The Parents' Part

A HOME without children is only a fragment of a home. Its life, however happy, is a song” with the sweetest part left out. Where no children come, the husband and wife miss much that is deepest and richest in life. Their wedded joy never realises its fullest measure of tenderness. There are chords in their hearts that are never waked. There are whole fields in their natures that are never brought under culture. There are powers and capacities in their souls that are never developed. They lose many a deep lesson that can be read from no book save from the pages of unfoldingchild-life. They miss many n6 Gbe perfect tpome

an inspiration of purity, of gentleness, of unselfishness, of beauty, for God has so constituted us that only in loving and caring for children are the richest and best things in us drawn out. Then, when old age comes on, how lonely is the childless home, with neither son nor daughter to come back with grateful ministries, to bring solace and comfort to the declining years!

It is a new marriage when the first-born enters the home. It draws the wedded lives together in a closeness they have never known before. It touches chords in their hearts that have lain silent until now. It calls out powers that have never been exercised before. Hitherto unsuspected beauties of character appear. The laughing, heedless girl of a year ago is transformed into a thoughtful woman. The careless, unsettled youth leaps into manly strength and into fixedness of character when he looks into the face of his own child and takes it to his bosom. New aims rise up before the young parents, new impulses begin to stir in their hearts. Life takes on at once a newer and deeper meaning. The glimpse they have had into its solemn mystery sobers them. The laying in their hands of a new and sacred burden, an immortal life, to be guided and trained by them, brings to them a sense of responsibility that makes them thoughtful. Self is no longer the centre. There is a new object to live for, an object great enough to fill all their life and engross their highest powers. It is only when the children come, that life becomes most real and earnest, and that parents begin to learn to live. We talk about training our children but they train us first, teaching us many a sacred lesson, stirring up in us many a slumbering gift and possibility, calling out many a hidden grace, and disciplining our us £be perfect -foome

wayward powers into strong- and
harmonious character.

“Children are God’s apostles, day by day Sent forth to preach of love, of hope, of peace.”

Our homes would be very cold and dreary without the children. Sometimes we weary of their noise. They certainly bring us a great deal of care and solicitude. They cost us no end of toil. When they are very young, they break our rest many a weary night with their teethings and other infantile ailments, and when they grow older, they well-nigh break our hearts many a time with their waywardness. After they come to us, we may as well bid farewell to living for self, to personal ease, and to independence, if we mean to do faithful duty as parents. There are some who therefore look upon the coming of children as a misfortune. They talk about them lightly as “responsibilities.” They regard them as in the way of their pleasure. They see no blessing in them. But it is cold selfishness that looks upon children in this way. Instead of beingf hindrances to true and noble living, they are helps. They bring benedictions from heaven when they come, and while they stay they are perpetual benedictions.

“Ah! what would the world be to us

If the children were no more? We should dread the desert behind us Worse than the dark before.

What the leaves are to the forest,

With light and air for food, Ere their sweet and tender juices

Have been hardened into wood —

That to the world are children;

Through them it feels the glow Of a brighter and sunnier climate

Than reaches the trunks below.”

When the children come, what shall we do with them? What duties do we owe to them? How may we discharge our responsibility? What is the parents’ part in the making of the home and the home-life? It is impos-Gbe perfect -fcome

sible to overstate the importance of these questions.

“It is no little thing when a fresh soul And a fresh heart, with their unmeasured

scope

For good, not gravitating earthward yet, But circling into diviner periods, Are sent into this world.”

