what the law says the prisoner may not do, incriminatehimself. We have no right to put on our children tests harder than theycan bear. Often we put those which are harder than we could face. Whatyou will do just then depends on what you have been doing for thetraining of the child or youth. Do not expect him to solve problems inmoral geometry if you have neglected simple addition in that realm. 

Punishment by the blow or the immediate sentence will be futile. Theoffender must know he has trespassed in a realm beyond youradministration and rule; he has done more than commit an offense againstyou. Whatever consequences follow--such as your hesitation to accept hisword--must evidently be a part of the operation of the entire moral law. Help him to see that lying strikes at the root of all social relationsand would make all happy and prosperous living, all friendship, and allbusiness impossible by destroying social confidence. 

Facing the crisis, do not demand more than your training gives you aright to expect. Often, instead of the direct categorical question as toguilt, we must gradually draw out a narrative of the events in question;we must patiently help the child to state the facts and to see thevalues of exactitudes. Without preaching or posing we must bring theevents into the light of larger areas of time and circles of life, helphim to see them related to all his life and to all mankind and to thevery fringes of existence, to God and the eternal. That cannot be donein a moment; it is part of a habit of our own minds or it is not reallydone at all. At the moment we can, however, make the deepest impressionby insistence on the importance of the actual, the real, the exactlytrue. 

 I. References for Study

 E. L. Cabot, _Every Day Ethics_, chaps. Xix, xx. Holt, $1. 25. 

 W. B. Forbush, _On Truth Telling_. Pamphlet. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. 

 J. Sully, _Children's Ways_, pp. 124-33. Appleton, $1. 25. 

 II. Further Reading

 G. S. Hall, "A Study of Children's Lies, " _Educational Problems_, I, chap. Vi. Appleton, $2. 50. 

 E. P. St. John, _A Genetic Study of Veracity_. Pamphlet. 

 J. Sully, _Studies in Childhood_. 

 E. H. Griggs, _Moral Education_. Huebsch, $1. 60. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. Are there degrees of lying?

 2. When is a lie not a lie?

 3. How can we discriminate among the statements of children?

 4. How can we help them to recognize the qualities of truth?

 5. In what ways are parents to blame for forcing children to protective lying?

 6. What of the relation of the thought of God to the demands for truth?

 7. Would you punish a child for lying and, if so, in what way?

CHAPTER XXII

DEALING WITH MORAL CRISES (_Concluded_)

§ 1. DISHONESTY

Many parents appear to think that the child's concepts of propertyrights and of fair dealing are without importance. Habits of pilferingare permitted to develop and success in cheating wins admiration. Lowstandards are accepted and religion is divorced from moral questions. The family attitude practically assumes that all persons cheat more orless and that it is necessary only to use wisdom to insure freedom fromconviction. 

Responsibility lies at home. We shall never have an honest generationuntil we have honest men and women to breed and train it. It is folly tothink we can lay on the public schools the burden of the moral educationof the young. Much is already being attempted there; yet little seems tobe accomplished because the home, having the child before and afterschool and for a longer period each day, furnishes no adequate basis inhabits, ideals, and instruction for the moral work of the school. Ifparents assume that one cannot succeed with absolute integrity, thatdishonesty in some degree is necessary to prosperity, then children willlearn that lesson despite all that may be said elsewhere. Honestchildren grow where, in answer to the false statement, "You will starveif you do business honestly, " parents say, "Then we will starve. "

But the very home life itself can be a teacher of dishonesty. Is itlargely a matter of sham and pretense for the sake of social glory? Doesit prefer a cheap veneer to a slowly acquired genuine article? Is thefront appearance that of a dandy while the backyard looks like aslattern? Is the home striving for more than it deserves? Is it tryingto get more out of life than it puts in? Evading taxes, avoiding duties, a community parasite, does it commend to children the arts of socialcheating and lying? Such homes teach so loudly that no voice could beheard in them. 

Given the atmosphere, ideals, and practices of the honest life in thehome itself, the problems of conduct, in the realm of these rights, aremore than half solved. Here in the home the real training for the lifeof business takes place. Not for an instant can we afford to lowerstandards here, nor to lose sight of the life-long power of our ideals, our habits, and our attitudes on the conduct of the next generation. Doparents know that the problems of lying, cheating, quarreling are thegreat, vital questions for their children, much more important thanindustrial or professional success in life; that on these all success ispredicated? If they do, surely they cannot regard the problems whicharise as mere incidents; surely they will provide for the culture of themoral life as definitely as for the culture of the physical or theintellectual!

§ 2. LESSONS IN HONESTY

But children also acquire habits from their playmates. Whenever the actof pilfering appears, the wrong must be made clear. Some sense ofproperty rights is necessary; not the right, as some assume, to do whatyou will with a thing because you have it, but the right to enjoy andusefully employ it. Help children to see the difference between mine andthine. Slovenly moral thinking often comes from too great freedom inforgetful borrowing within the family. In this little social group themembers must first acquire the habits of respect for the rights ofothers. Through toys, tools, and books the lesson may be learned soearly that it becomes a part of the normal order of things. 

Children can learn that the game of life has its rules and that thebreach of these rules spoils the game and prevents our own happiness. They can learn, too, that these are not arbitrary rules; they are likethe laws of nature; they are the conditions under which alone it ispossible for people to live together and to make life worth while. Gambling is wrong because it is unsocial; it is the attempt to gainwithout an equivalent giving. Cheating is wrong, no matter how manypractice it, just as surely as cheating is wrong in the game on theplayground. 

Children are really peculiarly sensitive to the social consciousness. Inschool under no circumstances will they do that which the school customforbids or the older boys condemn. In the home, despite contraryappearances, the opinion of elders, brothers, sisters, and parents isthe recognized law. Every small boy wants to be like his big brother. Children's conduct may be guided by an understanding of the social willoutside the school and home. Help them to know that all peopleeverywhere in organized society condemn cheating and dishonesty. [49]

Sentiment and emotional feeling must back up all teaching of conduct. Your stories and readings should be selected with this in mind. Theapprobation of parents and of the great Father of all enters as aneffectual motive. 

But parents seldom understand these problems; they attempt to deal witheach one as it arises until they are weary of the seemingly endlessprocession and abandon the task. Their endeavors are based on faintmemories of such problems in their own youth or on rule-of-thumbproverbial philosophy about morals and children. Does not thedevelopment of moral ability and culture deserve at least as muchattention as any other phase of the child's life? After all, what do wemost of all desire for all our children--position, fame, ease? or is itnot rather simply this, that, no matter what else they do, they may begood and useful men and women? Then what are we doing to make them goodand useful?

A clear view of the need for moral training, a belief that is possible, will surely lead to serious attempts to learn the art of moral training. In this they need not be without guidance. There is a number of goodbooks on character development in the child. [50] The foundation for allsuch training of parents ought to be laid in an understanding of whatthe moral nature is, and then of the laws of its development. Later thespecific problems may be separately considered. 

§ 3. TEASING AND BULLYING

Teasing is the child's crude method of experimentation in psychologicalreactions; the teaser desires to discover just how the teased willrespond. It degenerates, by easy steps, into a thoughtless infliction ofpain in sheer enjoyment of another's misery, and then into brutalbullying. When only two children are together mere teasing will notlast long; either the teaser will tire of his task or his teasing willturn to that lowest of all brutalities, delight in inflicting pain onweaker ones. 

But teasing is a serious problem in many families; the whole groupsometimes lives in an atmosphere of ridicule, derision, and annoyance. Teasing is likely to appear at its worst wherever a group is gathered, for the guilty ones are under the stimulus of the praise of others; theyinflict mental pain for the sake of winning approbation. 

