Sec. 2.  THE BLESSING OF LABOR

The home is the first place for life’s habituation to service.  The child is greatly to be pitied who has no duties, no share in the work.  Where the hands are unsoiled the heart is the easier sullied.  It is the height of mistaken kindness, one of the common errors of an unthinking, superficial affection, to protect our children from work.  This is a world of the moral order and of the glory of work.

When the child is very small it must learn this by having committed to it very simple duties.  As soon as it is able to handle things it may learn to do that which is most helpful with those things, to care for its toys, to put them away neatly.  A child can learn while very young to take care of its spoon, of certain clothes, of chair, and pencil and paper.  True, it is much easier to “pick up” after the child; but to do so is to yield to our own sloth.  The more tedious way is the one we must follow if we would train the child.

Besides the care of his possessions the child will gladly take a share in the general work of the home.  Let some daily duty be assigned to each one; such simple responsibilities as picking up all papers and magazines and seeing that they are properly stacked or disposed of may be given to one; another may sweep the stairs every day with a whisk broom (in one instance a boy of eight did this daily); another may be “librarian,” caring for all books; each one, after eight years of age, should make her own bed; each one should be entirely responsible for his own table in his room.  Many homes permit of many other “chores,” such as keeping up the supply of small kindling, caring for a pet or even a larger animal, keeping a little personal garden or vegetable plot.  Under those normal conditions of living, which some day we may reach, where each family, or all families, have trees and flowers and ample space, the opportunities are increased for joyous child activities which consciously contribute to social well-being as a whole.

Sec. 3.  RELIGION IN ACTION

Perhaps some will say, this is not religious education, it is everyday training.  Yes, it is “everyday training,” but it is the training of a religious person with the religious purpose of habituating the child to give his life in service to his world.  That is precisely what we need—­religion in everyday action.  The atmosphere and habitual attitude and conversation of the family must be depended on to give a really religious meaning to these everyday acts, to make them as religious as going to church, perhaps more so, and so to make them a training for the life that is religious, not in word only, but in deed and in truth.