Heltgton 
 
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 llome 
 
 Interchureh World Movement 
 of North America 
 
 45 West 18th Street, New Yobk City 
 

Religion in the Home 
 
 By 
 
 WALTER W. MOORE 
 
 INTERCHURCH WORLD MOVEMENT 
 OF NORTH AMERICA 
 45 West 18th Street, New York City 
 
Price, 5 cents each; 50 cents 
 per dozen; $2.75 per hundred 
 
jl^elision in tfie ^mt 
 
 Deut. 6:6-7. “And these words which I 
 command thee this day shall be in thine heart ; 
 and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy 
 children.” 
 
 The Greatness of Moses 
 
 Moses, the Hebrew law-giver, was perhaps 
 the greatest mere man that ever lived. His in- 
 fluence has probably been stronger, more far- 
 reaching and more beneficent than that of any 
 other teacher and organizer in the history of 
 the world, except alone our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 The teachings of Moses have largely deter- 
 mined the hi,story and influence of three of the 
 great religions of mankind — Judaism, Moham- 
 medanism, and Christianity. He was a many- 
 sided man. He was pre-eminent both as a 
 man of thought and a man of action. In the 
 realm of letters he excelled alike as a writer 
 of prose and a writer of poetry, as shown in 
 the matchless narratives of Genesis, the ring- 
 ing paean of deliverance at the Eed Sea, and 
 that lofty and melancholy hymn, the ninetieth 
 Psalm, the power of which is seen in the fact 
 that it has been made a part of every funeral 
 service in Christendom — so that these death- 
 less words about death are still read every 
 day over the mortal remains of many thou- 
 sands of our fellowmen. And when your time 
 comes and mine, the minister who officiates 
 
 3 
 
will pronounce over our lifeless clay the 
 threnody that Moses wrote three thousand 
 years ago. In view of what the Bible tells us 
 about his temperament and his defects as a 
 speaker, it would hardly be expected that 
 Moses should excel in the oratorical style. 
 Yet, Professor Moulton, of the University of 
 Chicago, who has made the literary forms of 
 Scripture his specialty, says that he once read 
 through on three successive days, each at a 
 single sitting, an oration of Demosthenes, one 
 of Burke, and the book of Deuteronomy, and 
 he had the feeling at the time that neither of 
 the other two rose to the oratorical level of the 
 speeches of Moses. 
 
 According to Josephus, Moses was also a 
 brilliant and victorious soldier, and, on the 
 occasion of an Ethiopian invasion, took com- 
 mand of the Egyptian army, repulsed the in- 
 vaders from the very gates of Memphis, drove 
 them back into their own country, and cap- 
 tured their capital. His pre-eminence as states- 
 man, legislator and organizer is seen in the 
 fact that to him are traced back nearly all the 
 formative ideas and institutions of the most 
 influential people that ever lived. In the 
 wealth of his endowments, in the grandeur of 
 his character, and in the massiveness of his 
 work he is a colossal figure. 
 
 But when that towering personality passed 
 away, would not the work he had done fall to 
 the ground? His work would certainly have 
 been incomplete had he not made provision for 
 the perpetuation of it after his death, and in 
 nothing does the greatness of the man appear 
 more clearly than in the measures which he 
 adopted for this purpose. 
 
 4 
 
The Essentials of His System 
 
 In the book of Deuteronomy we have the 
 closing addresses of the aged leader to his 
 people, and in the paragraph before us (Deut. 
 6:4-9), we find the three essentials of his sys- 
 tem, viz., a Theology, a Religion, and a 
 Pedagogy. 
 
 A Theology 
 
 “Hear, O Israel : the Lord our God is one 
 Lord.” No other portion of the Scriptures 
 has had so strong an influence on the character 
 and career of the Hebrew race as this. It is 
 the Holy of holies of their Bible — ^the central 
 article of their faith — the keystone of their 
 creed. It is repeated morning and evening in 
 the daily ritual in every land where there is a 
 Hebrew synagogue or a Hebrew home. It is 
 bound upon millions of arms and foreheads. 
 It is nailed upon millions of door-posts. In 
 every way it has been emphasized to the eye 
 as well as to the ear. In the original text the 
 final lettersl of the first and last words of the 
 verse are majuscula, i. e., printed much larger 
 than the ordinary size, so that, as soon as the 
 book is opened, this verse leaps from the page 
 as it were and seizes the attention of the 
 reader. These two letters form together a 
 word meaning “witness,” the utterance of this 
 verse being accounted by the Jews a witness 
 for the faith. 
 
