Its Fundamentals by J. O. Corliss

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 8, 1912

Its Fundamentals

By J. O. Corliss

Home Life — No. 1

Its Fundamentals

To many, home is but a convenient place for eating and sleeping. But the word should mean much more to every person. No other place on earth should have so much to do in forming character and directing life's aims as home influences. The dwelling of father, mother, and children under a single roof does not necessarily constitute that spot a home in the real sense. True, it is the place where one is born, and whence he goes out into the world's activities; but during childhood and youth were the association and influence of that domicile such as to fit its members best to meet the duties of maturer life?

A true, pure, godly home is not a natural product — an uncultivated, self-grown accomplishment. Such a place must be a work of time, in which constant care and master skill are exercised from its very inception. It can not be otherwise since the prominent factors in its building start as inexperienced performers. More than this, their habits and customs of earlier life are totally unlike, causing them to look upon the serious side of human affairs from entirely different standpoints.

This inauspicious beginning comes about quite naturally, though sometimes really unaccountably. For instance, a young man has been attracted toward a young woman whose home life and education have been along lines not conformable to his own. He has met her only under the most favorable circumstances, and neither is acquainted with the other's peculiarities, which are seen at their worst only in domestic life. But being convinced that they are well mated, they take the step that binds them to each other's interests.

The real work of becoming acquainted with each other has now just begun. What the result will be, depends on how each treats the other's infirmities, hitherto hidden. Separate wills, purposes, hopes, and actions, hitherto unrestrained, are now expected to blend and harmonize into the most satisfying unity. But does the fact of a marriage ceremony performed give security to this end? — Not always. The woven threads of former years in social and educational ways, are sure to present a barrier to immediate perfect blending. Taken unawares, the newly wedded couple just here enter the deep shades of married experience, where danger of alienation lurks in every day's experience.

Well would it be if in this initiation no third person is permitted to interject advice. This may be prevented when both are agreed to make a confidant of no one relative to domestic affairs. Let the process of forming affinity acquaintance go forward uninterruptedly within the home circle itself. The process may be prolonged and trying, because of former adverse training, but it can be successfully done, if each properly considers the situation, and the need of mutual accommodation and respect. In fact, the first necessary item in making a home is that of becoming acquainted.

By this is not meant a critical acquaintance, one that will embitter the life entered upon; but a loving, tender, yielding acquaintance, one that will regard the peculiarities of another as simply the likeness of one's own, and therefore to be borne as one would have his own overlooked. To do otherwise is to fail in home-making. Compromise must be the order of every day and hour, without which no harmony of action can obtain. Therefore life must be an accommodation of forces, that no single element shall have unlimited sway.

It needs no argument to convince the thoughtful mind that when one force alone insists on having supremacy, trouble quickly follows, carrying disintegration and revolt. For this reason true home life must be filled with mutual concessions and acts of compromise. For either side of the house to act otherwise is to become imperious and grossly offensive. Many a prospective home has been wrecked by the despotic will of a master or the selfish freak of a mistress. The husband who insists that his wife shall yield on every point, and the wife who will not assent though she clearly sees an inevitable resulting breach, are not only sowing seeds of discord for their own reaping, but are preparing an after-harvest for their children well calculated to blight their happiness in this world, and obscure their path to the eternal home above.

Who of us in older years does not recall some weary, sad-faced wife, the patient bearer of a husband's tyrannical ways; or a man of moral excellence who was constantly goaded by obstinate exactions of a fretful wife? The following from Mr. J. F. W. Ware is so much to the point on this particular issue that we give the reader its benefit:—

"Have you not known weary and heavy-laden fathers, stooping, wrinkled, gray, and mothers with faces so mutely eloquent of the heart's troubles, going prematurely down the vale of years, unsupported and unblessed, because of one who would not yield his habit, his wilfulness, his vice, but persisted in making it the center and law of the home? Had these learned the compromises of love, remembered and respected the rights, the position, the comfort, the happiness of others, studied to deny self, to avoid clashing, to clip away the rough edges of temper and preference, which make too great friction and jar, and endanger safety; the selfsame persons might have made a home angels would have looked upon with joy, and blessed as a success."

Let it be understood, then, that compromise in home life is necessary in everything but principle. By this is not meant mere opinion, which so often is made to pose as principle, but religious duty, enjoined by the plain statements of God's Word. In fact, no two persons of positive character, but holding different religious faiths, should risk the binding requirements of marriage ties; for the home is no sooner established than children are likely to become a part of the family group. When these are old enough to receive simple instruction in religious lines, the problem becomes a grave one. Shall the mother teach her children the faith to which she holds, and then hear this contradicted by the father? Surely this is bad for each in the family, for it brings sadness to the mother, ill temper to the father, and begets unbelief in the children.

This is an important problem which should be solved before the rearing of children begins; for it touches and controls the home life in all its relations. Differences of religious opinion between parents carry a vitiating and blighting influence in the home, which no other element can entirely eliminate. It is therefore an important matter to settle before entering married life, since the marriage relation is not for the purpose of satisfying inordinate passion, but for the continuance of happiness here and hereafter, for both parents and children.

Home life therefore is to be just what the interested parties make it. As has been truly said: "God will not make it the one, nor prevent its being the other. He ordained it; but he gave it to us to shape. That shaping is our life-work." Well will it be if our home life in every instance is laid in the broad lines of Christian culture and nobility.

Mountain View, Cal.