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The Building of a Home

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 19, 1908

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 34, No. 8

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The Building of a Home

By L. D. Avery-Stuttle

By Mrs. L. D. Avery-Stuttle

The Duties of the Mother.

I AM afraid you have placed so many duties and so many cares on the head of the poor father that you have not left us mothers anything at all to do,” says some ambitious little woman.
But if you will listen for a few moments, I think you will agree that enough work still remains for even the most ambitious and aggressive of mothers. In fact, the duties of the mother are so many and so varied that a mere enumeration of the half of them would occupy much more time and space than I have at my command. I shall therefore undertake to name but a few of the more important ones.
To the mother, more than to any one else in all the world, belongs the sacred duty of caring for those tender little beings whose frail lives are so often cut short by the unjustifiable ignorance or wilful folly of her whose chief thought should be the care and comfort of the little ones entrusted to her by Him who claims them as His “heritage.” What, then, shall I say of the culpable conduct of the mother who, shirking or ignoring this sacred responsibility, leaves her babe to the entire charge of a hireling, that she may be free to cater to the demands of fashion; that her days may be spent in idle vanity, and her evenings at the pleasure party or the theater; or, worse still, that she may have more time to give to the care of her lap-dog or poodle!
But the majority of mothers, I am happy to believe, are not of this class. “No, no!” exclaim a multitude of earnest, true-hearted women with a shudder, “we are anxious to do our duty by our little ones, but we don’t always know just how. We can’t agree as to any certain age when we should begin to insist upon obedience. When ought we to begin to train our children?”
Perhaps we all remember the answer of the physician to a similar question put to him by an anxious mother: “One hundred years before the babe is born, madam,” smiled the doctor.
Prenatal influence is indeed great. But, seriously, the training of the child should commence as soon as the little one begins to take notice of anything—or even before. A child carefully trained to obedience and virtue from the very cradle, by a godly mother, and with the voice of prayer constantly echoing in its ears, will not be likely to break that mother’s heart in a few years by choosing the path of destruction. Ah, the great majority of those poor girls whose lives of shame and folly are the curse of this unhappy land, were not brought up by true Christian mothers,—something essential in their training has been neglected,—there is no doubt about it. Of course there are exceptions. But O if parents could be made to understand the vital necessity of surrounding their children from their very birth with an atmosphere of prayer never ceasing, if mothers would teach their girls and boys to confide in them, if all their intercourse with them might be marked by love unchangeable and ceaseless, how much anguish of spirit might be saved.
Of how many among us, my sisters, could the testimony be borne by our children: “Mother never gave me a cross word in my life. She never spoke to me with a frown on her face; she never punished me in anger. Mother made my life at home one of peace and innocent happiness.”
Ah, I tell you, it is the home life that counts.
One morning my husband called me into the garden. Pointing to a large vine whose fine green leaves were sadly drooping, he said: “See; my vine is dying. I can not imagine the cause. I water it every morning, and there is no insect to be found among the leaves or on the stalk, but the plant is dying.”
The next day he came to me, bringing a section of the root in his hand. He had discovered the cause of all the trouble. Hidden away in the ground, and even creeping up the hollow rootlets, were myriads of tiny parasites. As tho ashamed to be seen in the broad light of day, where the searching eye of the gardener would discern it, the insect had hidden itself, that it might the better carry on its destructive work. It was at home only in dirt and darkness.
O let us rid our homes of everything which we well know can never stand before the all-seeing eye of the heavenly Gardener. The worm at the root is the careless word, the unjust reprimand, the ungenerous remark, the scolding tone, every unkind or harsh word you utter in the privacy of your own home, every prayer neglected, every injustice done to husband or children,—these, my sister, are worms at the root, which will ruin those tender vines which your heavenly Father has planted especially for your love and care and happiness. These small shortcomings, as we are prone to call them, are the little foxes that finally spoil the vines.
Do you remember the other day you saw the pastor coming in at the gate while you were giving little Mary a scolding because of some childish irregularity? How suddenly your sharp tones were lowered, and how quickly the puckering frowns straightened and smoothed themselves out! You hoped the pastor didn’t notice, or hadn’t heard. If he had, he kept quiet about it. But I can tell you who did notice, and who did hear: the recording angel was there with his pen. And, my sister, your little Mary noticed the sudden change, and looked up in astonishment. Ah, she was learning lessons in deceit from her Christian (?) mother. And there was still another record written, besides that of the recording angel,—written in ugly characters upon your fair brow. The lines are still faint, perhaps, but every day they are growing deeper,—lines of ill-nature and deceit. Do not lay these lines to the finger of Time. The lines he curves upon the calm brow of beautiful old age are too sacred, too divinely fair to be confounded with such a shameful forgery.
Do not forget to teach the children to pray. Spend more time in this manner than in endless rufflings and tuckings and flutings. Make your home bright and beautiful and attractive, but do not give so much attention to this that you neglect the preparations for the one to come,—“eternal in the heavens.”