The Need of Homes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Nov 7, 1907

The Need of Homes

The nation needs homes. The greatest factor in the life of the child and of the nation is not the institution, but the home circle.

Amid the stress of many duties there is danger to-day that the American home will suffer. The boys and girls gain their ideals of life upon the street, among companionships of their own choice, and often they owe less of their character to parental influence than to the chance suggestions that they have picked up carelessly.

It seems to us that the mother in the home has a higher calling than the church visitor or the charity worker. Her influence may not be wide, but it is deep; she may not win newspaper notoriety, but she wields a scepter which a king might envy; and in the lives she has molded she will live nobly long after her generation has passed away. The heroic service is not wrought abroad before great multitudes, or on the thrones of commerce. Heroism is found where the mother sits by the fireside, and out of her own heart teaches the children the alphabet of the gospel, and step by step assists them amid their little trials and duties, not to hear only, but to do. Here at least the grain of mustard seed, which indeed is the least of all seeds, when it is matured, becomes a tree of prodigious growth.—Home Herald.