Teasing has a pedagogical basis. A certain amount of ridicule actshealthfully on most persons. Even children need sometimes to see theirweaknesses, and especially their faults of temper, in the light of othereyes, in the aspect of the ridiculous. But children are seldom to betrusted to discipline one another; freedom to do so is likely to develophardness, indifference to the sufferings of others, and arrogance fromthe sense of lordship. The corrective of ridicule is safe only as it isa kindly expression of the sense of humor. The ability to see and toshow just how foolish or funny some situations are will turn many atragedy of childhood into a comedy. Whenever children laugh at thedistresses or faults of others, help them to laugh at their own. Cultivate the habit of seeing the odd, the whimsical, the humorous sideof things. A sound sense of kindly humor often will save us all fromunkind teasing. 

§ 4. SOME CURES FOR TEASING

Help the habitual and unkind teaser to see how cowardly the act is, tosee how it is against the spirit of fair play. Call on him to help theweaker one. If he is teasing for some fault of temper or some habit, show him the chance that is afforded to do the nobler deed of helpinganother to overcome that fault. 

Let the cowardly teaser reap the consequences of his own act; he mustbear the burden of the critic, the expectation of perfection. Teasinghim for his own shortcomings will sometimes cure him, but usually heloses his temper quickly. Make him feel the injustice of the teaser'smethod. If he is a bully he needs bullying. If ever corporal punishmentis wise it is in such a case. He who inflicts pain simply because he candeserves to endure pain inflicted by someone stronger. But one must becareful not to confirm him in the coward's code. The injustice of it hemust see, see by smarting under it. If ever punishment before others iswise it is in this case; for surely he who delights in humiliatingothers must be humiliated. But though justice suggests this course, experience shows that it does not always work; the bully only bides histime, and, cherishing resentment, he wreaks it on the weaker ones. 

The best cure for brutal teasing will take a longer time than isinvolved in a thrashing. Besides, the teaser will get his thrashingsvery soon from other boys. It requires time to change the habits thatmake bullying possible. Try gradually helping him to see the beauty andpleasure of helpfulness. Give him a chance to give pleasure instead ofpain. Help him to taste the joy of praise, the praise that helps morethan all teasing criticism. Help him to see that it is more truly a markof superiority to help, to cheer, to do good, than to oppress and tease. Take time to habituate him in helpfulness. 

In dealing with teasing in the family, two other things are worthremembering: First, the teased must be taught the protective power ofindifference. Teasers stop as soon as their barbs fail to wound; the funends there. Laugh at those who laugh at you, and they will soon cease. Secondly, the atmosphere and habit of the family determine the course ofteasing. Where carping criticism and unkindly ridicule abound, childrencannot be blamed for like habits. Where the sense of humor lightenstense situations, where we sacrifice the pleasure of stinging criticismfor the sake of encouraging those who most need it, children are quickto catch those habits too. The teasing child usually comes out of afamily of similar habits. On seeing our children engaged in teasingothers, our first thought ought to be as to the extent to which we mayhave been their example in this respect. Constant watchfulness on ourpart against the temptations to tease will have an effect far morepotent than all attempts to talk them out of the habit; it will leadthem out. 

 I. References for Study

 1. HONESTY

 P. Du Bois, _The Culture of Justice_, chaps. Iii, x. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $0. 75. 

 E. P. St. John, _Child Nature and Child Nurture_, chap. Viii. Pilgrim Press, $0. 50. 

 2. TEASING

 W. L. Sheldon, _A Study of Habits_, chap. Xvii. Welch & Co. , Chicago, $1. 25. 

 II. Further Reading

 ON GENERAL MORAL TRAINING

 Sneath & Hodges, _Moral Training in School and Home_. Macmillan, $0. 80. 

 E. O. Sisson, _The Essentials of Character_. Macmillan, $1. 00. 

 H. Thisleton Mark, _The Unfolding of Personality_. The University of Chicago Press, $1. 00. 

 Paul Carus, _Our Children_. Open Court Publishing Co. , $1. 00. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. Of what importance is the child's sense of possession?

 2. What are the first evidences of a consciousness of property rights?

 3. How do homes train in dishonesty?

 4. What is the relation between cheating and dishonesty?

 5. What is a child seeking to do when he teases another?

 6. What are the unfortunate features of teasing?

 7. What is the relation of teasing to bullying?

 8. What cures would you suggest for either?

FOOTNOTES:

[49] Parents will be helped by the practical discussions of cheating, cribbing, and other boy problems in Johnson, _Problems of Boyhood_. 

[50] See "Book List" in Appendix. 

CHAPTER XXIII

THE PERSONAL FACTORS IN RELIGIOUS EDUCATION

Whoever will stop to review his early educational experience will beimpressed with the instantaneous and vivid manner in which certainteachers spring into memory. They are seen as though actually livingagain. We have difficulty in recalling even the subjects they taught, while of the particulars of their teaching we have absolutely norecollection. But they continue to influence us; they are like so manysilent forces leading our lives to this day. The teacher is alwaysgreater than his lesson, and what he is, is greater than what he says. The religious education of the young depends more on the gift ofpersons, on contact with lives, than on anything else. 

There are instructors and there are teachers; the former impartinformation, the latter convey personality; the former deal withsubjects, the latter teach people. The greatest factor in education as aprocess of developing persons is the power of stimulating personality. The power of the family as an educational agency is in the fact that itis an organization of persons for personal purposes. When you take thepersons away you remove all educational potencies. 

The depersonalized home is the modern menace. We have come to think thatprovided you throw furniture and food together in proper proportions youcan produce a capable life. So we depend on the home as a piece ofmachinery to do its work automatically, forgetting that the workingactivity is not the home but the family, not the furniture but people. Life can only come from life, and lives can only come from lives. Personality alone can develop personality. By so much as you rob thefamily life of your personal presence, as mother or as father, you takeaway from its reality as a family, from its force as an educationalagency, from its religious reality. 

§ 1. ORPHANED FAMILIES

All that is said here about fathers might well be applied to mothers, save that they are not as flagrant sinners in this respect, and, besides, it comes with better grace for a father to speak on the sins offathers. 

There are too many fathers who are financial and physiological fathersonly. A good father easily grows as crooked as a dollar sign when he isnurtured only on money. Many, both fathers and mothers, take parenthoodwholly in physiological terms, imagining--if they think about it atall--that they have fully discharged all possible obligations if onlythey know how to bear, feed, and clothe children properly. True, suchduties are fundamental, but no father can be rightly called "a goodprovider" who provides only _things_ for his family, no matter with whatgenerosity he provides these things. Our homes need more of ourselvesfirst of all. 

He makes a capital error of setting first things in secondary places whowillingly permits business to interfere with the pleasure of being withhis children. Our social order fights its own welfare as long as anyfather is chained to the wheels of industry through the hours thatbelong to his home. But there are just as many who are not chained, butwho enslave themselves to business, and so miss the largest and bestbusiness in the world, the development of children's characters. 

Many a good father goes wrong here. Love and ambition prompt him toprovide abundantly for his children; he enslaves himself to give themthose social advantages which he missed in youth. 

But it is a short-measure love that gives only gifts and never givesitself. The heart hungers, not for what you have in your hand, but forwhat you are. "The gift without the giver is bare. " No amount ofbountiful providing can atone for the loss of the father's personality. It is easy for the hands to be so engrossed in providing that the homeis left headless and soon heartless. If we at all desire the fruits ofcharacter in the home we must give ourselves personally. 

