p. 406 | HOME ATMOSPHERE by Theodore L. Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 9, 1880

HOME ATMOSPHERE.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

This atmosphere of the household which either converts to Christ or perverts to fashion, folly, and impiety, is commonly created by the parents. They are responsible for it. If the whole trend of household talk and thought and ambition runs toward money-making, or social convivialities, or general godlessness of any kind, it is the father and the mother who give the pitch. Nowhere is it so difficult to make the best preaching or the best Sabbath-school teaching effective on character as in the malarious air of such a home. As soon expect to raise oranges in Lapland as plants of grace in so godless an atmosphere.

The parental influence penetrates through the house with as subtle a poison as escaping gas from an ill-built furnace. As Dr. Bushnell has pithily said, in his incomparable book on "Christian Nature:" "Whatever fire the parents kindle, the children are found gathering the wood. They help as either apprentices or accessories." If the father begins the Sabbath with some secular newspaper, the family will help him read it. If the parents go irregularly to God's house, the children will hardly go at all. If the mother is a scandal monger, she will make her children tattlers and eaves-droppers. If she directs her servants to say at the door that "she is not at home," the children will learn to be polite liars. If the father puts the decanter on his table, the boys will soon begin to practice with the fatal glass. That rich father who disinherited a son for drunkenness, and in the same will bequeathed his wine cellar to certain heirs, gave a very palpable proof of the home atmosphere which had poisoned the poor boy.

Parental provocation and ill-temper sour the very air of many households, so that the children can hardly escape being cross, snappish, and irritable. How can piety breathe in such an air. How can a family be trained up in the knowledge of God's word when the Book of books is seldom opened and the spirit of its instructions is no more known than in the house of a Mussulman? Even in the families of many professors of religion I do not look for any conversions; for I know that the influence of the most faithful discourses will be destroyed by the malaria of the home. It was the atmosphere of Elkanah's and Hannah's godly house that produced a Samuel. It was the wretched air of Eli's house which ruined Hophni and Phineas.—T. L. Cuyler, D. D., in Independent.