It is a great thing to take these young and tender lives, rich with so many possibilities of beauty, of joy, of power, all of which may be wrecked, and to become responsible for their shaping and training and for the upbuilding of their character. This is what must be thought of in the making of a home. It must be a home in which children will grow up for true and noble life, for God and for heaven. Upon the parents the chief responsibility rests. They are the builders of the home. From them it receives its character, whether good or evil. It will be just what they make it. If it be happy, they must be the authors of the happiness; if it be unhappy, the blame must parents’

rest with them. Its tone, its atmosphere, its spirit, its influence, it will take from them. They have the making” of the home in their own hands, and God holds them responsible for it. This responsibility rests upon both the parents. There are some fathers who seem to forget that any share of the burden and duty of making- the home-life belongs to them. They leave it all to the mothers. They come and go as if they were scarcely more than boarders in their own house, with no active interest in the welfare of their children. They plead the demands of business as the excuse for their neglect. But where is the business that is so important as to justify a man’s evasion of the sacred duties which he -owes to his own family? There cannot be any other work in this world which a man can do, that will excuse him at God’s bar for having neglected the care of his own home and the training of his own children. No success in any

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department of the world’s work can possibly atone for failure here. No piling up of this world’s treasures can compensate a man for the loss of those incomparable jewels, his own children. In the prophet’s parable he said to the king, “As thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone.” May not this be the only plea that some fathers will have to offer when they stand before God without their children:” As I was busy here and there, they were gone “? Men are busy in their worldly affairs, busy pressing their plans and ambitions to fulfilment, busy gathering money to lay up a fortune, busy chasing the world’s honours and building up a name, busy in the quest for knowledge; and while they are busy, their children grow up, and when they turn to see if they are getting on well, they are gone. Then they try most earnestly to get them back again, but their intensest efforts avail not. It is too late then to do that blessed work parents’ Hyart I23

for them, and upon their lives, which could so easily have been done in their tender years. Dr. Geikie’s book, entitled Life, opens with these words: “Some things God gives often: some He gives only once. The seasons return again and again, and the flowers change with the months, but youth comes twice to none.” Childhood comes but once with its opportunities. Whatever is done to stamp it with beauty must be done quickly.

Then it matters not how capable, how wise, how devoted the mother may be; the fact that she does her part well does not free the father in any degree from his share of the responsibility. Duties cannot be transferred. No other one’s faithfulness can excuse or atone for my unfaithfulness. Besides, it is a wrong and an unmanly thing for a strong, capable man, who claims to be the stronger vessel, to seek to put off on a woman, whom he calls the weaker vessel, duties and responsibilities which clearly belong- to himself. There is a certain sense in which the mother is the real home-maker. It is in her hands that the tender life is laid for its first impressions. In all its education and culture she comes the closer to it. Her spirit makes the home atmosphere. Yet from end to end of the Scriptures the law of God makes the father the head of the household, and devolves upon him, as such, the responsibility of the building up of his home, the training- of his children, the care of all the sacred interests of his family.

Fathers should awaken to the fact that they have something to do in making the life of their own homes, besides providing food and clothing, and paying taxes and bills. They owe to their homes the best influences of their lives. Whatever other duties press upon them, they should always find time to plan for the good of their own households. The very centre of every man’s life should be his home. Instead of being- to him a mere boarding-house where he eats and sleeps, and from which he starts out in the mornings to his work, it ought to be the place where his heart is anchored, where his hopes gather, to which his thoughts turn a thousand times a day, for which he toils and struggles, and into which he brings always the richest and best things of his life. He should realise that he is responsible for the character and the influence of his home-life, and that if it should fail to be what it ought to be, the blame and guilt must lie upon his soul.

Socrates used to say that he wondered how men who were so careful of the training of a colt were so indifferent to the education of their own children. Yet even in these Christian days men are found, men professing to be followers of Christ and to believe in the superiority of life itself to all things else, who give infinitely more thought

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and pains to the raising of cattle, the growing of crops, the building up of businesses, than to the training of their children. Something must be crowded out of every earnest, busy life. No one can do everything that comes to his hand. But it will be a fatal mistake if any father allows his duties to his home to be crowded out. They should rather have the first place. Anything else had better be neglected than his children. Even religious work in the kingdom of Christ at large must not interfere with one’s religious work in the kingdom of Christ in his home. No man is required by the vows and the spirit of his consecration to keep other men’s vineyards so faithfully that he cannot keep his own. That a man has been a devoted pastor, or a diligent church - officer, or a faithful Sunday-school superintendent or teacher, will not atone for the fact that he was an unfaithful father.

