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?