p. 652 | FAMILY STANDARDS by Christian Union

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 28, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 41.

FAMILY STANDARDS.

By Christian Union

No stream can flow higher than its source. The combined honesty of any family will not be higher than the laws governing its training.

The individual who was born and trained in a family where strict integrity and truth were unknown has that much harder battle to fight in overcoming the tendencies of his nature. It is this that makes the training of young children such a tremendous responsibility.

Is there a sadder sight than the puzzled expression in a child's face when the mother whom it loves with the whole strength of its being utters a social falsehood in its presence?—and yet it is not so rare a sight as it should be. Can there be a standard of truth in a family where the daily life of the family is an untruth, where the effort to appear is far greater than the effort to be? To give a child the right standards there must be harmony in his life, and there can be no harmony without truth. The small boy in an infant class struck the very foundation of life when he exclaimed to a little girl covered with shame and confusion because her cap had been knocked off, revealing a smoothly cropped head and the row of curls sewed fast to the ruches of the cap on the floor, "Ha! ye needn't be so 'shamed if ye hadn't made believe!" It is the "make believes" that cause the mortification. The man whose house is built on the rock truth has a sure foundation; he commands respect without question, and need fear no man's comment. "Electricity cannot follow a broken wire, nor success a lying life." "I teach my children to speak the truth," is but a small part of a moral education. Are they taught to live it? Is the home life, by example as well as precept, a life of truth? Within a few days the daily papers have recorded five heavy embezzlements. The principals concerned, as far as their histories have been revealed, were men who had peculiar social advantages; at least three of them were born into homes of wealth, and all were men who had had every educational advantage. The partner of one said: "I always knew he was careless, but supposed he was honest." Will a strictly honest man be careless where money matters are involved? Will a man to whom truth is more than a tongue accomplishment be careless to criminality? You may say he is weak, but "there is a weakness that is as criminal as wickedness," and it is this weakness that is a sure indication of the lack of courage inseparable from truth.

Truth, like love, is universal in its meanings, and a love of it, devotion to it, is a perfect equipment for all of life's battles.—Christian Union.