Definitions are important. It will help very greatly in working out the problem of the home-life to settle precisely the object of a home, and what it is intended to accomplish for those who are to grow up in it. When boys are to be trained for soldiers, a military academy is what is required. If they are to serve in the navy, they are sent to a naval school. If a young girl desires to study art, she does not go to a college of music, but to an artschool. If she wishes to study the science of medicine, she enters not a theological but a medical school. The course of study, the instruction, the tone and spirit of these schools, are not the same in all, but in each are adapted to produce the end desired. If we know definitely what a home ought to do for the children who are brought up in it, we can tell better what the training, the instruction, and the influences should be.

What, then, is the object of a home? What is its mission? What is it designed to accomplish? What kind of results is it expected to yield? We know the design of a blacksmith’s shop; articles and implements of iron are forged and fashioned there. We know what a marble-cutter’s yard is for; forms of grace and beauty are there chiselled from the block. We know what a great linen factory is designed to do; its shuttles weave the fabrics which men and women are to wear. When an artist fits up a studio we know what kind of work he expects to send out; on canvas or in marble he will fix the beautiful creations of his genius, and send them forth to give inspirations of loveliness to others. In every kind of shop or factory or mill which men build, they have some definite design to accomplish, some specific results to be achieved. What are the results which homes are meant to produce? What forms of beauty, what fabrics of loveliness, are they expected to yield?

We begin to think of these questions, and we say, “A home is a place in which to sleep and get one’s meals. It is a place in which to rest when one is tired, to stay and be nursed when one is sick; a place in which to rock the babies and let the children romp and play; a place to receive one’s friends and keep the treasures one gathers.”

Is that all? Someone asked a young- lady who had just completed her education, what her aim in life now was, and she replied, “To breathe.” Her reply may have been made in jest, yet there are many who have no higher aim in living. And about as high an aim as most married people have in their home-making is to have as good and showy a house as they can afford, furnished in as rich a style as their means will warrant, and then to live in it as comfortably as they are able, without too much exertion or self-denial.

But the true idea of a home is, that it is a place for growth. It is a place for the parents themselves to grow in — to grow into beauty of character, to grow in refinement, in knowledge, in strength, in wisdom, in patience, gentleness, kindliness, and all the Christian graces and virtues. It is a place for children to grow — to grow into physical vigour and health, and to be trained in all that shall make them true and noble men and women. That is, just as the artist’s studio is built and furnished for the definite purpose of preparing and sending out forms of beauty, so is a true home set up, and all its life ordered, for the definite purpose of training, building up, and sending out human lives fashioned into symmetry, filled with lofty impulses and aspirations, governed by principles of rectitude and honour, and fitted to enter upon the duties and struggles of life with wisdom and strength.

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If this be the true object and design in setting- up a home, the question arises: What sort of home - culture and home-education will produce these results? What influences will best fashion human infancy and childhood into strong, noble manhood, and lovely, queenly womanhood? The smith furnishes his shop with the appliances and tools which are best fitted to do the work he intends to do. The gardener prepares his soil, sows his seeds, waters his plants, regulates the temperature, and provides just the conditions adapted to promote the growth of his flowers. What sort of implements do we need in training tender lives? What are the conditions which will best promote growth in human souls? What kind of home-life must we try to make, if we would build up noble character in our children?

For one thing, the house itself in which we live, with its surroundings is2 £be perfect “toome

and adornments, is important. Every home-influence, even the very smallest, works itself into the heart of childhood and then reappears in the opening character. Homes are the real schools in which men and women are trained, and fathers and mothers are the real teachers and builders of life. The poet’s song that charms the world is but the sweetness of a mother’s love flowing out in rhythmic measure through the soul of her child. The lovely things which men make in their days of strength are but the reproductions in embodied forms of the lovely thoughts that were whispered in their hearts in tender youth. The artist’s picture is but a touch of a mother’s beauty wrought out on the canvas. There is nothing in all the influences and surroundings of the home of tender childhood so small that it does not leave its touch of beauty or of marring upon the life.

