Sec. 4.  A SCHOOL OF SOCIAL MINISTRY

The family trains lives for social ministry.  The unsocial lives come out of unsocial homes.  The home that exists for itself alone trains lives that exist only for themselves; these are the homes that throw the sand of selfishness into the wheels of society; they ultimately effect social suicide through selfishness.  The attitude and atmosphere of the home are of first importance here.  As we think, so will our children act.  If the home is to us a place without responsibilities for the neighborhood, without duties to neighbors, without social roots, then it is a school for industrial, commercial, and social greed and warfare.  As we think in our hearts and talk at our table, so are we educating those who sit thereat.

If we would have our homes really efficient and worthy agencies for education in social living, the first thing to do is to seek the social atmosphere, to cultivate all those influences which young lives unconsciously absorb.  We all know that character comes through environment in large measure, and that the mental and spiritual environment is by far the most potent.  Here is something that affects us more than the finest or poorest furniture and that gives the real zest and flavor to any meal.  The choice of our own reading enters here, not only the matter of reading in sociology, but of all reading, as to whether it blinds with class prejudices, intensifies caste feeling, or atrophies social sympathy by pandering to selfishness and sensuousness.  The control of our own feelings and judgment enters here.  Do we sedulously cultivate charity for others?  Do we stifle impatience, bitterness, class feeling?  Do we guide the conversation of visitors and the family group so that antisocial passions are subdued and a spirit of brotherly love and compassion for all is cultivated?  Here men and women have opportunity to give evidence of a change of heart; here they need that awakening to social consciousness which is a new birth, a regeneration into the life of the Son of Man who came to give his life.

By its active ministry the family is training for social living.  When a child carries a bowl of soup to some sick or needy one, he learns a lesson never to be forgotten.  The memories of hours of planning and preparation for some neighborly service—­the making of bread, the packing of a box, the preserves for the sick—­shine out like sunshine spots along childhood’s ways; they direct manhood’s steps.

We are gradually learning that social duties are not learned save through social deeds; that even the most carefully prepared and perfectly pedagogical systems of instruction fail, standing alone.  The college student uses the laboratory method in his sociology—­though we know that sociology may be as far from social living as the poles are apart.  The Social Service Association of the Young Men’s Christian Association has