It is not alone the habitué of the saloon or the idler in clubs andfraternities who is guilty of stealing from the home its rightful shareof his presence. He who gives so much of himself to any object as not togive the best of himself to his family comes under the apostolic ban ofbeing worse than an infidel. _A father belongs to his home more than hebelongs to his church. _ There have been men, though probably theirnumber is not legion, who have allowed church duties, meetings, andobligations so to absorb their time and energy that they have given onlya worn-out, burned-out, and useless fragment of themselves to theirchildren. Some have found it more attractive to talk of the heavenlyhome in prayer-meeting or to be gracious to the stranger and to win thesmile of the neighbor at the church than to take up the by-no-means-easytask of being godly, sympathetic and cheerful, courteous and kind amongtheir children and in their homes. No matter what it may be, church orclub, politics or reform organization, we are working at the wrong endif we are allowing them to take precedence of the home. 

§ 2. THE FATHER'S CHANCE

The father owes it to his family _to give himself at his best_, that is, as far as possible, when his vitality is freshest and his powerskeenest to answer to the young life about him. He owes it to his familyto conserve for it the time to think of its needs, time to listen to thewife's story of its problems, time to sit and sympathize with children, time to hear their seemingly idle prattle, time to play with them. Haveyou ever noticed this great difference between the father and themother, that while the latter always has time to bind up cut fingers andto hear to its end the story of what the little neighbor, Johnny Smith, did and said, somehow father's ear seems deaf to such stories and he isoften too busy to sympathize? It might work a vast change in somefamilies if the "children's hour" had a call to the father as well as tothe mother. Of course we are crowded with social engagements and life isat high pressure under the enticing obligation of uplifting andreforming everybody else, yet one hour of every evening held sacred forthe firelight conversation, one in which the children could really getat our hearts, might be worth more to tomorrow than all our publicpropaganda. 

Fathers owe their brains as well as their hands to their families. Competent and efficient fatherhood does not come by accident. We arelearning that children cannot be understood merely by loving them, thattwo things must be held in balance: the scientific and the sympatheticstudy of childhood. Is there any good reason why, while so readilygranting that mothers should belong to mothers' clubs, study childpsychology, the hygiene of infancy, domestic science, and eugenics, weshould assume that fathers may safely dispense with all such knowledge?There are men who sit up nights studying how to grow the biggestradishes in the block, there are men who toil through technicalhandbooks on the game of golf, who would look at you in open-eyed wonderif you should suggest the duty of studying their children with equalscientific patience. They of course desire to have ideal children butthey are not willing to learn how to grow them. 

§ 3. FATHERING AS A MAN'S TASK

It takes intelligence and burns up brain power to keep the confidence ofyour boy so that he will freely talk of his own life and needs to you. Those much-to-be-desired open doors are kept open, not by accident, norby our sentiments or wishes alone. A boy changes so fast that a man hasto be alert, thinking and trying to understand and sympathize all thetime. The boy sees through all sleepy pretenses of understanding. Wekeep the open door of confidence only as by steady endeavor we keep inreal touch with the boy's world. 

Fathers are ignorant of the problems of family training; they oscillatebetween the wishy-washy sentimentality that permits anarchy in the homeand the harsh, unthinking despotism that breeds hatred and rebellion. Fathers criticize the public schools but never take the time to go andlook inside one. They laugh at women's clubs because they are too lazyto make a like investment in the patient study of some of theirproblems. They affect indifference to the parent-teacher clubs whileremaining ignorant of the significant things they have alreadyaccomplished for the schools. If we were to make an inventory of whatthe women, the mothers, have accomplished by study, agitation, andlegislation for social, civic, ethical, and religious betterment, weproud lords of creation would, or ought to, hang our heads in shame. 

Fatherhood is our chance to become. It is our chance to grow into ourfinest selves. The measure of its gains to us depends upon the measureof our gifts to its opportunities and duties. It is our chance to bewhat we should like our children to be, our chance to find ourselves. All that it costs, all the self-denial, labor, and often pain it mustmean, is just the process of developing a fine, rich life. Now, thatlife is just the greatest gift that any man can make to his home and hisworld. We can never give any more than ourselves or any other thanourselves, and this pathway of sacrifice, this costly way ofhome-making, is a man's chance to become Godlike. The race has comeupward in this way. It needs the masculine in its ideal self as well asthe feminine. There is no race salvation without constant individualself-giving. That self-giving must be balanced equally on the part ofthe man and the woman. Fatherhood, like motherhood, is just our chanceto learn life's best lesson, that there is a certain short path tohappiness which men have called the way of pain and God calls the way ofpeace. 

Motherhood is a sacred portion, but so is fatherhood. Its calls are justas high, its service just as holy, its opportunities just as large, itsmeaning just as divine. How worse than empty are all our pratings aboutdivine fatherhood if we illustrate its meaning only degradingly ormisleadingly! And just as the life of the spirit is the gift of thatdivine fatherhood, so for us the gift of our lives, ourselves, is thelargest and richest contribution we can make to the religious lives ofour children. 

The father as a teacher teaches by what he is. The classes in the homehave no set lessons, for the text is written in lives and the word isspoken and taught in personality. You effect the religious education ofyour children in the degree that you give yourself as a simple religiousperson to them. 

 I. References for Study

 Hodges, _Training of Children in Religion_, chap. Vii. Appleton, $1. 50. 

 K. G. Busby, _Home Life in America_, chaps. I, ii. Macmillan, $2. 00. 

 II. Further Reading

 E. A. Abbott, _On the Training of Parents_. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. 

 Allen, _Making the Most of Our Children_. 2 vols. McClurg, $1. 00 each. 

 Wilm, _The Culture of Religion_, chap. Ii. Pilgrim Press, $0. 75

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. Which do you remember best, your teachers or your lessons? Why?

 2. Describe, from your memory, some of the influences of personality?

 3. Are these influences greater or less with parents on children?

 4. What are the causes that separate parents and children?

 5. How shall we define duties to business, to society, and to the family?

 6. Under what circumstances is one justified in refusing time to the church for the sake of the family?

 7. What are the best times and opportunities for the strengthening of the personal bonds between children and parents?

 8. How shall we overcome the apparent difficulty of maintaining the confidence of children?

CHAPTER XXIV

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Whether we can remedy the ills of family living today or not, we candetermine the character of the family life of the future. The homes oftomorrow are being determined today. The children who swing their feetin schoolrooms and play in our gardens will control family living verysoon. We can do little to reconstruct the old order; we can doeverything to determine the new. When the mountain sides have been madebare, forest conservation cannot save the old trees, but it can preparefor new growths. Ours is the larger opportunity because we can determinethe ideals of our children. Today we can determine that they shall notsuffer from false conceptions, shall not bruise themselves in the blindignorance that compelled us to find our own way. We shall see that, first, in the education of our children we can save the homes oftomorrow by training the children of today to set first things first. Iffamily life has been neglected in America, it has been because we havesubmerged its real values of character and affection in a flood ofthings, of materialism. 

§ 1. A CONSTRUCTIVE POLICY FOR CHARACTER

The future higher efficiency of the family depends on an extension of aconscience for character through all our thinking on the family. We arereally half-ashamed to talk of character. We blush for ideals but wehave no shame in boasting of commerce and factories; we are ashamed ofthe things of beauty and we love only the useful. So we have becomeashamed of the ideals of the home. Not only do we passively acquiesce inthe popular attitude of indifference or derision, but we voice itourselves. We join in the jest at marriage; we joke over maritalinfelicities. We would be ashamed to be caught singing "Home, SweetHome. " What is more important, we show that, as a people, we have lessand less the habit of regarding the home as any other than a commercialaffair. The tendency is to determine domestic living wholly by economicfactors. The literature on the "home" is overwhelmingly economic; itsheart is in the kitchen. High efficiency on the physiological, sanitary, culinary, and mechanical sides makes the modern home so convenient thatyou can lie on a folding bed, press a button to light the grate fire, turn on the lights, start the toaster, and wake the children. Homes areplaces to hide in at night, to feed the body, arrange the clothes, andstart out from for real living. They are private hotels. 