Even the natural scenery in wThich a parents’ ipart 133

child is reared has much to do with the tone and hue of its future character. Beautiful things, spread before the eye of childhood, print themselves on the sensitive heart. The mountains, the sea, lovely valleys, picturesque landscapes, forests, flowers, all have their influence in shaping the life. Still greater is the influence of the house itself in which a child is brought up. This subject has not yet received the attention which it merits. As people advance in civilisation and refinement, they build better houses. In great cities the criminal and degraded classes live in wretched hovels. One of the first steps in any wise effort to elevate the low and vicious elements of society must be to provide better dwellings for them. When a whole family is crowded into one room, neither physical nor moral health is possible. In a wretched, filthy apartment in a dark court or miserable alley, it is impossible for children to grow up in purity and re-

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finement. One of the things for true philanthropy to do is, to devise some plan by which better homes may be provided for the poor. Until this is done, the leprous spots in our great cities can never be healed.

Wherever a child grows up, it carries in its character the subtle impressions of the home in which it lived. The house itself, its shape and appearance, its interior arrangement and decoration, its furniture, its external surroundings, — brick walls and paved streets, or green grass and flowers, — its outlook, on the majestic sea, on the grand mountains, on barren stretches or picturesque landscape, — all these have their influence on the character, and help to determine its final sphere. In the choosing and preparation of a home, this fact must not be overlooked. The educating power of beauty must not be forgotten. The surroundings should be cheerful and attractive. The house itself, whether large or small, should be neat and tasteful. Its ornaments and decorations should be simple, yet chaste and pleasing” to the eye. The rooms in which our children are to sleep and play and live, we should make just as bright and lovely as our means can make them. If we can afford but two rooms for our home, we should put into them just as much educating power as possible. Children are fond of pictures, and pictures in a house, if they be pure and good, have a wondrous influence in refining their lives. In these days of cheap art, when prints and engravings can be purchased at such small cost, there is scarcely anyone who may not have on the walls of his house some bright bits of beauty which will prove an inspiration to his children. Every home can at least be made bright, clean, sweet, and beautiful, even if bare of ornament and decoration. It is almost impossible for a child to grow up into loveliness of character, gentleness of disposition, and purity of

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heart amid scenes of slovenliness, untidiness, repulsiveness, and filthiness. But a home clean, tasteful, with simple adornments and pleasant surrounding’s, is an influence of incalculable value in the education of children.

But the house is not all. Four walls do not make a home, though built of marble and covered with rarest decorations. A family may be reared in a palace filled with the loveliest works of art, and yet the influences may not be such as leave blessing. The home-life itself is more important than the house and its adornments. By the home-life is meant all the intercourse of the members of the family. It is a happy art, the art of living together in tender love. It must begin with the parents themselves. Unless their life together is loving and true, it will be impossible for them to make their home-life so. They give the keynote to the music. If their intercourse is marked by bickerings and quarrellings, they must expect their children to imitate them. If gentleness and affectionateness characterise their bearing toward each other, the same spirit will rule in the family life. For their children’s sake, if for no other, parents should cultivate their own lives, and train themselves to live together in the most Christlike way. They will very soon learn that good rules and wise counsels from their lips amount to but little, unless their own lives give example and illustration of the things thus commended.

