| Home Making |
Chapter 7 |
Page 4 |
There is something infinitely more important than the mere performance of duties. There is an unconscious influence that hangs about every life like an atmosphere, which is more important than the words or acts of the life. There are many parents who fail in no duty, who are deeply anxious for their children and really strive to make their home what it should be, whose influence is not a benediction. When the results of life are all gathered up it will probably be seen that the things in us which have been made the deepest and most lasting impressions in our homes and upon our children have not been the things we did with purpose and intention, planning to produce a certain effect, but the things we did when we were not thinking of training or influencing or affecting any other life. A wise writer says, “I look with wonder on that old time, and ask myself how it is that most of the things I suppose my father and mother built on especially to mould me to a right manhood are forgotten and lost out of my life. But the things they hardly ever thought of – the shadow of blessing cast by the home, the tender, unspoken love, the sacrifices made and never though of, it was so natural to make them, ten thousand little things so simple as to attract no notice and yet so sublime as I look back at them, – they fill my heart still and always with tenderness when I remember them and my eyes with tears.”
It is not so much strict fidelity in teaching and training that is so powerful in our homes for holy impression as it is the home life itself. The former is like the skillful trimming and training of a vine; the latter is like the sunshine and the rain that fall upon the vine. The writer above quoted adds: “It is said that a child, hearing once of heaven, and that his father would be there, replied, ‘Oh! Then I dinna want to gang.’ He did but express the instinct of a child to whom the father may be all that is good except just goodness; and be all that any child can want except what is indispensable – that gracious atmosphere of blessing in the healing shadow it casts, without which even heaven would come to be intolerable.”
It is necessary that the whole home life and home spirit should be in harmony with the teaching and training, if these are to make holy impressions. Simple goodness is more important than the finest theories of home government most thoroughly and faithfully carried out. There is nothing in the daily routine of the family life that is unimportant. Indeed, it is ofttimes the things we think of as without influence that will be found to have made the deepest impression on the tender lives of the household.
Page 4
<< Prior Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next Page >>