Allison: 0:02

Hello, homemakers. Welcome to week three of the art of home podcast summer reading series. I'm your host Allison Weeks. I'm a wife, a mom to four grown kids, grandmother to one baby boy do to arrive this fall and I've been practicing the art of home for 30 years. We are working through Jr Miller's classic book, homemaking, first published in 1882. This book has been instructing and encouraging readers on the importance of the home life for over 140 years. If you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad you found us. Be sure to go back and catch some of our regular episodes, which are interviews of everyday women about their experiences and homemaking, as well as some deep dives into topics related to homemaking. Today, Reverend Miller is going to instruct us on the parents part and the Children's part. I'm not going to talk too much before we get into these chapters because they are quite long. You may want to even split up your listening time today. I do want to remind you about our free reflection questions every Friday, we send out questions for that week's chapters. And the aim is to help you digest and apply these teachings in your own homemaking journey. You can sign up to receive chapter questions using the link in the notes or go to the art of home podcast.com/summer. I will have a few closing remarks and reminders at the end of this episode. So make sure you stick around for that right now. Let's get into it. chapters four and five of JR Miller's homemaking. Chapter four the parents part. God has so constituted us that in loving and caring for our own children, the richest and best things in our natures are drawn out. Many of the deepest and most valuable lessons ever learned are read from the pages of unfolding Child Life. we best understand the feelings and affections of God toward us. When we bend over our own child, and see in our human parenthood a faint image of the Divine fatherhood. Then in the culture of character, there is no influence more potent than that which touches us when our children are laid in our arms. There helplessness appeals to every principle of nobleness in our hearts, their innocence exerts over us a purifying power. The thought of our responsibility for them exalts every faculty of our souls in the very care which they exact, they bring blessing to us. When old age comes very lonely is the home which has neither son nor daughter, to return with grateful ministries to bring solace and comfort to the declining years. It is a new marriage when the firstborn enters the home. It draws the wedded lives together in a closeness they have never known before. It touches chords and 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 in his bosom. New aims rise up before the young parents, new impulses begin to stir in their hearts. Life takes on at once, a new 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, and 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 center, 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 real, 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 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 home 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 colleagues and teachings, and when they grow older, they willingly break our hearts many a time with their waywardness after they come to us, we may as well bid farewell to living for self and to personal ease and independence. If we mean to do a 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 being 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. Air their sweet and tender juices have been hardened into wood, that to the world our children. Through them It feels the glow of a brighter and sunnier climate than reaches the trunks below. When 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 making the home and the home life? It is impossible 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 UP building of their character. This is what must be thought of in the making of a home. It must be a home in which the 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 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 Gods bar for having neglected the care of his own home and the training of his own children. No success in any department of the world's work can possibly atone for failure here. Nope. Piling up of this world treasures can compensate a man for the loss of those incomparable jewels, his own children. In the prophets parable, He said to the king, as thy servant was busy here and there, he was gone. May not this be the only play that some fathers will have to offer when they stand before God with 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 fulfillment. Busy gathering money to lay up a fortune. busy chasing the world's honors 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 blessing work for them and upon their lives, which could so easily have been done in their tender years. Dr. geekie, his book entitled life opens with these words, some things God gives often, some things 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 his 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 ones 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 homemaker. It is in her hands that the tender life is laid for its first impressions, and all its education and culture, she comes the closer to it, her spirit and 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 for the upbuilding of his home, the training of his children, the care of all the sacred interests of his family, the father's should awake 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 center 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 1000 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 realize 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 in the training of a cult were 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 and pains to the raising of cattle, the growing of crops, the building up of business, then 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 in the spirit of his consecration to keep other men's vineyard 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 vary greatly in working out the problem of the home life to settle precisely the object of 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 art school. 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 at 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 with 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 shop, articles and implements of iron are forged and fashioned there. We know what a marble cutters yard is for forms of grace and beauty or they're chiseled from the block. We know what a great factory is designed to do. It's shuttles weave the fabrics which men and women are to where, when an artist fits up a studio, we know what kind of work he expects to send out on canvas or in Marvel 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 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 and living. And about as high an aim as most married people have in their homemaking 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, to grow into beauty of character, to grow in refinement, and knowledge, in strength, in wisdom, in patience, gentleness, kindness, and all the Christian graces and virtues. It is a place for children to grow, to grow into physical vigor and health, and to be trained in all that shall make them true and noble men and women. That is just as the artist studio is built and furnished for the definite purpose of preparing and sending out forms of beauty. So is a true home setup, 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 honor, and fitted to enter upon the duties and struggles of life with wisdom and strength. If this be the true object and design and 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, sews 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 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 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 both the reproductions and embodied forms of the lovely thoughts that were whispered in their hearts in tender youth. The artists 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 which a 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, forest 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 civilization 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 are 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 into purity and refinement. 