We enter some homes, and they are full of sweetness, as summer fields are of fragrance. All is order, beauty, gentleness, and peace. We enter other homes, and we find jarring, selfishness, harshness, and disorder. This difference is not accidental. There are influences at work in each home which yield just the result we see in each. There are different kinds of shells in the sea. Some of them are very coarse,

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ugly, and unsightly outside; others are very lovely, like the nautilus, “many-chambered, softly curved, pearl-adorned, glowing with imprisoned rainbows.” But each shell exactly corresponds with the nature of the creature that lives in it. Each little creature builds a house just like itself; indeed, it builds its own life into it. In like manner every home takes its colour and tone from its makers. A refined spirit puts refinement into a home, though it be only one plain room without an ornament or a luxury; a coarse nature makes the home coarse, though it be a palace filled with all the elegances that wealth can buy. No home -life can ever be better than the life of those who make it. It is nothing less nor more than the spirit of the parents, like an atmosphere, filling all the house.

What should this home-spirit be? First of all, I would name the law of imselfishness as one of its essential parents’ pait 139

elements. Where selfishness prevails, there can be no real happiness. Indeed, there is no deep, true, and holy love where selfishness rules. As love grows, selfishness dies out in the heart. Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, and to sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self- forgetfulness. Hence, where there is love in a home, unselfishness is the law. Each forgets self and lives for the others. But when there is selfishness, it mars the joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of the life of any home. It is like an ugly thorn-bush in the midst of a garden of flowers.

It was selfishness that destroyed the first home and blighted all the loveliness of Paradise, and it has been blighting lovely things in earth’s homes ever since. We need to guard against this spirit. Self-culture on the part of the parents is therefore an urgent duty and necessity. Selfishness in them will

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spread the same unhappy spirit through all the household life. They must be, not in seeming but in reality, what they want their children to be. The lessons they would teach they must themselves live.

Another essential element of true home-life is affectionate-ness; not love only, but the cultivation of love in the daily life of the family, the expression of love in words and acts. This reminder is not altogether needless. There are homes where the love is deep and true; the members of the family would die for each other; when grief or pain comes to one of them, the hearts of all the others give out their warmest expressions of affection. There is no question as to the reality and strength of the attachment that binds the household together. Yet in their ordinary intercourse there is a great lack of those exhibitions of kindly feeling which are the sweetest blossomings of love. Husband and wife pass

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weeks without one of those endearing expressions which have such power to warm the heart. Meals are eaten in haste and in dreary silence, as if the company that surround the table had nothing in common, and had only been brought together by accident. The simplest courtesies that even polite strangers never fail to extend to each other are altogether omitted in the household intercourse. Ill manners, that would not be tolerated for a moment in the ordinary associations of society, are oftentimes allowed to find their way into this holiest circle.

This should not be so. The heart’s love should be permitted to flow out in word and deed. There are such homes. The very atmosphere as one enters the door seems laden with fragrance. The conversation is bright, sparkling, cheerful, courteous. The warmth of love makes itself felt in continuous influence. No loud, harsh tones are ever heard. A delightful thoughtfulness pervades all the family life. Everyone is watchful of the feelings of the others. There is a respectfulness of manner and bearing that is shown even toward the youngest, and toward servants. Without any of the extravagances of expression which mark the intercourse of some families, there is here a genuine kindliness of manner which is very charming even to the casual visitor, and which for the hearts of the household has a wondrous warming and satisfying power. All the amenities and courtesies of true politeness are carefully observed, touched also by a tenderness which shows that they come from the heart.

This is the true home spirit. It needs culture. Even the best of us are in danger of growing careless in our own family life. Our very familiarity with our home companions is apt to render us forgetful, and when we have grown forgetful and have dropped parents’ ff»art 143

the little tendernesses out of our home intercourse, soon the love itself will begin to decay, and what the end may be of coldness and desolateness no one can foretell.

The home-life should also be made bright and full of sunshine. The courtesy of the true home is not stiff and formal, but sincere, simple, and natural. Children need an atmosphere of gladness. Law should not make its restraints hang” like chains upon them. Sternness and coldness should have no place in home-life or in family government. No child can ever grow up into its richest and best development in a home which is gloomy and unhappy. No more do plants need sunshine and air than children need joy and gladness. Unhappiness stunts them, so that their sweetest graces never come out.