If we would save the family we must save the child from losing sight ofthe primacy of human values; we must strengthen his natural faith thatpeople are worth more than all besides, leading him into the faith thatmoral integrity, truth, honor, righteousness, are the glory of a life. More, these young lives must be trained to habitual and efficientright-doing. In a word, the conservation of the home is simply a programof beginning today ourselves to set first things first, to conserve thehuman factors that will make homes, to make education everywhere inschool and church and home count first of all for character. And thatbroader education we ourselves must test first of all by this, whetherit makes youth competent to live aright, cultivates the love of worthyideals, and makes him willing and able to pay the price of a trainedlife consecrated to the service of his world, to the love of hisfellows, and to the making of a new world. 

We shall need, first, to safeguard the primary motives that enter intothe founding of families. Those motives begin to develop early. They arein the making in childhood. Somehow we must plan the education of youthsso that they will think of homes and of marriage in new terms. Possiblythe public school will not only teach the physiology of marriage and thebare physical facts of sexual purity, but will teach new ideals offamily life; it will count it at least as much a duty to cultivate alove of home as it is to cultivate a love of country. It can set soclearly the final objective of character that even children shall seethat life has higher ends than money-making and the family greaterpurposes than garish social display. 

§ 2. THE CHURCH AIDING

Certainly the church must seek to quicken and develop new ideals offamily life; it must bring religion to our hearths and homes; it mustworry less about a "home over there, " and show how truly heavenly homesmay be made here. It must not only get youth ready to die, it mustprepare them to live; to live together on religious terms. It will dothis, not only by general discussions in the pulpit, but by specialinstruction in classes. No church has a clear conscience in regard toany young person contemplating the duties of a family whom it has notdirectly instructed in the duties of that life. 

It is a strange spectacle, if we would stop long enough to look at it, of the church proclaiming a way of life but scarcely ever teaching it. In any church there is a large number of young people under instruction;what are they learning? Usually a theological interpretation of anancient religious literature. Some still are learning to hate all otherpersons whose religion differs from the brand carried in thatinstitution. In a few years these youths will be bearing social burdens, facing temptations, taking up duties; does their teaching relate at allto these things? No, indeed, that would be "worldly"; it would seem tobe sacrilegious to teach them how actually to be religious. The businessof the church school is still largely that of filling minds withtheological data rather than training young, trainable lives to becomereligious schoolboys, religious voters, religious parents. How many havebeen at all influenced by Sunday-school teaching when they stepped intoa polling-booth, when they chose a life-mate, when they guided ordisciplined their children? If religious education does not at allinfluence us in the great events of life, of what value is it to us?Must it not be counted a sheer waste of time?

If we would conserve the human values of the family we must train youthto a religious interpretation of the home. If we cannot do that in thechurch we might as well confess that the church cannot touch the sourcesof human affairs. 

§ 3. IDEALS AND METHODS

No matter what the breadth of the interests of the public school, youthwill still need training for family living given under religiousauspices and with the religious aim. The day school may give courses indomestic economy, but family living demands more than ability to sweep aroom or cook an egg. In fact, no one can be competent to meet its higherdemands unless at least two things are accomplished, first, that he, orshe, is led to see the family as essentially a religious, spiritualinstitution because it is an association of persons for the purpose ofdeveloping other persons to spiritual fulness; secondly, that he, orshe, is moved to willingness to count the work of the family, itspurpose and aim, as the highest in life and that for which one iswilling to pay any price of time, treasure, thought, and endeavor. 

This means that the fundamental need is that our young people shall growup with a new vision and a new passion for the home and family. Thatpassion is needed to give value to any training in the economics ormechanics of the home; and that training is precisely the contributionwhich the church should make to all departments of life today. It is theprophet, the interpreter, revealing the spiritual meanings of all dailyaffairs and quickening us to right feeling, to highly directed passionfor worthy ideals. 

From the general teaching, the high message of the church, directed tothis special problem, there must be formed in the mind of the cominggeneration a new picture of the family, a new ethics of its life, a newevaluation of its worth. That can come in part by the prophetic messagefrom the pulpit, but it will come more naturally and readily by regularteaching directed to the actual experiences and the coming needs of theyoung people who are to be home-makers. The soaring ideals pass overtheir heads, but when you teach the practice, the details of the life ofthe family in the spirit of these ideals, as interpreted and determinedby the higher conception, then they catch the vision through thedetails. 

We need two types of classes in church schools in relation to the lifeof the family: First, classes for young people in which their socialduties as religious persons are carefully taught and discussed. Perhapssuch courses should not be specifically on "The Family, " but thisinstitution ought, in the course, to occupy a place proportionate tothat which belongs to it in life. The instruction should be specific anddetailed, not simply a series of homilies on "The Christian Family, ""Love of Home, " etc. , but taking up the great problems of the economicplace of the family today, its spiritual function, questions of choiceof life-partners, types of dwelling, finances and money relations in thefamily, children and their training, and the actual duties and problemswhich arise in family living. 

All topics should be treated from the dominant viewpoint of the familyas a religious institution for the development of the lives ofreligious persons. The courses should be so arranged as to be given toyoung people of about twenty years of age, or of twenty to twenty-five. They should be among the electives offered in the church school. 

The second type of class would be for those who are already parents andwho desire help on their special problems. Many schools now conduct suchclasses, meeting either on Sunday or during the week. [51] Work on"Parents' Problems, " "Family Religious Education, " and similar topics isalso being given in the city institutes for religious workers. No churchcan be satisfied with its service to the community unless it providesopportunity for parents to study their work of character developmentthrough the family and to secure greater efficiency therein. Suchclasses need only three conditions: a clear understanding of the purposeof meeting the actual problems of religious training in the family, aleader or instructor who is really qualified to lead and to instruct inthis subject, and an invitation to parents to avail themselves of thisopportunity. 

The value of such a class would be greatly enhanced if it should be heldin close co-ordination with similar classes or clubs conducted by thepublic schools. [52] Here all the parents of the community meet in theschool building, not to discuss how the teachers may satisfy parentalcriticism, but to learn what the school has to teach on moderneducational methods applied to the life of the child, especially in thefamily, and mutually to find ways of co-operation between the home andthe school for the betterment of the child. 

 I. References for Study

 Articles in _Religious Education_, April, 1911, VI, 1-77. 

 Helen C. Putnam in _Religious Education_, June, 1911, VI, 159-66. 

 George W. Dawson in _Religious Education_, June, 1911, VI, 167-74. 

 Cabot, _Volunteer Help in the Schools_, chap. Vii. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $0. 60. 

 II. Further Reading

 Forsyth, _Marriage, Its Ethics and Religion_. Hodder & Stoughton, $1. 25. 

 Lovejoy, _Self-Training for Motherhood_. American Unitarian Association, $1. 00. 

 Pomeroy, _Ethics of Marriage_. Funk & Wagnalls, $1. 50. 