 Nor are the Jews alone in stressing this doc- 
 trine of the divine unity. The Mohammedans 
 give it an equally conspicuous place in their 
 creed. Five times every day the muezzin 
 climbs to the minaret and calls the faithful to 
 prayer with the words : “There is no god but 
 God.” The importance attached by Christians 
 
 6 
 
to the doctrine of the exclusive deity of Je- 
 hovah is too well known to require further 
 mention. But in the time of Moses there was 
 need of special emphasis on the unity of God. 
 He and his people had just come out of a land 
 which was the very hot-bed of polytheism — 
 where, as Herodotus said, it was easier to find 
 a god than a man — a land where the people 
 had deified the sun and worshiped that, where 
 they had deified the Nile and worshiped that, 
 where they had deified bulls and rams and cats 
 and worshiped them. Over against this riot 
 of polytheism, Moses taught that God is one, 
 supreme, almighty creator and Lord of all, 
 loving and gracious — “our God.” And it is 
 impossible to overestimate the world’s debt 
 , to him for doing it. For, explain it how you 
 will, polytheism degrades and monotheism 
 exalts. The product of the one dies, the 
 product of the other endures. The religion of 
 Egypt has perished, the religion of Israel 
 abides. And the explanation is not far to seek: 
 For belief in one God, righteous and almighty, 
 is the indispensable condition of a calm, 
 courageous conservative mind and a rational 
 view of human affairs. It steadies, strengthens 
 and lifts the whole character and life of the 
 individual and the community to know that 
 this universe is the thought of one mind, that 
 it is under the control of one hand, and that 
 in all its parts it moves to the accomplishment 
 of one great end. To anyone, therefore, who 
 may suppose that this is all academic and far 
 removed from the practical interests of our 
 land and time we would say that a sound 
 theology is one of the most practical of things 
 because it affects directly the temper of the 
 
 6 
 
mind, the steadiness of the character, and the 
 quality of the work. 
 
 A Religion 
 
 Further, Moses not only gave a Theology, 
 but a Religion. He not only taught what we 
 are to believe concerning God, but what duty 
 God requires of us : “Thou shalt love the 
 Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all 
 thy soul, and with all thy might.” This, as 
 you will remember, is the passage cited by our 
 Lord as the first and great commandment of 
 the law. And it is a commandment which is 
 “peculiar to revealed religion. That is only to 
 say, in other words, that it presupposes re- 
 demption. We could not imagine such a pre- 
 cept in the religion of Greece or of Rome, and, 
 of course, we do not find it there.” The gods 
 of Greece and Rome were largely apotheoses 
 of human prowess or human vice, and it was 
 impossible for any one to love them in any 
 conceivable sense of the word. Could you 
 have asked one of the ancient Romans, “Do 
 you love Jupiter?” he would have answered, 
 “I fear Jupiter, but I cannot love an unprin- 
 cipled omnipotence of selfishness and lust.” 
 And so of all the deities of their pantheon. 
 “Neither the place they hold in the universe, 
 nor their characters and relations to each 
 other, nor their attitude to men, inspire any 
 such emotion.” It is altogether different with 
 the God of Israel. Of Him Moses says, “Thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God.” 
 
 “It is often said that love cannot be com- 
 manded, but that has only a limited truth. 
 Granted certain relations between persons, and 
 love is demanded by the very nature of the 
 case ; if it is wanting, its absence is the gravest 
 
 7 
 
of moral faults, and brings innumerable others 
 in its train; till it comes, literally nothing can 
 be right.” 
 
 Thus closely related then are Theology and 
 Religion: God revealed to us as one and su- 
 preme, holy and loving — that is Theology ; our 
 love responding to God’s — the total self-surren- 
 der of man’s being to his Maker — that is Re- 
 ligion. 
 
 A Pedagogy 
 
 But a third point remains. By what means 
 can these two indispensable things — Theology 
 and Religion — be preserved from generation to 
 generation? How can we secure the preserva- 
 tion among men of this true knowledge of God 
 and this genuine devotion to His service ? It is 
 his answer to this question which I say puts 
 the cap-stone on the proof of Moses’ great- 
 ness; for he teaches that the only effective 
 method of conserving and perpetuating true 
 knowledge of God and living obedience to His 
 will is the training of the children in religion, 
 that the responsibility of this training rests 
 chiefly on the parent, and that the home is the 
 mainstay of religion. Hear him : “These 
 words which I command thee this day shall 
 be in thine heart : and thou shalt teach them 
 diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk 
 of them when thou sittest in thine house, and 
 when thou walkest by the way, and when thou 
 liest down, and when thou risest up. And 
 thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine 
 hand, and they shall be as frontlets between 
 thine eyes. And thou shalt write them upon 
 the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.” 
 