Someone says:” Make your children happy in their youth; let distinction come to them, if it will, after well-spent

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and well -remembered years.” Wise parents will see that their home possesses the essential conditions of happiness. They will sympathise with their children, and take care never to grow away from them in spirit, though carrying the weightiest responsibilities or wearing the highest honours among men. The busiest father should find at least a few moments every day to romp with his children. A man who is too stately and dignified to play with his baby, or carry his little ones pick-a-back, or help them in their sports and games, not only lacks one of the finest elements of true greatness, but fails in one of his duties to his children. For this is one of the points at which the mother should not be left alone. She is with her children all the day, and carries the burden of their entertainment for long hours without rest or pause. Surely it is only just to her that for the little time the father is in the home he should relieve her?

Besides, he owes it to his children, for happiness is one of their inalienable rights under his roof and at his hands. Then in no other way can he so enshrine himself in their hearts as by giving them daily a few precious moments of gladness associated with himself, which shall endear him to them for ever. No father can afford to let his children grow up without weaving himself into the memories of their golden youth.

Norman Macleod says: “O sunshine of youth, let it shine on! Let love flow out fresh and full, unchecked by any rule but what love creates, and pour itself down without stint into the young heart. Make the days of boyhood happy; for other days of labour and sorrow must come, when the blessing of those dear eyes and clasping hands and sweet caressings will, next to the love of God whence they flow, save the man from losing faith in the human heart, help to deliver him from

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the curse of selfishness, and be an Eden in the evening” when he is driven forth into the wilderness of life.” Another writes: “The richest heritage that parents can give is a happy childhood, with tender memories of father and mother. This will brighten the coming days when the children have gone out from the sheltering home, will be a safeguard in times of temptation, and a conscious help amid the stern realities of life.”

Whatever parents may do for their children, they should at least make their childhood sunny and tender. Their young lives are so delicate that harshness may mar their beauty for ever, and so sensitive that every influence that falls upon them leaves its trace, which grows into the character either as a grace or a blemish. A happy childhood stores away sunshine in the chambers of the heart which brightens the life to its close. An unhappy childhood may so fill the life’s fountains with bitterness as to sadden all the after years.

“Wait not till the little hands are at rest

Ere you fill them full of flowers; Wait not for the crowning tuberose

To make sweet the last sad hours; But while, in the busy household band, Your darlings still need your guiding hand, Oh, fill their lives with sweetness!

Remember the homes whence the light has

fled,

Where the rose has faded away; And the love that glows in youthful hearts,

Oh, cherish it while you may! And make your home a garden of flowers, Where joy shall bloom through childhood’s

hours, And fill young lives with sweetness!”

Something must be said concerning the training of children. It is to be kept in mind that the object of the home is to build up manhood and womanhood. This work of training belongs to the parents, and cannot be transferred. It is a most delicate and responsible duty, one from which a thoughtful soul would shrink with awe

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and fear, were it not for the assurance of divine help. Yet there are many parents who do not stop to think of the responsibility which is laid upon them when a little child enters their home.

Look at it a moment. What is so feeble, so helpless, so dependent, as a new-born babe? Yet look onward and see what a stretch of life lies before this feeble infant away into the eternities. Think of the powers folded up in this helpless form, and what the possible outcome may be. Who can tell what skill there may be lying- unconscious yet in these tiny fingers, what eloquence or song in these little lips, what intellectual faculties in this brain, what power of love or sympathy in this heart? The parents are to take this infant and nurse it into manhood or womanhood, to draw out these slumbering powers and teach it to use them. That is, God wants a man trained for a great mission in the world,

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and He puts into the hands of a youngfather and mother a little babe, and bids them nurse it and train it for Him until the man is ready for his mission; or at least to have sole charge of his earliest years, when the first impressions must be made which shall mould and shape his whole career.