 III. Topics for Discussion

 1. In how far are home problems due to the ignorance of parents?

 2. What do you regard as the essentials in the training of parents?

 3. Where can the necessary subjects best be taught?

 4. What are the difficulties in the way of teaching these subjects to young people?

 5. In how far can we direct the reading of young people toward sane and helpful knowledge of family life and duties?

FOOTNOTES:

[51] Pamphlets on plans for parents' classes: _The Home and the SundaySchool_, Pilgrim Press; _Plans for Mothers' and Parents' Meetings_, Sunday School Times Co. ; _How to Start a Mothers' Department_, David C. Cook Co. ; _The Parents' Department of the Sunday School_, ConnecticutSunday School Association, Hartford, Conn. 

[52] See pamphlet published by the National Congress of Mothers: _How toOrganize Parents' Associations and Mothers' Circles in Public Schools_. 

APPENDIXES

APPENDIX I

SUGGESTIONS FOR CLASS WORK

This book is designed for individual reading or for use in classes. Itis not a textbook of the same character as a textbook in mathematics orhistory, but the material is arranged so as to be both easily readableand of ready analysis for classes. There are two methods of followingthe course: one by work conducted under a regular teacher in a class, and the other by private or correspondence study. 

§ 1. THE CLASS

The class should be composed of parents and other adults, inasmuch asthe work is designed for them. It may be a class in connection with theSunday school in a church, a class conducted by a mothers' club orcongress or by a parent-teacher association, or it may be organizedunder other auspices. Or it might be organized by a group of parents inany community. The class need not consist of either fathers or mothersalone, as the work is planned for both. In any case the work of teachingwill be facilitated if, in addition to the customary officers of theclass, the teacher will appoint a librarian, whose duties would be toascertain for the members of the class where the books for study andfor reference may be obtained, that is, whether they are in the publiclibrary, church library, or in private collections, and also, wheneverit is desired to purchase books, where they may best be secured. 

§ 2. THE TEACHER

The primary requisite for the teacher will be an eagerness to learn, asufficiently deep interest in the subject to lead to thorough study. Noone can teach this class who already knows all about the subject. Aspirit sympathetic with the child and the life of the family and a mindwilling to study the subject will accomplish much more than facilerhetorical familiarity with it. The best teacher will not often be "aneasy talker" on the family; class time is too precious to be occupiedwith a lecture. While, naturally, one who is a parent will speak withgreater experience than another, the ability to teach this subjectcannot be limited to fathers and mothers; physiological parenthood isless important than spiritual parenthood. The teacher must have, then, willingness to study the subject, ability to teach as contrasted withmere talking, sympathy with parenthood, and a passion for the religiouspersonal values in life. 

§ 3. GENERAL METHOD

The teacher's aim will be to make this course definitely practical. Thebook is not concerned so much with theories of the family as with thepresent problems of the family, and especially with those that relate tomoral and religious education. There must be a sense of definiteproblems to be concretely treated in all lessons. The teacher willtherefore encourage discussion, but will also avoid the tendency todrift into desultory conversation. Direct the discussion to avoidtedious détours on side issues. Direct the discussion to avoid thetendency to treat superficially all the subject at one session. It willbe necessary frequently to insist that attention be focused upon theimmediate problems suggested by the lesson for the day, and to ask theclass to wait until the subjects which they in their eagerness suggestshall come in their due order. 

Encourage personal experiences as sidelights and criticisms on the text, but remember that no single experience is conclusive. Beware of theover-elaboration and detailed narration of experiences. 

_Insist on a thorough study of the text. _ Students should be so preparedas to make a lecture superfluous and to allow discussion to take theplace of review and explanation. The greatest danger in parents' classesis that the members do not study; class work becomes indefinite and soonloses value. Again, the members of the class often are unwilling to begoverned by the schedule of lessons, and the class drifts into aimlessconversation. Adult students especially need to be turned from thetendency to regard educational experience as having come to an end withtheir school days. The members of this class will need encouragement;they must be stimulated patiently until they have re-formed some habitsof study and rediscovered the pleasures of systematic thinking. The beststimulus will be a teacher so convinced of the supreme importance of thesubject to be studied as to lead the members to recognize its importanceand the insignificance of any price they may pay for efficient spiritualparenthood. 

§ 4. CLASS WORK

At the first session teach chap. I, which is introductory. Draw outdiscussion on the points suggested therein, and assign this chapter andthe one following for the next session. The first lesson will give theteacher opportunity to explain and illustrate the method of study, presentation, and discussion. 

Assign the work carefully each week, calling especial attention to the"References for Study. " Secure promises from as many as possible to readat least one of these references and to prepare a written report, on onesheet of paper, for presentation at the next session. Ask others to lookinto the special points which will be found in the references givenunder the heading "Further Reading. "

In beginning a lesson it will be wise to call to mind first theprinciple running through the book, that the great work of the family isthe development of religious persons in the home; then call to mind theapplication of this principle in the last lesson. Make your review verybrief. 

Next, bring out the leading topic of the lesson for the day. This shouldbe done so as to present a vital issue and a live topic to the class. Very often the best way of doing this is to state a concrete caseinvolving the issue discussed. The presentation of a definite set ofcircumstances or a fairly complete experience involving the fundamentalprinciples under discussion is an instance of teaching by the "casemethod. " If the teacher will consider how the law student is trained bythe study of _particular cases_, the advantage of the method will beclear. Be sure that the "case" selected will include the principles tobe taught. Prepare the statement of the case beforehand. This should bedone in a very brief narrative, so giving the instance as to enable theclass to see the reality of the question. Be sure that your instance isitself vital and probable. A class of adults will especially need suchpoints of vital contact. By announcing the topic in advance the teacherwill often be able to obtain definite cases in point from the members. 

With the case thus presented take the points in the text and apply them, first to the special case alone, but with the purpose of developing theprinciples involved in that and similar cases. Beware of the specialdanger of the case method, namely, that the class may discuss thespecific instances rather than the principles. 

_Teaching is more than telling_; it is stimulating other minds to seeand comprehend and state for themselves. Therefore the teacher mustfirst comprehend and be able to state for himself. Avoid repeating thephrases of the text. Get them over into your own language and see thatthe class does the same. Do not fail to call for the brief reports onreading, and to make them a real part of the subject of discussion. 

_Questioning_ is the natural method of stimulating minds. Use thequestion method, but do not confine yourself to "What does the authorsay on this?" Direct your questions to the points stated and the issuesraised so as to compel students to think on the topics and so as to drawout the results of their thinking. Form your own judgments and help theclass to form theirs too. Remember that the purpose of the class is toget people thinking on the great subjects discussed. The text is notwritten in order that groups of students may learn the author'sstatements, but that they may be led to think seriously on all thesematters and stimulated to do something about them. 

Use the "discussion topics" given at the end of each lesson. They arenot designed to furnish a syllabus of the lesson, but to suggestimportant questions for discussion, some of which may barely bementioned in the text. They may be used in assigning the advance work, giving topics to different students, and they may be used in your reviewof the previous lesson. 

A syllabus of each lesson will be helpful, provided it be prepared bythe students themselves. Encourage the careful reading of the lesson byevery member of the class, letting the syllabus grow out of this. 

Notebooks will have their largest value if used at home for twopurposes: first, to set down the student's analysis of the book as hereads, secondly, to record the student's observations on definiteproblems and on practice in the home. Note-taking in the class will havevery little value unless it is backed up by study at home. 

_Generalization. _ Have clearly in your own mind a definite concept ofthe general principle underlying each section. Read through each sectionuntil you can state the principle for yourself. Bring your teaching intoa focus at the point of that principle before the lesson ends. Try toget the members of the class to state the principle in their own words. 