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 leopard spots in our great cities cannot be healed. Whenever a child grows up, it carries in its character, the subtle impressions of the home in which it lives. 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 the illimitable prairie. On barren stretches or picturesque landscape. These have their influence on the character and helped determine its final shaping. 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 the two rooms for our home, we should put into them just as much educating power as possible. Children are fond of pictures, and pictures and a house if they be pure and good, have a wondrous influence and 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 they're of ornament and decoration. It is almost impossible for a child to grow up into loveliness of character, gentleness of disposition and purity of heart, amid scenes of slovenliness untidiness, repulsiveness and filthiness but a home clean tasteful with simple adornments and pleasant surroundings is an influence of incalculable value in the education of children. But the house is not all four walls do not make a home 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 lead 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 and 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 bickering and quarreling, they must expect their children to imitate them. If gentleness and affection witness characterize 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 Christ like 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 an illustration of the things thus commended. We enter some homes and they are full of sweetness as summer fields are a fragrance. All is order, beauty, gentleness, and peace. We enter other homes where 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, ugly and unsightly. 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 built its own life into it. In like manner, every home takes its color and tone from its makers, or refines spirit puts refinement into a home. Though we'd be only one plain room without an ornament or a luxury. Of course nature makes the home course though we'd 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 unselfishness as one of its essential 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 to sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity. Perfect love is perfect self forgetfulness. Hence where there is love and 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 the spirit. Self culture on the part of the parents is therefore an urgent duty and necessity, selfishness in them will 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 live. Another essential element of true home life is affectionate pneus 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 expression 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 blossom rings of love. Husband and wife past weeks without one of these endearing expressions, which will 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 failed 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 hearts love should be permitted to flow out in a 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 toward servants. Without any such sickening extravagances of expression as marked the intercourse of some families, there is here a genuine kindness 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 are from the heart. This is the true home spirit. It needs culture, even the best of us are in danger of growing careless and 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, the little tenderness is out of our home intercourse. Soon the love itself will begin to decay, and what the end may be of coldness and desolate pneus 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 deepest 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 Grace's never come out. Someone says, Make your children happy in their youth. Let distinction come to them if it will, after well spent and well remembered years. Wise parents will see that their home possesses the essential conditions of happiness. They will sympathize with their children and take care never to grow away from them in spirit. Though carrying the weightiest responsibilities, or wearing the highest honors 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 back or help them in their sports 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 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 one of their inalienable rights under his roof and at his hands is happiness. 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 forever. No father can afford to let his children grow up without weaving himself into the memories of their golden youth. Norman MacLeod says, Oh sunshine of youth, let it shine on. Let love flow out of 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 labor and sorrow must come when the blessing of those dear eyes and clasping hands and sweet caressing his will, next to the love of God from whence they flow. Save the man from losing faith in the human heart, helped to deliver him from the curse of selfishness, and being eaten in the evening when he is driven forth into the wilderness of life. Another rites, the richest heritage that parents can give is a happy childhood with tender memories of father and mother. This will bright in 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 childhoods sunny and tender. Their young lives are so delicate that harshness may Mar their beauty forever, 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. I happy childhood stores away sunshine in the chambers of the heart, which brightens the life to its close. And Annette unhappy childhood may so fill the life's fountains with bitterness as to satin all the after years. Wait not till the little hands are at rest. Err, you fill them full of flowers. Wait not for the crowning tuberosus 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 once 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 childhoods 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 the most delicate and responsible duty. One from which a thoughtful soul would shrink with awe 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 newborn baby, 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. And he puts into the hands of a young father and mother a little baby 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 mold 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 his any work in marbles 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 task 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 to 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 intelligence office, a girl who undertakes to relieve her of the charge of her little one, and will hand over to this mirror hireling. This ignorant stranger, the soul of mothering, which God has entrusted to her, she has mother to 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 Empress of her spirit to draw into its inner being the life be it what it may have this uncluttered soul. she awakens 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 to receive to enjoy balls and operas, discharging her trust for an immortal life by proxy. Is there any Maleficent in office, in these days of dishonor, like unto this hour, women crowd the churches to draw the inspiration of religion for their daily duties, and then prove recreant to the first of all, Fidelity's 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 there in