By J.R. Miller
No work any man can do for Christ, is more important than what he can do and should do, in his own home. No measure of faithfulness in public Christian duties, will excuse fathers and mothers for the neglect of the spiritual care and culture of their own households. Perhaps, too, there is no part of Christian duty which is more apt to be neglected in these days, than that which we owe to our homes. On the one hand the business life and club life of many men, make them almost ciphers of influence in their own families, especially in the line of pious influence. On the other hand, the social life and other outside engagements of many women, so fill their hands that they find little time for the beautiful and gentle service they might render in their own homes.
A great picture was being exhibited for the first time in the artist's studio. It was rich and beautiful. But those who were present that day saw that it lacked something. It seemed all mist and cloud--hazy, incomprehensible. The artist himself, as he looked at the picture, noticed the lack. Taking his brush, he put a touch of red on the canvas, and that changed everything. Some homes seem to have in them everything they need to make them perfect. They have all the equipments and conveniences that modern taste and skill can provide. Health and happiness, the gladness of hospitality and the pleasures of refined social life yield their portion to the comfort of these homes. Yet something is wanting to make them perfect. It is the red of Christ's love; it is the blessing of Christ's gentleness. If Christ were guest, the joy and sweetness would be immeasurably increased. We need to think very seriously of these matters, for if the Christian home fails, is lost, given up, the loss will be irreparable.
It is not a shrinking from their share of the responsibility, for men to say that the making of the home is primarily woman's work. Men have their part--a serious and important part. They should provide the home and maintain it. They should bring to it noble and worthy life, joy, cheer, happiness, the very best they have to bring. A man calls himself the head of the family. The head should give honor to the house. A man should so live in private and in public, that his wife and children shall be proud of him. The man should be the family priest, and should be holy, true, and right with God. There are many things that the man can do in and for his home. But there are things that a wife can do better than her husband. Her hands are gentler, her heart is kindlier, and she has skill for the doing of many things that he cannot do.
The mother is the real home-maker. It is her sweet life which gives the home its atmosphere. It is through her love, that God comes first to her little children. The rabbis used to say: "God could not be everywhere, and therefore He made mothers." The thought is very beautiful. Mother-love is God's love revealed in an incarnation which comes so close to the life of infancy, that it wraps it about in divine tenderness, and broods over it in divine yearning.
No mother needs to be taught to love her children--but a suggestion may be needed about the aim and direction of this wonderful love. Some good mothers live for their children most devotedly--but think only or chiefly of worldly things. They watch over them tenderly in sickness. They toil and deny themselves to have their children clothed in a fitting way. They begin very early to teach them little lessons, and cease not to train their minds to fit them to shine in the world. But they do not give such thought to their children's spiritual education. They do not teach them the will of God. They do not fulfill the ancient exhortation to talk with their children of the divine law, when sitting in their homes and when walking by the way, when they come in and when they go out. There are homes in which children grow up without ever hearing a prayer from their fathers or mothers, or receiving any instruction whatever concerning spiritual matters.
On the other hand, there are homes where the fires always burn brightly on the altar, where loving words are spoken continually for Christ, where children are taught in their earliest years about God, and where they learn to pray with their first lisping. A good man tells of what happened in his own childhood home over and over again. As he lay quietly at night in his little room, before sleep came on there would be a gentle footstep on the stairs, the door would open noiselessly, and in a moment the well known form, softly gliding through the darkness, would appear at his bedside. First, there would be a few gentle inquiries of affection, gradually deepening into words of counsel. Then, kneeling, her head touching his, the mother would begin in gentle words to pray for her boy, pouring forth her whole soul in desires and supplications. Mothers know how her pleadings would run, and how the tears would mingle with the words. "I seem to feel them yet," he writes in advanced years, "where sometimes they fell on my face. Rising, then, with a good night kiss, she was gone. The prayers often passed out of thought in slumber, and came not to mind again for years--but they were not lost. They were safely kept in some sacred place of memory, for they reappear now with a beauty brighter than ever. I willingly believe that they were an invisible bond with heaven that secretly preserved me while I moved carelessly amid numberless temptations and walked the brink of crime."