 The whole matter and form of this injunc- 
 tion assume that religion is the paramount 
 
 8 
 
concern of human life. Observe: “These 
 words shall be in thine heart” — not merely 
 memorized, but understood and loved — only 
 he can effectually teach God’s commands to 
 others who himself obeys them from the heart 
 — “Children like teachers who talk out of their 
 hearts.” “And thou shalt teach them dili- 
 gently” — the Hebrew says sharpen them — 
 “unto thy children” — make the truth pointed — 
 cause it to penetrate into their minds. “And 
 thou shalt talk of them” at home and by the 
 way, in the evening and in the morning, “with 
 all the familiar ease of conversation”; no 
 anxiety need ever be felt as to the future of 
 children who come from homes where the 
 Word of God is talked of naturally, easily, 
 affectionately. “And thou shalt bind them for 
 a sign upon thy hand, and they shall be for 
 frontlets between thine eyes.” The Jews, as all 
 know, have interpreted this injunction literally 
 and have based upon it the custom of wearing 
 phylacteries at prayers. A piece of parchment 
 containing this passage (Deut. 6:4-9) and 
 three other passages in which the same com- 
 mand is given (Ex. 13:1-10, 11-16; and Deut. 
 11:13-21), is sewed up in a small cubical 
 leather box, with thongs attached, by means 
 of which this box is bound upon the arm or 
 the forehead. But the language is figurative, 
 and the real meaning of the command is that, 
 as the hands are the instruments of action and 
 the eyes the organs of direction and the fore- 
 head the chamber of thought and purpose, 
 God's law should direct all our work and hal- 
 low all our thought — every part of the life 
 should be ruled by it — it should be as con- 
 stantly present to view as if bound upon the. 
 
 9 
 
person. “And thou shalt write them upon the 
 posts of thy house and upon thy gates.” This 
 also the Jews have interpreted literally — whence 
 the Mesuzah, that is the square piece of parch- 
 ment inscribed with Deut. 6 '4-9 and 9:13-21, 
 which, rolled up and enclosed in a small cyl- 
 inder of wood or metal, is nailed to the right- 
 hand post of every door in a Jewish house. 
 On the outside of the parchment the word 
 Shaddai (Almighty) is written, and a portion 
 of the cylinder is cut out so that this word may 
 be plainly’seen. The pious Jew, when passing 
 in or out, touches the divine name, kisses his 
 finger, and says in Hebrew, Psalm 121 :8 : 
 “The Lord shall preserve thy going out and 
 thy coming in from this time forth, and even 
 forevermore.” But here, too, the language 
 is figurative and the real meaning is that 
 God’s law is to rule the whole house — that it is 
 to be kept in view in all goings forth to toil 
 and in all returnings to rest. 
 
 God’s Ideal of Home Training in Religion 
 
 I have ventured to give this unusual mass 
 of exegetical details in order to show not only 
 how every word of this Mosaic scheme of peda- 
 gogy emphasizes the transcendent importance 
 of religion, but also how every detail of this 
 divinely appointed system of home training ac- 
 centuates the responsibility of parents. The 
 Word of God is to be in the heart, it is to be 
 taught diligently to the children, it is to be har- 
 pooned into their minds, it is to be the subject 
 of talk as a part of our life, we are to speak of 
 it as naturally as we breathe or eat; it is to 
 dominate the whole man — head, eyes, hands, 
 to regulate the whole life — thoughts, purposes, 
 
 10 
 
actions : it is to rule the whole house — to 
 hallow the home in all its phases of activity 
 or rest, all its goings out and comings in. 
 That is God’s ideal of home training in re- 
 ligion. If it is ever to be realized, it must be 
 realized through the faithfulness of parents. 
 
