THE INFLUENCE OF THE HOME.
By C. M. S.
The Homiletic Review for April, in an article upon the question, “Is the Home Losing Its Social Place and Its Social Functions?” presents an earnest and thoughtful article upon the influence of the family circle. After presenting briefly the sacredness and sanctity of the home, and deprecating the disintegrating influence of the lodge, the club, and the saloon, the Review says:— “The notorious lack of discipline is among the saddest features in American families. Parents with the wisdom and experience of many years abdicate their authority in order to give a loose rein to the dominion of inexperienced and wilful children. These have their own way, which usually means the rule of arbitrariness and personal gratification. As at present trained, the American boy or girl form some of the most serious problems of our life. The boys in the United States between the ages of ten and seventeen are said to number 5,500,000. For what they become to the school, to business, politics, society, and the nation, the chief responsibility rests with the home. The brutal hazing in colleges and at West Point is most of all a reflection on the families from which the boys came. This lack of discipline in the home is the source of the gravest dangers to society and the country. The family has become the school for the training of Anarchists.” “To strangers has been consigned the education which the family should give, or at least supervise. The father has no time for it; the mother has other interests which are more absorbing; and in many cases neither has inclination nor fitness for the task. Perhaps the home does not even furnish the dearest friends and most trusted companions at a time when friendship and companionship are most needed. Even in families called Christian the lessons constantly inculcated are luxury, mammonistic greed, mental and moral libertinism, and vulgar display. The mother caresses and dotes about a pet dog, while her offspring is committed to the mercy of a foreign nurse. When old enough the child is sent to a kindergarten, a day-school, or a Sunday-school,11sometimes as much to get rid of the child as to have it educated. Many parents pay no attention to the education of their children, not even inquiring about their schools and teachers. It is lamentable, but true, that multitudes of children would be fortunate if at home they received half the attention for their welfare which is given to cattle on a good stock farm. “What a problem the home thus presents to pastors and churches! It ought to be made the most beautiful and most cheerful place on earth—a social paradise, a type of the heavenly home. The home needs Christianization and socialization, making it a human and divine community. The school, the church, and social institutions can not be its substitutes, but they ought to second and supplement its holy mission. No friend or teacher can be so near the child as the mother and the father, and none can assume their responsibility. “Pastors are studying the problems of the home, and find them the most urgent and most fruitful in their ministry. The revival of the Christian home is in order. If it comes, it will be the earnest of the deepest, broadest, and most permanent revival in the Christian church.” The condition of the home and its needs are not overdrawn in the above. Indeed, they are conservatively stated; for the influences which are at work to undermine the Christian home are legion, and the legions of darkness are concocting and spurring them on. The great growth of saloons, lodges, secret societies, clubs male and clubs female, the gilded gambling den, the theaters, and the races,—all are conspiring against the nursery of childhood, the sanctity of the home, assaulting it from every side, from above and beneath; and while the onslaught is in progress, thousands of parents are fondly dreaming that all is well with their children; or, regardless of their influence, allow themselves to fret and scold and fume, and make home anything but a haven of love. It is time for a reformation, that the tender, guiding, restraining influence of the home may not be lost to the children of to-day.