Oh, that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a baby is placed in her bosom to be nursed and trained? Could she have been 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 making 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 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, hear 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 parents 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 100 rebukes of anger. One selfish deed one social deception. We'll do more tomorrow. than 100 hamamelis 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, unto Christ like 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 good behavior 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 a moment than their teachings. Men say that into the strings of some old Cremona, violin, the life of the master who wants played upon it has passed, so that it is an imprisoned soul, breathing out at every skillful 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 mothers 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 and the little ones that you hushed to sleep in your bosom last night, are powers that shall exist forever. You are preparing 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 an addiction which makes everyday better and happier, or it is a curse, which leaves blight and sorrow on every hour. 1000s 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 chords that a true home throws about the heart. John Randolph said, I used to be called a Frenchman, because I took the French side and 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 worthwhile for parents to seek to have such a biting 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 an ever eminent terror. So over the life of 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 realize 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 It Sweetlips asked 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, 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 tomorrow, and miss from my life henceforth all their love, and go with empty arms and sobbing heart through this world to life's close than to 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 and all the horizon, nothing but burning sand underfoot 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 know 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, and very weariness, as she toils to fulfill 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. The work may seem too great for them, and they may faint under its burdens and seem to fail. But 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 and 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. Chapter Five, the children's part what would I not give, said Charles Lamb, to call my dear mother back to Earth for a single day, to ask her pardon upon my knees, for all those acts by which I grieved her gentle spirit. Many another sensitive heart has felt the same pain when standing by a parent's grave, and has side in like manner for an opportunity to speak its penitence, and its cries for pardon, into the dead ear. Bud filial love blossoms out too late when it waits till the parental ear is beyond the reach of human cry. The time for the child to show his affection and gratitude is along the years, while the father and mother are living and treading Earth's paths. If he then screws thorns for their feet, what does it avail that he brings flowers for their burial? If he Dishonored them by disobedience, by unkindness, by unworthy conduct by sin, what does it avail that he sets up the costly monument over their graves, cutting in the white marble His praises of their virtues and their faithfulness? The place for the flowers is along the hard pads of toil and care and burden bearing. The best monument for grateful affection to erect is a noble, beautiful life, a joy to the heart and an honor in the eyes of fond parental hope. Kindness to the living is better than bitter tears of penitence over the dead. The debt of children to a true home is one that never can be overpaid, or even fully discharged. It dates from the first moment of their being. It accumulates as the days and years pass on. There are the years of helpless infancy with their solicitudes their broken nights and toilsome days, their unsleeping thoughtfulness and unselfish sacrifice. They're gentle nursing and patient watching. There are the years of training and teaching. When the bodily powers are being developed. The feet taught to walk the hands to handle the tongue to speak, when the mental faculties are being drawn out, and when all the functions of life are being trained to there several uses. There are the times of sickness When the lamp never goes out in the room by night, and the pale weary watcher accepts no relief till the danger is past, there are long years of anxieties of prayers of tears of hopes, of disappointments, of sacrifices of pains and toils. The best that a child can do for True Parents will never repay them for what they have done for him. The question therefore, what is the children's part in the home life is no unimportant, one they have a place and making the home joy. dreary is the household life where no children ever come, very lonely and desolate is the home where they come and stay for a time and then go away. Unconsciously the children have a most sacred and holy part in the home life from their earliest infancy. Then all along, they're yours, while they remain under the old home roof, and after they leave its shelter to set up homes of their own. They have duties to perform and obligations to render to those who gave them birth and watched over their helpless ears. The little wheels of a watch do not seem to be important, yet if one of them is broken, or if it is bent, or if it fails to perform its part. All the wheels will be arrested in their motion and the watch will stop. If the smallest wheel goes wrong, moves too fast or too slow. The hands on the dial likewise go wrong. There is no part of the delicate machinery of the watch so small that it makes no difference how it does its duty. When the question is asked, what part of the children in making the home life someone may answer. The children cannot do anything at least while they are small to aid in making the home that it should be. They cannot help make money to buy bread. They cannot do the work. When they grow older, they can be of use but when they are young, all they can do is be rocked and petted while they are babies. And then as they grow larger, go to school and eat and romp and wear out clothes. They cannot help in any way. They are only burdens. But wait a minute. They are not so useless after all. They are like the tiny wheels of the watch. They may not look large enough to be of any use and yet there is not a child in any true home so small as to have no influence. There is not even a baby that does not unconsciously affect all the home life by its coming. Indeed, every baby is an emperor with a crown and scepter and from its throne on the mother's bosom it rules all the house. The father out at his work in the busy world has a lighter warmer heart because he is thinking of the baby at home. The mother gets through all her work more easily because her baby is sleeping in its crib, or kicking up its heels on the floor beside her. The boys and girls are gentler, more quiet and more thoughtful since baby came. No one can say that any child is too small to have a part in making the home life. Of course the baby's part is done unconsciously. And it is not to be held responsible as are the children who have grown older. This chapter is not addressed to babies, but to those who are of sufficient age to know what they ought to do and to try to do it. Here is the question on which every child living in a parent's house should think much what is my part in making this home what it should be? You know what a true home ought to be. It ought to be a place where love rules. It ought to be beautiful, bright, joyous, full