 Heredity and Environment 
 
 The character of a child is chiefly the 
 product of two forces, heredity and environ- 
 ment, and to both of these forces parents are 
 more vitally related than any other human 
 beings. Over the first they have compara- 
 tively little control — the child himself has none 
 whatever. As Dr. Stalker says: “There is in 
 human life a mysterious element of necessity. 
 Everyone is born into a particular family 
 which has a history and a character of its 
 own, formed before he arrives. He has no 
 choice in the matter; yet this affects all his 
 subsequent life. He may be born where it is 
 an honor to be born, or, on the contrary, 
 where it is a disgrace. He may be heir to in- 
 spiring memories and refined habits, or he may 
 have to take up an hereditary burden of physi- 
 cal or moral disease. A man has no choice of 
 his mother or father, his brothers or sisters, 
 his uncles or his cousins, yet, on these ties 
 which he has no power to unlock, may depend 
 three-fourths of his happiness.” With what a 
 solemn sense of responsibility then should a 
 man and a woman enter into that relation from 
 which a new life is to spring! How fervently 
 they should pray that they may inject no physi- 
 cal or moral poison into the stream of their 
 child’s descent, but, on the contrary, add some- 
 thing to his splendid inheritance of health and 
 virtue! And how earnestly they should strive 
 
 11 
 
to foster the good and repress the evil which 
 belong by birth to the child in whose veins 
 their own blood flows ! God declares in Ma- 
 lachi that His purpose in instituting the family 
 relationship was “that He might seek a godly 
 seed” — the object of the marriage relation is 
 to bring children into the world and to give 
 them a godly rearing. How infinitely removed 
 from the divine idea are the flippant concep- 
 tion of marriage and the baneful evasion of 
 parental responsibility which have become so 
 common in our own day! Little wonder that 
 our Lord made this institution the one excep- 
 tion to His rule of announcing only general 
 principles concerning human relationship — lit- 
 tle wonder that He legislated specifically and 
 directly in regard to marriage only. Little 
 wonder that the Bible makes the family rather 
 than the individual the unit of the Church. 
 There is a heritage of piety; “I thank God, 
 whom I serve from my forefathers with pure 
 conscience,” says Paul. Grace does not run 
 in the blood, indeed, yet a godly ancestry lays 
 the lines of thought and feeling and tendency 
 along which Christian character is built up. 
 And God has promised that, if parents are 
 faithful and will in their training take due 
 account of what each child is by heredity, that 
 training will keep him in the right path 
 (Prov. 22:6). Train up a child according to 
 his way— -with due regard to his connatal tem- 
 perament and talents — and when he is old, he 
 will not depart from it. 
 
 The Atmosphere of the Home 
 
 While parents have little control over hered- 
 ity, they have immense control over environ- 
 ment, the other main force in the making of 
 
 12 
 
our children ; and when it is asked how par- 
 ents can meet the tremendous responsibility 
 resting upon them — how they can efifectually 
 teach the character-making and soul-saving 
 Word of God to their children, as Moses here 
 enjoins — the answer is, first, by the creation 
 of a right environment, a religious atmosphere 
 in the home. Modern conditions have made 
 this far more difficult to do than it used to be. 
 When apartment houses are taking the place 
 of homes, when the feverish rush of business 
 prevents anything like a leisurely breakfast, 
 and is still more fatal to anything like family 
 worship, when the two great ends of life 
 seem to be money and pleasure, virhen husbands 
 and wives are never so happy as when at the 
 club, the bridge party or the theater, and 
 never so bored as when forced to stay at 
 home — the difficulty of creating a wholesome, 
 normal atmosphere for children to grow up 
 in is obviously very much increased. Yet the 
 creation of such an atmosphere is an absolute 
 necessity. Without it Christianity, cannot win 
 out. The Christian home is the hope of the 
 world. 
 
 The atmosphere which seems to be nothing 
 is in fact the most subtle, all-pervasive and 
 powerful of all influences affecting the physical 
 health. In like manner the moral atmosphere 
 of the home goes farther than any other force 
 to determine the character and destiny of the 
 children. And this atmosphere is an exhala- 
 tion from the hearts and lives of the parents — 
 the inevitable product of their character and 
 example — whether it be the miasma of insin- 
 cerity, and worldliness, and money-worship on 
 the one hand, or, on the other, the sweet, pure. 
 
 13 
 
sanctifying air of a reverent and happy faith 
 in God. The apostle speaks of “the church in 
 thy house” — the church — Kuriakon — “that 
 which is the Lord’s” — in thy house. 
 