_In action:_ The principles will have little value unless translatedinto practical methods; direct your teaching to their actual use infamilies. Your generalization is for guidance into application. Urgethat the plans described be actually tried. Expect this and call forreports on plans tested in the daily experience of families. If a numberof students would try, for example, the plan of worship suggested fortwo or three weeks and report their experiences in writing, togetherwith the accounts of any other plans tried, a valuable budget of helpfulknowledge could thus be gathered. [53]

_Conference plan:_ Some classes will be able to meet twice a week, taking the lesson at one session and at another spending the time inconference. At the conference period the program might provide for (1)brief papers by members of the class on topics personally assigned, (2)abstracts or summaries of assigned readings, (3) discussion on theparticular points raised in the papers, and (4) conference on unsettledquestions from the lesson for the class period preceding. 

_Club work:_ A parents' club might be organized, either in a church orin connection with a school, which would use this textbook, follow thestudy work with conferences, and would secure for its own use a libraryof the books listed after each chapter. Such a club would be able to putinto practice some of the plans advocated and could encourage theirapplication in groups of families. 

FOOTNOTES:

[53] The teachers are especially invited to secure records of actualexperiments of this character. Accounts of tried methods of familyworship, especially those with new features, which should be given insome detail as to the exact plan, the circumstances, the material used, and the results, should be sent to the author in care of the publishers. Perhaps in this way material which may be valuable to large numbers maybe gathered. 

APPENDIX II

A BOOK LIST

The following books would be found useful for the working library of aclass or club following the study of this text or for a section of thechurch library on the home and family. The books marked with an asteriskare the ones which may be regarded as of first practical value toparents and others studying the development of character in the life ofthe family. 

In addition to the titles mentioned below, the the references at the endof each chapter in this book will furnish a list of other sources ofvaluable material. 

 I. The Institution of the Family

 C. F. And C. B. Thwing, _The Family_. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, $1. 60. A historical survey of the family with a special study of its modern dangers and needs. 

 P. T. Forsyth, _Marriage, Its Ethics and Religion_. Hodder & Stoughton, $1. 25. An important, popular statement of the ethics of marriage as the foundation of family life. 

 *W. F. Lofthouse, _Ethics and the Family_. Hodder & Stoughton, $2. 50 net. The most important recent book on the family; traces its historical development, the ethical ideals involved in the institution, and discusses its present problems and perplexities. 

 Katherine G. Busby, _Home Life in America_. Macmillan, $2. 00 net. A popular statement of the outstanding characteristics of life in American homes; entertaining and informing. 

 *Clyde W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0. 25. A careful and comprehensive survey, of great value. 

 Charles A. L. Reed, _Marriage and Genetics_. Galton Press, Cincinnati, Ohio, $1. 00. A surgeon's message on eugenics, especially on the aspects indicated in the title. A study of the laws of human breeding. 

 II. Child Nature

 *E. P. St. John, _Child Nature and Child Nurture_. Pilgrim Press, $0. 50. A textbook dealing with the nature of the child and with problems of his training in the home. 

 *Irving King, _The High School Age_. Bobbs-Merrill & Co. , $1. 00 net. A study of the nature and needs of boys and girls in the first period of adolescence. Written for all who are alive to the problems of this period as well as for school people; gives constructive suggestions for educational problems. 

 Elizabeth Harrison, _A Study of the Child Nature_. Chicago Kindergarten College, $1. 00. Long recognized as a standard for parents in the study of the development and functions of the child-life. 

 George E. Dawson, _The Right of the Child to Be Well Born_. Funk & Wagnalls, $0. 75. A plain study of eugenics, non-technical and helpful; includes a chapter on eugenics and religion. To be commended to parents. 

 George E. Dawson, _The Child and His Religion_. The University of Chicago Press, $0. 75. The religious nature and needs of the child with some suggestions as to method. 

 *W. Arter Wright, _The Moral Conditions and Development of the Child_. Jennings & Graham, $0. 75. An important and valuable book on the newer views of the religious development of the child-life. 

 Frederick Tracy and J. Stempfl, _The Psychology of Childhood_. D. C. Heath & Co. , $1. 20. Gathers up the general results in the field of child psychology. 

 *W. G. Koons, _The Child's Religious Life_. Jennings & Graham, $1. 00. From the modern point of view, dealing with some of the interesting problems of the relation of the child to religious life and the development of his religious ideas. 

 Thomas Stephens, _The Child and Religion_. Putnam, $1. 50. A series of short papers by English writers, particularly on the question of child conversion. 

 George A. Hubbell, _Up through Childhood_. Putnam, $1. 25. A good general review with special reference to religious problems and religious institutions. 

 Edith E. R. Mumford, _The Dawn of Character_. Longmans, Green & Co. , $1. 20. A very important book, dealing especially with the moral development of young children. 

 III. Training in the Home

 William B. Forbush (ed. ), _Guide Book to Childhood_. American Institute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa. Very valuable as a guide to reading on the many problems of child-training. 

 LeGrand Kerr, _The Care and Training of the Child_. Funk & Wagnalls, $0. 75. A good, general, brief study of the nature of the child and the method of education. 

 William J. Shearer, _The Management and Training of the Child_. Richardson, Smith & Co. A popular and practical statement of many problems and their treatment in the home and school. 

 John Wirt Dinsmore, _The Training of Children_. American Book Co. While written for school-teachers, this is one of the best studies which parents could possibly read. 

 A. A. Berle, _The School in the Home_. Moffat, Yard & Co. , $1. 00. Contains much valuable suggestion to parents who really desire to take advantage of the educational opportunities of the home. 

 John Locke, _How to Train Up Your Children_. Sampson, Low, Marston & Co. , London. Written over two hundred years ago, and yet of very great value in many parts to day. 

 *William B. Forbush, _The Coming Generation_. D. Appleton & Co. , $1. 50. Discusses the various aspects of child-training in the light of the social consciousness of today. Many of the public agencies for child betterment are carefully discussed. 

 *William A. McKeever, _Training the Girl_. Macmillan, $1. 50. 

 *----, _Training the Boy_. Macmillan, $1. 50. These two books constitute one of the best collections of material, most practical and helpful. They view girls and boys as active factors and all the phases of home and community life are studied with reference to their needs. 

 IV. Special Religious Training in the Home

 *George Hodges, _The Training of the Child in Religion_. D. Appleton & Co. , $1. 50. One of the few books dealing in any modern manner with the special problems of the religious life of the family. 

 Rev. William Becker, _Christian Education or The Duties of Parents_. B. Herder, St. Louis, $1. 00. Recent and interesting sermons on the duties of parents in the religious education of the Catholic child; a striking example of messages that ought to be heard from every pulpit. 

 John T. Faris, _Pleasant Sunday Afternoons for the Children_. Sunday School Times Co. , $0. 50. A number of practical plans are suggested. 

 *George A. Coe, _Education in Religion and Morals_. Fleming H. Revell Co. , $1. 35. A book which all parents ought to read for its valuable guidance on the general principles of religious education. 

 Elizabeth Grinnell, _How John and I Brought Up the Children_. American Sunday School Union, $0. 70. A popular statement in a simple form of methods of dealing with many of the problems of religious training. 

 V. Moral Training

 Edward H. Griggs, _Moral Education_. B. W. Huebsch, $1. 60. One of the best-known books on this question, readable and helpful at many points. 

 Ennis Richmond, _The Mind of the Child_. Longmans, Green & Co. , $1. 00. One of the most helpful books because of its new and refreshing point of view. 

 *Edward O. Sisson, _The Essentials of Character_. Macmillan, $1. 00. A book on the broad principles and ideals; one dealing with the outstanding elements of character. 

 Ernest H. Abbott, _On the Training of Parents_. Houghton Mifflin Co. , $1. 00. A bright statement of some of the most perplexing problems of family life. 

