| Home Making |
Chapter 6 |
Page 2 |
In every home where there are brothers and sisters there is a field which needs only wise, patient culture to yield life’s richest and loveliest things. Are we cultivating this field or is it lying neglected, covered, perhaps, with weeds and thorns, while we are spending all our strength in trying to make harvests grow on some bare, rocky hillside?
A complete family is one in which there are not only both parents and children, but also both brothers and sisters. A family with boys alone or with girls alone is incomplete. Its life is not full. In either case, however happy the home may be, there is something wanting. If there are boys only, the coarser, ruder elements are likely to prevail without the softening, refining influence which comes from girl life in the family. An English writer says: “Families that are composed only of boys grow up rude and selfish, very hard, brusque and unfeeling. The process of education, which begins as soon as a child is born, loses all its tenderness, all its sweetness, when girls are wanting. Then, if there are girls only, they on the other hand miss the strengthening inspiration which comes from association and companionship with brothers.” Though this statement is too absolute in its terms, yet it is true of many cases, and certainly expresses a tendency in all.
A full and complete family is one in which there are both brothers and sisters, and where all dwell together in tender love. We all know such homes, where the family life is full and the family intercourse close, familiar and happy; where parents and children and brothers and sisters live together in sweet accord, and where the music of the daily life is like an unbroken song of holy peace. Wherever there is such a home its blessedness is almost heavenly.
But it is not thus in every household. There are families which are complete, so far as numbers go, with both brothers and sisters in the circle, but whose home life fails to realize the peace and love which I have described. Something is wanting. There may be bitterness and strife, or there may be only the absence of all tenderness and of all true holy fellowship. In either case the story is very sad. A great possible happiness is neglected and despised. Such a home ought always to be not merely happy, but happy in the deepest, richest, fullest sense. If it fails to be so, great must be the guilt of those who are responsible for the failure.
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