of tenderness and affection. A place in which all are growing happier and better each day. There should never be any discord or wrangling or angry words or bitter feelings. The home life should be a harmonious song, without one jarring note, day after day. The home no matter how humble it is, how plain how small, should be the dearest spot on earth to each member of the family. It should be made so happy a place and so full of love. That no matter where one may wander in after years, in any of the ends of the earth, His home should still hold its invisible lines of influence about him, and should ever draw, resist lessly upon his heart, it ought to be the one spot in all the earth to which he would turn first in trouble or in danger. It should be the refuge of his soul in every trial and grief. To make a home such a power in one's afterlife, it must be happy in the days of childhood and youth have childhood and youth any response ability for the realizing of this ideal of home. Is it all together and only the parents work? So far as infancy is concerned, there certainly is no responsibility. The father and mother must do all. And the little one is only a tender and lovely plant growing in the garden, which parental hands tend. But with the years of consciousness comes responsibility. And then every child helps either to make or mar the home blessedness and the home joy. What should the child life be that would perfectly fulfill its part in the home, we have a model. Once there was a home on earth in which a child lived, whose life was spotless and faultless, and who realized all that is lovely, tender and true in Child Life. If we only knew how Jesus lived as a child, and that Nazareth home, it would help other children to live right. We know that he helped to make the home happy. He never caused his parents one anxiety, one paying one moment of shame. He never failed in a duty. We know that he did his part well in the making of that home. And if we only had a memoir of his years of childhood, telling us what he did, every other child could study it and imitate his example. We have no such memoir. But we have one single glimpse into his home life, which reveals a great deal. We see him at 12 years of age. He is in the temple at Jerusalem. He has been lost from his parents in a great caravan returning from the Passover. And when they find him again, we are told in one brief sentence, that he went down with them to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. Then for 18 years longer, he remained in that home. We have not another word about him, not another glimpse do we get of him or of his home? Scripture is silent concerning him all those years. We have only this one sentence about the way in which he lived in that home. He went down with them to Nazareth and was subject unto them. Yet this one glimpse really reveals the whole history of those years. He was subjected to his parents. Remember who this child was. It was over his birth that the angels sang their song, Glory to God in the highest on earth peace, goodwill to men. He was the eternal Son of God. He had made all the worlds he had adorn to the heavens. Him all the hosts of glory obeyed. Yet he humbled himself, veiled His glory and dwelt in a lowly home of Earth for 30 years. He submitted Himself to earthly parents and obeyed them. Then he brought himself with his own hands to help support the home. No details are given just this one word. But we can easily fill out the picture for ourselves. We see for 30 years from infancy to full manhood, this holy child exhibiting toward his parents, the most perfect dutifulness obedience, honor, and helpfulness. He obeyed them not by constraint, but cheerfully all these years. He did his part well, in the making of that home. This example is the answer to the question of this chapter. And what is it but this, that the great duty of childhood in the home life is to obey, he was subject unto them, although he was the Son of God, yet He learned obedience to human parents. He did their will and not his own. He had entered upon the affairs of his Heavenly Father. In the temple, he said, whistIe not that I must be about my Father's business. Yet, immediately after saying this, he went back to his own home to take and keep for 18 years more the place of a child. Hence, we conclude that the father's business for him all those years, was subjection to his earthly parents. That was the work which was given him to do for that time, he had come to the earth on a great mission, the greatest ever undertaken or performed in the universe, yet the place in which he was prepared for that mission was not in any of the fine schools of the world, but in a lowly home, not at the feet of rabbis and philosophers, but with his own mother for his teacher. What an honor does this fact put upon home? What a dignity upon motherhood? It would seem that no argument after that we're needed to prove to children the duty and the dignity of obedience to parents. We take our place far back in the history of the world. We stand under the cloud crowned fire wreath, Sinai, and amidst its awful thunderings we hear the voice of God proclaim, Honor thy father and thy mother, that I days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. But even all these scenes of majesty, the voice of Jehovah, the burning mountain, the cloud, and the thunder, did not give to this command such sacred authority, such solemn importance, as when Jesus, the Son of God, for 30 years and a lowly home on Earth, submitted Himself to human parents and obeyed their commands. Does any question ever arise as to the authority of this divine word in the Decalogue? This picture of Jesus obeying it and not Galilee and home is sufficient answer. Does the thought ever arise? Is it manly? Is it womanly to yield to my parents, to have no will of my own to do their bidding and all things? Behold, Jesus till 30 years of age yielding to the control of his human parents, asking them continually what they would have him do, referring every question to them. Was it manly and him? Surely then it cannot be unmanly and any son of earthly parents in this world. Where shall we learn manliness if not in the life and from the example of Jesus? Thomas Hughes says In speaking of manliness and of courage, as one of its elements, tenacity of will lies at the root of all courage. But courage can only rise into true manliness when the will is surrendered. And the more absolute the surrender of the will, the more perfect will be the temper of our courage and the strength of our manliness. There is nothing manlier and all Christ's life than his quiet subjection to his parents in that cottage at Nazareth, though conscious of his divine origin and nature, and of His glorious mission. There is no manlier thing ever seen on this earth than a man in the prime of his strength and power, showing deference and love to a humble parent and yielding obedience and honor as if he were a little child. To some evil spirits suggest that such subjection to parents keeps one down, puts chains on his freedom keeps him under restraint and hinders him from rising into Grand urine nobleness of character did it have such effect on Jesus did the 30 years of submission in his home cramp and fetter his manhood, did his subjection, break his power, repressed the glorious aspiration of his soul stunt and hinder the development of his life and make his career a failure. In the end? We know well that it did not. There was a preparation for His mission which as a man, he could have gotten in no other way, but by the discipline he obtained in his own home. No human powers were ever yet cramped or stunted or repressed by taking the place of subjection in a true home. Rather, that life will always be more or less a failure, which in its earlier years does not learn to submit and be ruled. No one is fitted for ruling others who has not first learned in his place to obey. Someone