Make Home Beautiful

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 15, 1864

Make Home Beautiful

MAKE HOME BEAUTIFUL.—The following suggestions will indicate to parents an important direction which they may give to their means and leisure time, in order to secure the same happy result:

Let home be the nursery of truth, of refinement, of simplicity, and of taste. Study to make it attractive to your children by every means in your power, and lose no opportunity for improving their minds and cultivating their home affections. Let system and order, industry and study, taste and refinement, be cultivated at home, and comfort, harmony, and peace will reign within your dwelling, however humble. Do your children love music, or drawing or flowers? Encourage their taste to the utmost of your ability. Indeed, where the love of music pervades a family, and is judiciously cultivated, it is an important aid in the training of children; for the child whose soul is touched with melody easily yields to the voice of affection, and seldom requires severity. More than this, the harsh tones of the father's voice, as he commands, and the cutting tones of the mother, as she forbids, become milder and more persuasive, if accustomed to join with their children in these recreations, and thus both parents and children are mutually refined and elevated. Let me add that I can not conceive of any purer enjoyment than is felt by the head of the family, as wife and children gather in about him, and pour forth their sweet voices in songs of praise at the morning sacrifice and the evening oblation. If the father has money to spare, I do not doubt that he might make a good investment in a piano, a melodeon, or some other instrument, to accompany the voices of his wife and children, provided always that practice on these instruments be not allowed to interfere with the practice at the kneading-trough, the wash-board, or with any other duty that a true woman, be she daughter, sister, wife, or mother, ought to understand. These duties and these pleasures are in no degree incompatible with each other. Whatever tends to develop the intellect, to refine the taste, and purify the affections, may find a fitting place in every house.