| Home Making |
Chapter 8 |
Page 6 |
We need religion in our homes to help us to do each his own part faithfully. Take the parents, for example – whose duties and responsibilities have been considered in a former chapter – into whose hands come tender young lives with infinite possibilities of development. They are to train these immortal souls in beauty and build up in them a noble manhood or womanhood. These lives are so sensitive that the slightest influences will leave imperishable impressions upon them, that a wrong touch may mar them forever. They may have in them the elements of great power or usefulness; God may want them trained to be leaders in the world. For the up-building of their character, for the impressions that shall be stamped upon their souls, for their protection from unholy influences, for the moulding and shaping of their lives, for the development and training of their powers and for their preparation for life’s mission and for eternity, the parents are responsible. Who is sufficient alone for these things? Where is the parent who feels ready in himself to assume all this responsibility – to take an infant child from God’s hands to be tended, sheltered, taught, trained and led, and to answer at the end before God’s bar for the faithful keeping of his sacred trust? Where is the parent who is prepared to engage to do all this and who wants no help from God? That so many do become fathers and mothers who never ask divine aid and wisdom only proves how thoughtlessly men and women can enter the most solemn mysteries of life, and with how little conception of their responsibility they accept the most momentous duties. Only the religion of Christ can fit parents for their high and holy responsibility.
We need religion in our homes in the time of sorrow. And where is the home into which sorrow comes not? We can build no walls strong enough or high enough to shut it out. We can gather within our doors no treasures so sacred that sorrow will never lay its hand upon them. Then when sorrow comes where shall we find comfort if not in the religion of Jesus Christ? Shall we find anything in the splendors of architecture, in the beauties of art, in the luxuries of costly furnishing or adorning, to bring calm and comfort to our hearts when one of our household lies in the struggle of death?
Page 6
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