may say again, my parents are very plain people, they have never known much of the world. They have missed the opportunities that I am enjoying, and therefore have not intelligence or wisdom or education sufficient to direct my life. We have only to remember again, who Jesus was. Was there ever any human parent in this world? Who was really worthy or capable in this sense to be his teacher, to guide and control his life? Was there ever in any home on Earth such a distance between parents and child as there was in that home at Nazareth? Yet this son of God, with all his wisdom, his knowledge, his grandeur of character, did not hesitate to submit himself to the training of that peasant mother and that peasant father? Shall any other child in view of this model child's life at home, assert that he is too far advanced, too much superior in knowledge and culture, to wise and intelligent to submit to the parents God has given him. If Christ could be taught and trained by his lowly parents for his glorious mission, where is the true parent who is not worthy to be his own child's guide and teacher? This then is the part of every child in the home life. This is the way in which children can do the most To make the home life true and happy, it is the part of the parents to guide to train, to teach to mold the character. God holds them responsible for this, they must qualify themselves to do it. Then it is the part of the children to accept this guidance, teaching, training and shaping at the parents hands. When both faithfully do their part, the home life will be a sweet song of love, where either fails there will be discordant life and the angel of blessing will not leave his business and of peace. Such in general is the central feature of children's part in the home life, to recognize their parents as the head and to yield to them in all things. This is not meant to make them slaves. The home life I am depicting is ruled by love. The parental authority is exercised in love, it seeks only the highest good of each child. It asks nothing unreasonable or unjust. If it was holds things that a child desires, it is either because it is not able to grant them or because the granting of them would work injury rather than benefit. If it seeks to guide the tender feet in a way that is not the chosen way, nor the most easy and pleasant way. It is because a riper wisdom sees that it is the best way. True parental guidance is love grown wise. It is an imitation of God's government. He is our Father and we are His children. We are to obey him absolutely and without question. Yet it is no blind obedience. We know that he loves us with a deep love, tender, unchanging, we know that he is wiser than we are infinitely wiser and can never err. We know that when he denies a request. The granting of it would be an unkindness when he leads us in another path than the one we had marked out. His is the right way. When He chastens or corrects, there is love in his chastisement or correction. We know that in all his government and discipline, he is seeking only our highest good. Our whole duty therefore as God's children is to yield ourselves to His will. True human parenthood is a faint copy of the Divine and to its direction and guidance children artists admit this objection implies obedience to the commands of parents. Thus Paul interprets it. Children obey your parents in the Lord for this his right. And again, children obey your parents and all things for this as well pleasing unto the Lord. It is right on moral grounds and this ought to settle the matter. True manliness never wants to know more than that a thing is right is duty, devotion to duty at whatever cost is one of the first elements of heroism. It is right that children should obey their parents, and no further question need be asked. No further reason for obeying need be sought. But it is also well pleasing unto the Lord. He is watching how every child acts, and he is well pleased when he sees obedience. This ought to furnish an additional motive, if any were needed. The thought that doing a certain duty faithfully causes the motions of pleasure and approval in the heart of God certainly ought to be a wonderful spur and incentive to heroic fidelity. This obedience is to extend to all things, the things that are agreeable, and the things that are disagreeable. Though he may be unjustly treated, the child is not to rebel. He may know that his parent is unkind or oppressive or even cruel, but his duty is not thereby changed. Wrong on the parents part will never justify wrong on the part of the child. There is only one qualification. Children are to obey their parents in the Lord. If the parent commands the child to commit a sin, of course it is not to obey her Rhodius was under no moral obligation to obey when her cruel and bloody mother bade her asked for the head of John the Baptist. No human authority is ever binding when it bits us break a divine law. No true parent will knowingly ask anything of his child that is not right. Hence the law of parental government requires obedience in all things. It is told of general have a lock that one day when a boy his father having some business to do, left him on London Bridge and made him wait there till he came back. The father was detained and forgot his son not returning to the bridge all day. In the evening he reached home and after he had rested a little while his wife inquired, where's Harry? The father thought a moment. To me, he said, I quite forgot Harry. He's on London Bridge and has been there for eight hours waiting for me. He hastened away to relieve the boy and found him just where he had left him in the morning, pacing to and fro like a sentinel on his beat. That father knew just where to find his son because he knew that he always obeyed His commands. It is such obedience that pleases God. While it ensures harmony and peace in the home. The parents are the divinely constituted head of the family, and it is the children's part to obey. This requirement implies also honor and respect. Honor thy father and thy mother says the command. Honor is a larger word than obey. We may obey a person whom we do not respect. We are to honor our parents, that is reverence them as well as obey them. There is no need for any argument to prove that every child should honor his parents. Yet it is idle to deny that there is on every hand a lack of filial respect. There are many children who show by their words or acts that their parents are not sacredly enshrined in their hearts. I heard a bright young girl well dressed with good manners and good face, say that her mother looked so old fashioned, that she was ashamed to have her in the parlor or to walk with her on the street. Or chance to know a little about that mother and that daughter. I knew that one reason why the mother looked so old fashion and probably lacked something of refinement of manner, was because of her devotion to the interests of her daughter. She had made a sacrifice of herself for her daughter's sake. She had denied herself in dress and ornament that her daughter might appear well and be admired. Some young people may read these pages, who at times feel as this young lady did. Have you ever sat down quietly to think over and sum up the debt you owe to your old fashioned mother? Look at the matter for a few moments. Begin with the time when you were a very little baby, as you certainly once were, however great you are now and think what she had to do for you then she had to nurse you hour after hour, and lie awake minea night to take care of you. Sometimes you were very cross, though you are so gentle now. Yet, no matter how cross you were, she was as patient as an angel with you. She wore herself out for you then, as you grew older, she taught you. Did you ever think how little you knew when you came into this world. You had hands and feet and eyes and tongue and brain. But you did not know what they were for or how to use them. It