 *Mary Wood-Allen, _Making the Best of Our Children_. First and Second Series. A. C. McClurg & Co. , $1. 00 each. Takes one after another of the different situations in child-training. 

 *Patterson DuBois, _The Culture of Justice_. Dodd, Mead & Co. , $0. 75. An important contribution, as it calls attention to some frequently neglected aspects of moral training especially applicable to the home. 

 Walter L. Sheldon, _Duties in the Home_. W. M. Welch & Co. A textbook, the thirty sections of which would furnish an excellent basis for parents' discussions of home discipline. 

 VI. General Reading in the Home

 John Macy, _Child's Guide to Reading_. Baker & Taylor Co. , $1. 25. A discussion of reading and the education of children thereby, with suggestions and criticisms of suitable books in different departments of reading. 

 W. T. Taylor, _Finger Posts to Children's Reading_. A. C. McClurg & Co. , $1. 00. A practical discussion of suitable reading for children, with a list of books. 

 *G. W. Arnold, _A Mothers' List of Books for Children_. A. C. McClurg & Co. , $1. 00. The books are arranged by ages and topics, making this one of the most useful collections available. 

 Edward P. St. John, _Stories and Story Telling_. Eaton & Mains, $0. 35. A textbook, for parents' classes. It contains much valuable material. 

 E. M. Partridge, _Story Telling in School and Home_. Sturgis & Walton, $1. 35. One of the best discussions of the principles and methods of story-telling, with a number of good stories. 

INDEX

Activity in relation to character, 75

Amusement of young people, 190

Anger, Dealing with, 224

Bible, Methods of using the, 121

Bible, The, in the home, 119

Blessing at table, 133

Book list on the family, 290

Books and reading, 113

Boy, The, in the family, 173

Boys' play, 175

Bullying, 253

Character, A constructive policy for, 269

Child nature, Books on, 291

Child unity with the church, 207

Child welfare, Religious meanings of, 3

Childhood characteristics, 53

Christian family, The, as a type, 41

Church, The, and the children, 204

Church, The, and the family, 198

Church, The, and the program of the home, 271

Citizenship, Training for, 96

Class work, Plans of, 281

Community, The, in relation to the home, 88

Community service, 91

Conversation, Religious, 62

Courtship, 188

Dishonesty, 249

Economic development of the home, 13

Educational function, The, of the family, 46

Educational process, The, 49

Factory system, The, and the home, 14

Family as an institution, Books on the, 290

"Family Book, " 155

Family defined, 5

Family ideal in the church, 202

Family life, Dominating motive of, 27

Family worship, 126

Family worship, Methods of, 133

Father, The, and the boy, 177

Father, The, and the family, 263

Fighting among children, 234

Function of the family, 46

Future of the family, 268

Girl, The, in the family, 180

God, The consciousness of, 64

Grace at table, 133

Hebrew family life, 39

Home and school co-operation, 213

Home, is it passing? 10

Home, Religious interpretation of, 1

Home versus family, 18, 22

Honesty, Training in, 249

Hymns for children, 102

Jesus' teaching on the family, 42

Loyalty as the basic principle, 31, 54

Loyalty, The organization of, 57

Lying and the moral problem, 240

Meals, Conversation at, 165

Moral crises, Dealing with, 218

Moral life, religious roots in the family, 31

Moral teaching, 70

Moral training, Books on, 294

Motive, Religious, in the family, 2

Music in the family, 105

Organization of home, Purpose of, 19

Parental aversion, 186

Parenthood and religious training, 260

Parents' classes, 274

Parents trained in schools, 214

Petulancy in children, 233

Play activity, 107

Play, A policy of, 150

Play on Sunday, 149

Prayers, Children's, 135

Prayers, Family, 137

Quarrels of children, 231

Questions, Children's, 69

Reading, Developing taste for, 115

Religious character of the family, 46

Religious development of the child, 52

Religious education in the family, Books on, 293

Religious education, Meaning of, 47

Religious growth of the child, 55

Religious history of the family, 37

Religious ideas of children, 60

Religious service, 78, 80

School, The home as a, 87

Schools, Public, and the home, 212

Self-control, Developing, 227, 236

Social life of youth, 189

Social qualities to be developed, 28

Social training, 29, 82, 92

Socialization of the home, 16

Song and story, 101

Spiritual values, Place of, 30

Stories and reading, 110

Story-telling, 110

Sunday afternoon problem, 154

Sunday in the home, 145

Sunday play, 149

Table, Ministry of the, 164

Table-talk, 169

Teasing and bullying, 253

Will, Training the, 221

Work and character, 76

Worship in the family, 126

Worship, Outlines of, 139

Youth in the home, 183

PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. 

THE CONSTRUCTIVE STUDIES

The Constructive Studies comprise volumes suitable for all grades, fromkindergarten to adult years, in schools or churches. In the productionof these studies the editors and authors have sought to embody not onlytheir own ideals but the best product of the thought of all who arecontributing to the theory and practice of modern religious education. They have had due regard for fundamental principles of pedagogicalmethod, for the results of the best modern biblical scholarship, and forthose contributions to religious education which may be made by the useof a religious interpretation of all life-processes, whether in thefield of science, literature, or social phenomena. 

Their task is not regarded as complete because of having produced one ormore books suitable for each grade. There will be a constant process ofrenewal and change, and the possible setting aside of books which, because of changing conditions in the religious world or further advancein the science of religious education, no longer perform their function, and the continual enrichment of the series by new volumes so that it mayalways be adapted to those who are taking initial steps in modernreligious education, as well as to those who have accepted and are readyto put into practice the most recent theories. 

As teachers profoundly interested in the problems of religiouseducation, the editors have invited to co-operate with them authorschosen from a wide territory and in several instances already well knownthrough practical experiments in the field in which they are asked towrite. 

The editors are well aware that those who are most deeply interested inreligious education hold that churches and schools should be accordedperfect independence in their choice of literature regardless ofpublishing-house interests and they heartily sympathize with thisstandard. They realize that many schools will select from theConstructive Studies such volumes as they prefer, but at the same timethey hope that the Constructive Studies will be most widely serviceableas a series. The following analysis of the series will help the readerto get the point of view of the editors and authors. 

KINDERGARTEN, 4-6 YEARS

The kindergarten child needs most of all to gain those simple ideals oflife which will keep him in harmony with his surroundings in the home, at play, and in the out-of-doors. He is most susceptible to a religiousinterpretation of all these, which can best be fostered through aprogram of story, play, handwork, and other activities as outlined in

 _The Sunday Kindergarten_ (Ferris). A teachers' manual giving directions for the use of a one- or two-hour period with story, song, play, and handwork. Permanent and temporary material for the children's table work, and story leaflets to be taken home. 

PRIMARY, 6-8 YEARS, GRADES I-III

At the age of six years when children enter upon a new era because oftheir recognition by the first grade in the public schools theopportunity for the cultivation of right social reactions isconsiderably increased. Their world still, however, comprises chieflythe home, the school, the playground, and the phenomena of nature. Anormal religion at this time is one which will enable the child todevelop the best sort of life in all these relationships, which nowpresent more complicated moral problems than in the earlier stage. Religious impressions may be made through interpretations of nature, stories of life, song, prayer, simple scripture texts, and handwork. Allof these are embodied in

 _Child Religion in Song and Story_ (Chamberlin and Kern). Three interchangeable volumes; only one of which is used at one time in all three grades. Each lesson presents a complete service, song, prayers, responses, texts, story, and handwork. Constructive and beautiful handwork books are provided for the pupil. 