Any mother will find it well worth while, to weave such chains of gold about her child, in its tender years, to bind it fast round God's throne. It is well worth her while to fill her children's earliest life with such sacred memories as these, which will never fade out of their hearts. Far down into the years the memory of these holy moments will abide, proving a light in darkness, an inspiration in discouragement, a secret of victory in hard struggle, an angel of God to keep from sin in fierce temptation.
Atmosphere is important--is the vital thing. We do not begin to realize how much the atmosphere of a home has to do with the making of the character of the children who grow up there. There might be a great deal of religion in the family life, so far as talk and even formal prayer are concerned, religion in its forms and ceremonials, and yet be an utter absence of the spirit of Christ--love, truth, justice, holiness.
There are homes where selfishness rules--the daily home life is a constant scramble to get the best. There are homes where worldliness reigns--love of pleasure, amusement, gaiety, with no vision of heaven, with no thought of God. There are homes where love is lacking--no gentleness, no thoughtfulness, no considerateness, no patience, no unselfish serving of each other in the daily life. Then there are homes where Christ's presence can almost be felt in the sweet atmosphere, where love is continually displayed, where sincerity and truth appear in every act, where there is no sordidness, where no impatient, unkind, uncharitable, or censorious word is ever heard, where each one is an encourager, and none ever a discourager.
We do not realize what the daily life of the home means, in the future of the children. Parental example is most important. One said to a minister: "The memory of my father is a sacred influence to me; yet I can remember the day when I was hungry because of my father's conduct. I can remember my mother crying as she cut the last loaf, keeping none for herself, and gave us what there was." The father had been turned away from his business for refusing to do a mean and shabby thing. They gave him three days to think it over, and then he came home with no prospects and no money. The mother said to her children, "It breaks my heart to see you hungry--but I will tell you what kind of a man your father is," as she told them. The son, far on in his years, testified: "Many a time I have been tempted to do wrong, and then there arose before me the figure of the man who dared even to see his children suffer, before he would sully his own conscience and sin against God." And this recollection restrained him and kept him true. It is a great thing for a boy to have such memories of his father as that.
That is the kind of religion that Christ would have us live in our homes. What others do, does not make the ideal for us. No matter what goes on in other homes close to ours where we visit, and whose inhabitants visit us--we must live right within our own doors. If we are sordid, selfish, and bitter in our spirit; if we are mean, truckling, or dishonest, we cannot expect our children to be any better than we are. The very first place for us to practice truth, honesty, right, and love--is at home, the holiest place in the world, the very presence of the Lord to us. If we are untrue and unloving at home--there is little use in our professing saintliness outside.
But parents are not the only members of a household who have to do with the making of the home. Children have their share of the responsibility. Said Charles Lamb: "What would I not give to call my dear mother back to earth for a single day--to ask her pardon upon my knees, for all those acts by which I grieved her gentle spirit!" Many people carry a like feeling of regret through all the years. By far the keenest element of a child's grief beside a parent's coffin--is the remorse caused by the memory of unkindness done along the days. Sometimes it is thought to make atonement for wrongs committed, for hurts caused to a gentle heart--by bringing flowers to the coffin. But the place for a child to scatter flowers--is along the parents' hard paths of toil and care. The love of parents for their children should be repaid with gratitude and by love's ministry--all the days down to life's very end.
How happy is the home where all--parents and children, not one missing--are together in the family of God! Very sweet is the joy of fellowship in a home life this. Such a home is a foretaste of heaven. There never can be any real separation in it. One may be taken--but the home is not broken.
A father and his son were shipwrecked. They clung to the rigging for a time, and then the son was washed off. In the morning the father was rescued in an unconscious state, and after many hours awoke in a fisherman's hut, lying on a soft, warm bed. He turned his face, and there lay his son beside him on the same bed.
So one by one, our households are swept away in the sea of death. Our homes are emptied and our honest ties are broken. But if we are all united in Christ, we shall awake in the other world to see beside us again our loved ones whom we have lost awhile--but who have only gone on before us into the eternal home.