was your loving patient Mother Who taught you to walk and to talk and to look and to think you have been a great deal of trouble to your mother in your time. But she has borne it all cheerfully for you. She has gone without many things herself that you might have what you wanted. She has worked very hard that you might receive an education and be fitted to shine in society among your friends, and be ready for an honored and useful place in this world. Sometimes you think she looks very plain and old fashioned? Perhaps she does. Perhaps she is more than a little faded and worn. But did you ever think that it is because she has given so much of the best power and energy of her life to caring for you. If she had not chosen to toil and suffer and deny herself for your sake, if she had thought more of herself and less of you, she might have been very much fairer and fresher now. If she had only neglected you instead of herself, she might shine now with you in the parlor. For once her cheeks were as lovely as yours are now. She might have found more rest and less hard work if she had not chosen to spend so many hours in stitching away on frocks, Trousers, Jackets or dresses for you making new and mending old she might have better clothes even now to wear so that you would not blush to have your friends meet her with you. If she did not take so much interest in dressing you prettily and richly. It may be that the little allowance of money that she gets is not sufficient to dress both herself and you and fashionable array and that you may be well clad. She wears the same dress and bonnet year after year. Never forget where your mother lost her freshness and youthful beauty. It was in the self denying toil and suffering for your sake. Those wrinkles in her face those days Keep Caroline's in her cheeks, that weary look in her eye. She wears all these marks now where once there was fresh beauty because she has forgotten herself, these long years and loving devotion to you. These scars of time and toil and pain are the seals of her care for you. Look at your father to he is not so fresh and youthful as once he was. Perhaps he does not dress so finely as some of the young people you see about you, or as their fathers dress. There are marks of hard toil upon him marks of care and anxiety, which in your eye seems to disfigure his beauty. It may be that you blush a little sometimes when your young friends meet you walking with him, or when he comes into the parlor when you have company and wish he would take more pains to appear well, do not forget that he is toiling these days for you, and that his hard hands and his bronze face are really tokens of his love for you. If he does not appear quite so fresh and handsome as some other men, very likely it is because he has to work harder to give you your pleasant home, your good clothes, your daily food in many comforts and to send you to school. When you look at him and feel tempted to be ashamed of his appearance, just remember this. Perhaps he is now an old man with bent form, white hair, slow step, awkward hand wrinkled face and feeble broken voice. Forget not what history there is an all these marks that look to you like moorings of his manly beauty. The soul writes its story on the body. The soldiers scars tale of heroism and sacrifices the merchant's anxious face and knit brow tell of struggle and anxiety. So gluttony and greed and selfishness and licentiousness right out there record and unmistakable lines on the features, and so do kindness, benevolence, unselfishness and purity. You look at your father and see signs of toil of pain, of self denial of care. Do you know what they reveal? They tell the story of his life. He has passed through struggles and conflicts. Do you know how much of this story if rightly interpreted, concerns you? Is there nothing in the bent form? The faded hands, the lines of care, that tells you of his deep love for you and of sufferings endured, sacrifices made and toils and anxieties for your sake. We when you think thus of what you owe your parents, and of what they have born and rot for you, can you ever again be ashamed of them? Will not the shame rather be for yourself that you could ever have been so ungrateful as to blush at their homeliness. All the reverence of your soul will be kindled into deepest purest admiration. As you look upon these marks of love and sacrifice for your sake, you will honor them all, the more, the more they are worn and wasted, the more they are broken and their grace and beauty shattered. These tokens of self neglect and self sacrifice are the jewels in the crown of love. This honor is not to be shown only by the young child living yet as a child in the old home, but by those who are grown up to full manhood and womanhood. While parents live, there never comes a time when a child is no longer a child, owing Love and Honor. Few things in this world are so beautiful as the sight of a middle aged man or woman, showing true devotion to an aged father or mother. In all, the story of the life of President Garfield there is no one incident that will be longer or more tenderly remembered, than that little scene on the day of his inauguration, in which he showed such honor to his aged mother. When the last words were spoken, and the ceremony was ended, when he was now President of this great nation, and while the huzzah is of the vast throngs were falling upon his ear, and when the greatest and noblest of the land were pressing forward to speak their applause, he turned away from all this, from the cheers of a nation from the salutations of the great from the congratulations of foreign ambassadors who bore messages from kings and queens, to give the first thought of that supreme hour, to a little aged and worn woman who sat behind him, encircling her with his strong arms and kissing her. It was she to whom he owed all that he was, in the days of poverty she had toiled and suffered for him. She had been both father and mother to him. She had struggled with adversity and had never spared herself that she might bless his early years. She was plain and poor, and wrinkled and unfashionable. But she was his mother. And in that hour, his loyal manly heart honored her above all the world. President Garfield will be honored himself and all the future of our country, honored for his noble character and his kingly rank among men, honored for his achievements in the days of war and in the days of peace, honored for the splendor of soul that shone out from his sick room and those long weary days of death struggle. But in all the brilliant glory that flashes about his name, no one record will shine more imperishable early than the sentence that tells how in the moment of his supremacist exaltation, he bent and printed a kiss of recognition and honor on the wasted face of his mother. His is not the only case. This noble trait is not so rare as we might think. Though it sometimes shines with a luster so brilliant as to draw all eyes to itself. Life says history is not all written, loves noble deeds are not all wrought in the eyes of the world. Much of the rarest and noblest heroism of love is never seen by human eyes. There are other great men who have shown the same reverence and love for their parents in age or feebleness. There are noble daughters to who forego the joys offered to them in homes of their own, refusing offers of marriage and voluntarily choosing to live without its blessing and comfort. That they may shelter in old age and surround with loves tenderness, the father or the mother, or both, who filled their youth with sunshine. Here and there a heroism finds its way into record, but the noblest heroism of life, the tenderest histories of love, the most sacred things wrought by human affection remain unwritten and untold. Men talk of the wickedness of this world, and surely, it is wicked enough. Sin leaves blackness everywhere. There are horrors of ingratitude, of meanness