JUNIOR, 9 YEARS, GRADE IV

When the children have reached the fourth grade they are able to readcomfortably and have developed an interest in books, having a "readingbook" in school and an accumulating group of story-books at home. Onebook in the household is as yet a mystery, the Bible, of which theparents speak reverently as God's Book. It contains many interestingstories and presents inspiring characters which are, however, buried inthe midst of much that would not interest the children. To help them tofind these stories and to show them the living men who are their heroesor who were the writers of the stories, the poems, or the letters, makesthe Bible to them a living book which they will enjoy more and more asthe years pass. This service is performed by

 _An Introduction to the Bible for Teachers of Children_ (Chamberlin). Story-reading from the Bible for the school and home, designed to utilize the growing interest in books and reading found in children of this age, in cultivating an attitude of intelligent interest in the Bible and enjoyment of suitable portions of it. Full instructions with regard to picturesque, historical, and social introductions are given the teacher. A pupil's homework book, designed to help him to think of the story as a whole and to express his thinking, is provided for the pupil. 

JUNIOR, 10-12 YEARS, GRADES V-VII

Children in the fifth, sixth, and seventh grades are hero-worshipers. Inthe preceding grade they have had a brief introduction to the life ofJesus through their childish explorations of the gospels. His characterhas impressed them already as heroic and they are eager to know moreabout him, therefore the year is spent in the study of

 _The Life of Jesus_ (Gates). The story of Jesus graphically presented from the standpoint of a hero. A teacher's manual contains full instructions for preparation of material and presentation to the class. A partially completed story of Jesus prepared for the introduction of illustrations, maps, and original work, together with all materials required, is provided for the pupil. 

In the sixth grade a new point of approach to some of the heroes withwhom the children are already slightly acquainted seems desirable. TheOld Testament furnishes examples of men who were brave warriors, magnanimous citizens, loyal patriots, great statesmen, and champions ofdemocratic justice. To make the discovery of these traits in ancientcharacters and to interpret them in the terms of modern boyhood andgirlhood is the task of two volumes in the list. The choice between themwill be made on the basis of preference for handwork or textbook workfor the children. 

 _Heroes of Israel_ (Soares). Stories selected from the Old Testament which are calculated to inspire the imagination of boys and girls of the early adolescent period. The most complete instructions for preparation and presentation of the lesson are given the teacher in his manual. The pupil's book provides the full text of each story and many questions which will lead to the consideration of problems arising in the life of boys and girls of this age. 

 _Old Testament Stories_ (Corbett). Also a series of stories selected from the Old Testament. Complete instructions for vivid presentation are given the teacher in his manual. The pupil's material consists of a notebook containing a great variety of opportunities for constructive handwork. 

Paul was a great hero. Most people know him only as a theologian. Hislife presents miracles of courage, struggle, loyalty, andself-abnegation. The next book in the series is intended to help thepupil to see such a man. The student is assisted by a wealth of localcolor. 

 _Paul of Tarsus_ (Atkinson). The story of Paul which is partially presented to the pupil and partially the result of his own exploration in the Bible and in the library. Much attention is given to story of Paul's boyhood and his adventurous travels, inspiring courage and loyalty to a cause. The pupil's notebook is similar in form to the one used in the study of Gates's "Life of Jesus, " but more advanced in thought. 

HIGH SCHOOL, 13-17 YEARS

In the secular school the work of the eighth grade is tending towardelimination. It is, therefore, considered here as one of the high-schoolgrades. In the high-school years new needs arise. There is necessary agroup of books which will dignify the study of the Bible and give it ashistory and literature a place in education, at least equivalent to thatof other histories and literatures which have contributed to theprogress of the world. This series is rich in biblical studies whichwill enable young people to gain a historical appreciation of thereligion which they profess. Such books are

 _The Gospel According to Mark_ (Burton). A study of the life of Jesus from this gospel. The full text is printed in the book, which is provided with a good dictionary and many interesting notes and questions of very great value to both teacher and pupil. 

 _The First Book of Samuel_ (Willett). Textbook for teacher and pupil in which the fascinating stories of Samuel, Saul, and David are graphically presented. The complete text of the first book of Samuel is given, many interesting explanatory notes, and questions which will stir the interest of the pupil, not only in the present volume but in the future study of the Old Testament. 

 _The Life of Christ_ (Burgess). A careful historical study of the life of Christ from the four gospels. A manual for teacher and pupil presents a somewhat exhaustive treatment, but full instructions for the selection of material for classes in which but one recitation a week occurs are given the teacher in a separate outline. 

 _The Hebrew Prophets_ (Chamberlin). An inspiring presentation of the lives of some of the greatest of the prophets from the point of view of their work as citizens and patriots. In the manual for teachers and pupils the biblical text in a good modern translation is included. 

 _Christianity in the Apostolic Age_ (Gilbert). A story of early Christianity chronologically presented, full of interest in the hands of a teacher who enjoys the historical point of view. 

In the high-school years also young people find it necessary to face theproblem of living the Christian life in a modern world, both as apersonal experience and as a basis on which to build an ideal society. To meet this need a number of books intended to inspire boys and girlsto look forward to taking their places as home-builders and responsiblecitizens of a great Christian democracy and to intelligently choosetheir task in it are prepared or in preparation. The following are nowready:

 _Problems of Boyhood_ (Johnson). A series of chapters discussing matters of supreme interest to boys and girls, but presented from the point of view of the boy. A splendid preparation for efficiency in all life's relationships. 

 _Lives Worth Living_ (Peabody). A series of studies of important women, biblical and modern, representing different phases of life and introducing the opportunity to discuss the possibilities of effective womanhood in the modern world. 

 _The Third and Fourth Generation_ (Downing). A series of studies in heredity based upon studies of phenomena in the natural world and leading up to important historical facts and inferences in the human world. 

ADULT GROUP

The Biblical studies assigned to the high-school period are in mostcases adaptable to adult class work. There are other volumes, however, intended only for the adult group, which also includes the young peoplebeyond the high-school age. They are as follows:

 _The Life of Christ_ (Burton and Mathews). A careful historical study of the life of Christ from the four gospels, with copious notes, reading references, maps, etc. 

 _What Jesus Taught_ (Slaten). This book develops an unusual but stimulating method of teaching groups of students in colleges, Christian associations, and churches. After a swift survey of the material and spiritual environment of Jesus this book suggests outlines for _discussions_ of his teaching on such topics as civilization, hate, war and non-resistance, democracy, religion, and similar topics. Can be effectively used by laymen as well as professional leaders. 

 _Great Men of the Christian Church_ (Walker). A series of delightful biographies of men who have been influential in great crises in the history of the church. 

 _Christian Faith for Men of Today_ (Cook). A re-interpretation of old doctrines in the light of modern attitudes. 

 _Social Duties from the Christian Point of View_ (Henderson). Practical studies in the fundamental social relationships which make up life in the family, the city, and the state. 

 _Religious Education in the Family_ (Cope). An illuminating study of the possibilities of a normal religious development in the family life. Invaluable to parents. 

 _Christianity and Its Bible_ (Waring). A remarkably comprehensive sketch of the Old and the New Testament religion, the Christian church, and the present status of Christianity. 

It is needless to say that the Constructive Studies present no sectariandogmas and are used by churches and schools of all denominationalaffiliations. In the grammar-and high-school years more books areprovided than there are years in which to study them, each bookrepresenting a school year's work. Local conditions, and the preferenceof the Director of Education or the teacher of the class will be theguide in choosing the courses desired, remembering that in the precedinglist the approximate place given to the book is the one which theeditors and authors consider most appropriate. 

For prices consult the latest price list. Address

The University of Chicago PressChicago Illinois