When we look at a little child and remember all this, what a dignity surrounds the work of caring for it! Does God give to angels any work grander than this?

Women sigh for fame. They would be sculptors, and chisel out of the cold stone forms of beauty to fill the world with admiration of their skill. Or they would be poets, to write songs to thrill a nation and to be sung around the world. But is any work in marble so great as hers who has an immortal life laid in her hands to shape for its destiny? Is the writing of any poem in musical lines so noble a work as the training of the powers of a human soul into harmony? Yet there are women who regard the duties and cares of motherhood as too obscure and commonplace tasks for their hands. So when a baby comes, a nurse is hired, who for a weekly compensation agrees to take charge of the little one, that the mother may be free from such drudgery, and devote herself to the nobler and worthier things that she finds to do!

Is the following indictment too strong? — “A mother will secure from the nearest registry office a girl who undertakes to relieve her of the charge of her little one, and will hand over to this mere hireling, this ignorant stranger, the soul-mothering which God has entrusted to her. She has mothered the body — .anyone will do to mother the soul! So the little one is left in the hands of this hireling, placed under her constant influence, subjected to the subtle impress of her spirit, to draw into its inner being the life, be it what it may, of this uncultured soul. She wakens its first thoughts, rouses its earliest emotions, brings the delicate action of motives to bear upon the will — generally in such hands a compound force of bullying and bribing, mean fear and mean desire — tends it, plays with it, lives with it; and thus the young mother is free to dress and drive, to visit and receive, to enjoy balls and operas, discharging her trust for an immortal life by proxy! Is there any malfeasance in office, in these days of dishonour, like unto this? Our women crowd the churches to draw the inspiration of religion for their daily duties, and then prove recreant to the first of all fidelities, the most solemn of all responsibilities. We hear fashionable young mothers boast that they are not tied down to their nurseries, but are free to keep in the old gay life; as though there was no shame to the soul of womanhood therein.” -Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendour of the work that is given to her when a babe is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse into the future of that life as it- reaches on into eternity; could she look into its soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny, — she would see that in all God’s world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no other hands the sacred and holy trust given to her. This is not the place to present theories of family government: I am trying only to define the parents’ part in the making of the home. So far as their children are concerned, their part is to train them for life, to send them out of the home ready for whatever duty or mission God may have ready for them. Only this much may iparents’ frart 153

be said — whatever may be done in the way of governing, teaching, or training, theories are not half so important as the parents’ lives. They may teach the most beautiful things; but if the child does not see these things in the life of the parent, he will not consider them important enough to be adopted in his own life. To quote here the words of another:” You cannot give your child what you do not possess: you can scarcely help giving your child what you do possess. If you are a coward, you cannot make him brave; if he becomes brave, it will be in spite of you. If you are a deceiver, you cannot make him truthful; if you are selfish, you cannot make him generous; if you are self-willed, you cannot make him yielding; if you are passionate, you cannot make him temperate and self-controlled. The parent’s life flows into the child’s life. We impress ourselves upon our children less by what we teach them than by what we are.

Your child is a sensitive plate; you are sitting- before the camera: if you do not like the picture, the fault is with yourself One angry word from your lips will outweigh a hundred rebukes of anger. One selfish deed, one social deception, will do more to mar than a hundred homilies can do to make.”

What we want to do with our children is not merely to control them and keep them in order, but to implant true principles deep in their hearts which shall rule their whole lives; to shape their character from within into Christlike beauty, and to make of them noble men and women, strong for battle and for duty. They are to be trained rather than governed. Growth of character, not merely g-ood behaviour, is the object of all home governing and teaching. Therefore, the home influence is far more important than the home laws, and the parents’ lives are of more moment than their teachings.