of shame, of guilt, which make earth a stench and God's nostrils. Yet, amid all that is so revolting. There are records of such sacred tenderness, such holy beauty, such ineffable love, that angels must pause over them and reverence. These are fragments of the Eden loveliness that float down upon the dark tide, like lilies, pure and white, and unsullied on the black waters of some stagnant bog. in Earth's homes where the story of Christ's love has been told, there are filial devotions that are as fair as angelic ministries. It was on the cross that Jesus paid his last tribute of love and honor to his mother. The nails were in his hands and feet, and he hung there in agony. He was dying in deepest shame. The obloquy of the world was pouring its blackest tides upon his head. In the throng below, his I fell on a little group of loving friends, and among them he saw his mother. fullest his heart was of its own anguish. It was not too full to give thought to her. She would have no protector now. The storms would beat in merciless fury upon her unsheltered head. Besides the bitterness of her bereavement, there would be the shame she must endure on his account, the shame of being the mother of one who died on a cross, his heart felt all this and they're in the midst of his own agony, he made provision for her preparing a home and shelter for her amid the dark scenes of the cross, His example shines like a star in the bosom of the blackest clouds, saying to us, Honor thy father and thy mother. If true honor for parents has its seat in the heart, there is little need for rules, or detailed suggestions. Yeah, yet a few particular ways may be mentioned in which children can add to the happiness and blessedness of the home life. They should show their love for their parents by confiding in them not simply by believing in them and trusting their love and their wisdom. But by making them the recipients of all their confidences, a wise parent teaches his child from the very beginning to conceal nothing from him to to Tell him everything, and there is no part of the child's life in which he takes no interest. True filial love maintains this openness of heart and life toward a parent, even into the years of maturity. There are no other friends in the world who have so much right to all the confidences of children as their own parents. There are no others in whose breasts these competences will be so safe. They will never betray the trust that are placed in them by their own children. There are no others who will take such deep interest in all the events of their daily lives. To the True Mother, nothing is trifling, which has interested her child. She listens as eagerly to the story of its experiences, its joys, its disappointments, its plans, its imaginations, its achievements, as other people listen to the recital of some romantic narrative. She never laughs at its fancies, nor ridicules anything that it says or does. Then there are no other friends who are such safe and wise counselors. Someone says that bad advice has wrecked many souls and destinies. The advice of godly and loving parents never wrecks souls 1000s are wrecked because they will not be guided by it, but none by following it. The children that speak every thought, every hope, every ambition, every plan, every pleasure in the era of their parents and consult them on every matter will live safely. At the same time, they will confer great happiness upon their parents by confiding so fully in them. For it is a great grief to parents when a child does not confide in them, and turns away to others with the sacred confidences of his heart. Children must learn self denial, if they would faithfully do their part. They cannot have everything they desire. They must learn to give up their own wishes for the sake of others. They must learn to do without things that they would like to have. In no other way can home life be made what it should be. Every member of the family must practice self denial. The parents make many sacrifices for the children. And it is certainly right that the children early learn to practice self denial to relieve their parents to help them and to minister to their comfort. They should also learn thoughtfulness. A home is like a garden of tender plants which are easily broken or bruised. A thoughtless person is forever causing injury or pain, not through intention, but heedlessly. Many also who outside are thoughtful, careful of the feelings of others and quick to speak. The gentle word that heals and blesses at home are thoughtless. But surely there is no place in the world where we ought to be so studiously thoughtful as in our own homes. There are no other friends who love us, as do the home friends. There are no other hearts that are so much hurt by our want of thought, as are the home hearts. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that even quite young children shall learn to be thoughtful. For those who are older, there certainly cannot be a shadow of excuse for rudeness and thoughtlessness. There are in every home abundant opportunities for the culture and display of a thoughtful spirit. Is anyone sick? All the others should avoid noise, moving quietly about the house, speaking softly, so as not to disturb the sufferer. All should be gentle to the invalid, ministering in every little way, brightening the sick room by their kindnesses. This thoughtfulness should show itself also toward parents. Oftentimes they carry heavy burdens while they go about busying themselves and their daily duties. Their work is hard, or they are in ill health, or they are perplexed and anxious, perhaps on their children's account. bright, happy, joyous youth never can know what burdens rests heavily on the hearts of those who are older, who are in the midst of life's struggles. It would make us gentle even to strangers to know all their secret griefs much more would it soften our hearts toward our friends to know what trials they have. If children would remember always that their parents have cares, anxieties and sorrows of which they know not, it would make them gentle at all times toward them. Here is an opportunity for most helpful ministry, for nothing goes deeper into a parent's heart than the sympathy and gentleness of his own child. It is not great services that belong to thoughtfulness. Only a word of cheer perhaps when one is discouraged, a little tenderness when one looks Add a little timely help when one is overwrought. It may be nothing more than a bringing of a cheer when a father comes in weary, or the running of a little errand for the mother to save her tired feet, or keeping quiet when the baby is sleeping, or it may only be a gentleness of manner and tone, showing warmth within thoughtlessness causes no end of pain and care, off times of trouble and loss. It goes stalking through heart gardens treading down the most delicate flowers. It is always saying the wrong word and hurting someone's feelings. It is noisy in the sick room, rude in the presence of sensitive spirits, and cold and unsympathetic toward pain and sorrow. It misses the countless opportunities which intimate daily association with others gives, to do really kind deeds, to give joy and help. And instead of such a ministry of blessing, it is always causing pain. It's confession must continually be are me. The wounds I might have healed the human whoa and smart. And yet it never was in my soul to play so Ill apart. But evil is wrought by want of thought, as well as want of heart. Oh, I did not think or I did not mean it is the poor, excused most common in many homes. It would be better to learn to think, to think of others, especially of those who love us, and then to walk everywhere, but particularly in our own homes, with tender care and regard for the feelings and comfort of others. Children should early learn to bear some little share in the homework. Instead of being always and only a burden to the loving ones who live in