Religious Education in the Family | Page 8

It varies as do the fashions of men.
Much that we assume to be detrimental to the life of the home is simply
due to the fact that in the evolution of society the family, as it were,
puts on a new suit of clothes, adopts new forms of organization to meet
the changing external conditions.
§ 6. THE HOME CHANGING; THE FAMILY ABIDING

The home is of importance only as a tool, a means to the final ends of
the family life; the test of its efficiency is not whether it maintains
traditional forms but whether it best serves the highest aims of family
life. We may abandon all the older customs; our regret for them, as we
look back on the days of home cooking, cannot be any greater than the
regrets of our parents or grandparents looking back on the
spinning-wheel and the hand loom that cumbered the kitchen of their
childhood. Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated, that
human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discarded the
family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developing
civilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his
own house, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these
days of specialized service in community living, the home has changed
with each step of industrial progress, but the family has remained
practically unchanged.
The family stands a practically unchanging factor of personal qualities
at the center of our civilization; the family rather than the home
determines the character of the coming days. In its social relationships
are rooted the things that are best in all our lives. In its social training
lie the solutions of more problems in social adjustment and
development than we are willing to admit. The family is the soil of
society, central to all its problems and possibilities.
Before church or school the family stands potent for character. We are
what we are, not by the ideals held before us for thirty minutes a week
or once a month in a church, nor by the instructions given in the
classroom; we are what parents, kin, and all the circumstances that have
touched us daily and hourly for years have determined we should be.
The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family
life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that
claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged
into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love
and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth
has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place
made it potent.

Stronger even than the memories that remain are the marks of habits,
tendencies, tastes, and dispositions there acquired. Many a man who
has left no fortune worth recording to his sons has left them something
better, the aptitude for things good and honorable, the memory of a
good name, and the heritage of a life that was worthy of honor. The
personal life has been always the enduring thing. Our concern for the
future should be not whether we can pass on intact the forms of home
organization, but whether we can give to the next day the force of ideal
family life. Perhaps like Mary we would do well to turn our eyes from
the much serving, the mechanisms of the home, to set our minds on the
better part, the personal values in the association of lives in the family.
I. References for Study
W.F. Lofthouse, Ethics and the Family, chaps. ii, xi, xii. Hodder &
Stoughton, $2.50.
Charles R. Henderson, _Social Duties from the Christian Point of
View_, chaps. ii, iii. The University of Chicago Press, $1.25.
C.W. Votaw, _Progress of Moral and Religious Education in the
American Home_. Religious Education Association, $0.25.
II. Further Reading
Jacob A. Riis, Peril and Preservation of the Home. Jacobs,
Philadelphia, Pa., $1.00.
Charles R. Henderson, Social Elements. Scribner, $1.50.
Charles F. Thwing, The Recovery of the Home. American Baptist
Publication Society, $0.15.
III. Topics for Discussion
1. The tendency toward community life illustrated in the schools,
amusement parks, and hotel life. Remembering the ultimate purpose of
the family, how far is communal life desirable?

2. Does the apartment or tenement building furnish a suitable condition
for the higher purposes of the family?
3. Is it possible to restore to the home some of the benefits lost by
present factory consolidation of industry?
4. What can take the place of the old household arts and of those which
are now passing?
5. What steps should be taken to secure to the family a larger measure
of the time in terms of occupation of the parents?
6.