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Men say that into the strings of an old Cremona violin the life of the master who once played upon it has passed, so that it is as an imprisoned soul, breathing” out at every skilful touch. This is only a beautiful poetic fancy. But when a little child in a mother’s bosom is loved, nursed, caressed, held close to her heart, prayed over, wept over, talked with, for days, weeks, months, years, it is no mere fancy to say that the mother’s life has indeed passed into the child’s soul. What it becomes is determined by what the mother is. The early years settle what its character will be, and these are the mother’s years.

Oh, mothers of young children, I bow before you in reverence! Your work is most holy! You are fashioning the destinies of immortal souls! The powers folded up in the little ones that you hushed to sleep in your bosoms last night are powers that shall exist for ever. You are prepar-

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ing them for their immortal destiny and influence. Be faithful! Take up your sacred burden reverently! Be sure that your heart is pure and that your life is sweet and clean! The Persian apologue says that the lump of clay was fragrant because it had lain on a rose. Let your life be as the rose, and then your child as it lies upon your bosom will absorb the fragrance. If there is no sweetness in the rose, the clay will not be perfumed.

History is full of illustrations of the power of parental influence. It either brightens or darkens the child’s life to the close. It is either a benediction which makes every day better and happier, or it is a curse which leaves blight and sorrow on every hour. Thousands have been saved from drifting away by the holy memories of happy, godly homes, or, when they have drifted away, have been drawn back by the same charm of power.

There are no chains so strong- as the cords that a true home throws about the heart. John Randolph said: “I used to be called a Frenchman, because I took the French side in politics. But though this is false, I should have been a French atheist, had it not been for one recollection, and that was the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my little hands in hers, and, causing me to bow at her knee, taught me to pray, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’” Is it not worth while for parents to seek to have such abiding, strong, and blessed influence over their children’s lives? Just as far-reaching and as powerful is the evil influence if parents are unholy. When the morning sun rises, the shadow of Mount Etna is cast far across the lovely island of Sicily, resting on gardens and fields and the people’s homes, a shadow always of gloom, a shadow as of an everimminent terror. So over the life of

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a child to its close hangs the shadow of an ungodly parental influence. What parent wants to project such fatal gloom over the future years of the child he loves so well?

When I think of the sacredness and the responsibility of parents, I do not see how any father and mother can look upon the little child that has been given to them, and consider their duty to it, and not be driven to God by the very weight of the burden that rests upon them, to cry to Him for help and wisdom. When an impenitent man bends over the cradle of his firstborn, when he begins to realise that here is a soul which he must train, teach, fashion, and guide through this world to God’s bar, how can he longer stay away from God? Let him, as he bends over his child’s crib to kiss its sweet lips, ask himself: “Am I true to my child while I shut God out of my own life? Am I able to meet this solemn responsibility of parenthood all alone,

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in my unaided human weakness, without divine help? “I know not how any father can honestly meet these questions as he looks upon his innocent, helpless child, given to him to shelter, to keep, to guide, and not fall instantly upon his knees and give himself to God. Rather would I see my own little ones laid away in the grave to-morrow, than attempt to train them, teach them, and lead them on, without the help of God. “Better be out on the boundless sea, without knowledge of the stars above or the currents beneath; better be in the untrodden forest, without pathway or compass; better be on the trackless desert without a landmark in all the horizon, nothing but burning sand under foot and brazen sky overhead, — than to be on this sea, in this wilderness, upon this desert of our life, with a human destiny entrusted to your care and no guiding God to pilot you to Him and the desired haven! But with God’s presence, help, and guidance, even this great and responsible work shall not crush you nor make you afraid.”

There is an old picture which represents a woman who has fallen asleep at her wheel, in very weariness, as she toils to fulfil her household duties, and the angels have come and are softly finishing her task while she sleeps. Let parents be faithful; let them do their best. What they cannot do, the angels will come and finish while they sleep. Night by night they will come and correct the day’s mistakes, and, if need be, do all the poor, faulty work over again. Then at last, when the parents sleep in death, dropping out of their hands the sacred work they have been doing for their children, again God’s angels will come, take up the unfinished work, and carry it on to completeness.