toil and sacrifice for them. They should seek in every way they can to give help. It was Charles Kingsley who said, We can become like God only as we become of use. There is a deep truth in his words, we began to live only when we begin to live to minister to others. Instead of singing, I want to be an angel. It were better if the children should strive to be like the angels and the angels are ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation. Home is the school in which we are first to learn and practice the lessons of life. Children should learn there to be useful to their parents and to one another. They can do much in this direction by not requiring unnecessary attendance by not making trouble and work for others on their account. There are some spoiled children who are such selfish tyrants at home, that all the other members of the family are taxed to wait upon them. As soon as possible. Children should learn to wait upon themselves and in a measure be independent of the help of others, so as to become self reliant and strong. What more painful picture do we see than that of sons and daughters growing up idle and selfish in their own homes to indolent to put forth an exertion to proud to soil their dainty hands with any kind of work, but not too proud to let delicate or already overwrought parents slave to keep them in dainty food or showy array of dress. Nothing good or noble can ever come out of such home life. Children should make themselves worthy of their parents. They should seek to be all that the Father and Mother in their most ardent dreams hoped for them. It is a sad thing to disappoint loves brilliant expectations. It matters not so much if mere dreams of earthly greatness failed to come true. For oftentimes the hopes of ambitious parents for their children are only for honors that whether in a day, or for wealth that only sinks the soul to ruin. Such hopes we're better disappointed. But in the heart of every true Christian parent, there glows in ideal a very fair beauty of character and nobleness of soul, which he wants to see his child attain. It is a vision of the most exalted life lovelier than that which fills the thought of any sculptor as he stands before his marble and begins to Hue at the block fairer than that which rises in the poet's soul as he bows an ecstatic fervor over his page and seeks to describe his dream. Every true godly parent dreams of the most perfect manhood and womanhood for his children. He wants to see them grow up into Christ's likeness, spotless and purity, rich in all the graces with character fully developed and rounded out and symmetrical beauty shining in this world, but shining more and more onto the perfect day. Just hear it may be suggested to children that a large part of what seems to them fustiness And needless fault finding on the part of parents is due to anxiety to have them perfect. Parents sometimes air through over anxiety, or through unwise and irritating because incessant admonitions, but the sons and daughters should recognize the fact that deep anxiety for their well being is at the root of even this excessive carefulness. There is a story of a great sculptor, weeping like a child as he stood and looked on the fragments of his breathing marble, the work of his lifetime and his ripest powers, the dream of his various hopes which lay now shattered at his feet. With still deeper sorrow and bitter grief, do true and godly parents look upon the wreck of their high hopes for their children and the shattering of the fair ideals that glowed in their hearts during the bright years of childhood and youth. If children would do their part well and returning for all the love that has blessed their helpless years, and surrounded them in their youth, and that lingers still on wasted in the days of manhood and womanhood, they must seek to realize in their own lives, all the sacred hopes of their parents hearts. erect and debauched manhood, are a frivolous and purposeless womanhood is a poor return for parental love, fidelity and sacrifice. But a noble life, a character strong, true, earnest and Christ like brings blessings and satisfying reward to a parent for the most toilsome and painful years of self forgetting love. parents live in their children, and children hold in their hands the happiness of their parents. Let them never be untrue to their sacred trust. Let them never bring down the gray hairs of father or mother with sorrow to the grave. Let them be worthy of the love almost divine that holds them in its deathless grasp. Let them so live as to be a crown of honor to their parents in their old age. Let them fill their declining years with sweetness and tenderness. Let them make a pillow of peace for their heads when death comes. When our parents grow old, they exchange places as it were with us. There were years when we were feeble and helpless, unable to care for ourselves than they cared for us. They watched over us they toiled and sacrificed for us. They sheltered us from hardship and trial. They threw around our tender years love sweetest gentleness, and holiest protection. Now we are strong and they are feeble, we are able to endure hardship and toil, but the faintest breath of storm makes them tremble, and the lightest toil wearies them this is the time for us to repay them. It is ours now to show tenderness to them, to shelter them from trial, and to pour about them as much of love's tenderness as possible. And Canst thou mother for a moment, think that we thy children, when Old Age shall shed its blanching honors on thy weary head, could from our best of duties ever shrink? Sooner the sun from its high sphere should sink, then we ungrateful. Leave the in that day to Pine and solitude the life away, or Chandi, tottering on the graves cold brink. Banish the thought, were our steps may roam, or smiling Plains or waste without a tree, still will find memory point our hearts to the and paint the pleasures of thy peaceful home, while duty bids us all thy griefs assuage and smooth the pillow of thy stinking age. Thank you so much for listening today. These were lengthy chapters, but I hope they have given you some food for thought. As always, I want to remind you to consider the cultural and the historical context of this book as you ponder what you have heard today. If there were statements or ideas that seemed off to you, may I suggest that you take it to the Lord and to your husband, and work through those things, you might find that your understanding is totally different from Reverend Miller, or that maybe he's just presented a new perspective you haven't thought about something. Regardless, test everything against the Scripture so that your understanding will be in line with God's word You may also find the reflection questions helpful in working through some of the sticky spots. If you have questions or comments to share, please don't hesitate to contact me, use the link in the notes or go to our website contact page to leave us a voicemail or an email. Finally, if you're finding value in the summer reading series, you can give the show some love in one of the following ways. First of all, share, share share with a homemaker that you know or more than one homemaker that you know who could use some encouragement maybe you could even get together and talk about this series. Number two, leave us a rating and a review on your listening app. And then finally, you can leave us a tip in our virtual Tip Jar buy me a coffee, coffees are given in $5 increments and you can give as few or as many as you'd like. Just go to buymeacoffee.com/theartofhome. Thank you for all your support for listening for commenting for liking, sharing, giving. It means the world to me to hear how the podcast is spurring you on in your homemaking. Well, that's all for this episode. I will meet you back here next week for chapters six and seven of JR Miller's homemaking. Until then, keep practicing your art of making a home