 A Personal Question 
 
 How about your house ? Have you in it that 
 which is the Lord’s? And is that the domi- 
 nant influence there? Happy the children of 
 such a house! Well has it been said that 
 “God has no kinder gift to us than a hal- 
 lowed home, the memory of lessons from the 
 lips of father and mother, the early impres- 
 sions of virtue and wisdom, the sacred streams 
 which rise from that fountain head, and that 
 alone, and run freshening and singing and 
 broadening all through our lives. * * * Not 
 without reason has a great cardinal of the 
 Romish Church said that if he may have the 
 children up to the age of five, he will not mind 
 in whose hand they may be afterwards; for it 
 is almost impossible to exaggerate the per- 
 manent effects of those first tendencies im- 
 pressed upon the soul before the intellect is 
 developed. * * * Things which we learn we 
 can more or less unlearn, but things which are 
 blended with the elements of our composition, 
 made parts of us before we are conscious of 
 our own personality, defy the hand of time 
 and the power of conscious effort to eradicate 
 them. * * * Let a child draw his first breath 
 in a house which is a sanctuary; let him come 
 to know by his quick childish perceptions that 
 there is in his home a ladder set up from earth 
 to heaven, and that the angels of God go up 
 and down on it; let him feel the Divine at- 
 mosphere in his face, the air all suffused with 
 heavenly light, the sweetness and the calm 
 
 14 
 
which prevail in a place where a constant com- 
 munion is maintained — and in after years he 
 will be aware of voices which call, and hands 
 which reach out to him from his childhood, 
 connecting him with heaven, and even the most 
 convincing negations of unbelief will be power- 
 less to shake the faith which is deep as the 
 springs of his life.” 
 
 The things that a child absorbs from the 
 home atmosphere about him in those early 
 years of “delicate susceptibility, that season 
 when the surface of life is porous to the 
 Highest,” are the things that abide with him 
 and make him what he is to be. 
 
 The Father 
 
 In the making of that atmosphere the father 
 is a large factor. To a little child his father 
 is the greatest man in the world, the fountain 
 of all wisdom, the source of all authority, the 
 wielder of all power — to the child he stands in 
 the place of God. What an opportunity and 
 responsibility are his! Yet, how many fathers 
 neglect their privilege and shirk their duty and 
 throw the whole burden on the mother! An 
 eminent business man of New York recently 
 said that if he had his life to live over again, 
 he would perhaps make less money, but he 
 would spend more time at home with his sons, 
 so that the relations between them might be 
 more intimate and that he might teach them, 
 as none others can, the great issues of char- 
 acter. 
 
 The Mother 
 
 But important as is the father’s contribution 
 to the atmosphere of the home, the mother’s 
 contribution is greater still. It is not merely 
 
 15 
 
an alliterative epigram when we say, “the hand 
 that rocks the cradle rules the world.” It is a 
 fact. The development of the affections in 
 children precedes that of the intellect. The 
 mother governs through the affections, and as 
 she alone is brought into the closest relations 
 with the children during the formative period 
 of their lives, they learn to love her with a 
 far different feeling from that which is in- 
 spired by the father. His is largely the rule 
 of authority or force. Hers is the rule of love, 
 and hers is infinitely stronger and more abid- 
 ing. Aye more abiding, for it lasts and lasts 
 and lasts long after her gentle spirit has passed 
 into the better land. 
 
 Posthumous Influence 
 
 Astronomers tell us that the light of a star 
 lingers on the earth for thousands of years 
 after the star itself has left its place in the 
 firmament. However that may be, it is certain 
 that the influence of these blessed luminaries 
 of the home abides with their children and 
 their children’s children long after they them- 
 selves have gone hence. 
 
 Some years ago there appeared from the 
 press a volume of remarkable sketches of 
 Scottish peasant life, under the sentimental 
 title of “Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush.” The 
 teaching of some of these sketches cannot be 
 altogether commended, but that they are writ- 
 ten with singular freshness and power was 
 conceded on every hand. Opinions differed as 
 to the comparative merits of the several 
 sketches, but from the moment I laid the book 
 down after reading it to the end, my own mind 
 was made up. I awarded the palm without 
 hesitation to the chapter entitled “His Mother’s 
 
 16 
 
Sermon.” You will recall the story — how the 
 young minister came to Drumtochty fresh 
 from the Theological Seminary, green and 
 conceited, but with a heart at bottom sound 
 and true — how he supposed that a man who 
 had taken the McWhammel prize in the Semi- 
 nary should on his first appearance in this 
 remote parish give the people some instruc- 
 tion as to the present drift of liberal theo- 
 logical thought — how he accordingly prepared 
 an elaborate essay with learned references to 
 “Semitic Environment” and the like — and how 
 his godly maiden aunt became troubled when 
 she discovered what kind of fare he was pre- 
 paring to give his people on his first appear- 
 ance in their pulpit. With a woman’s tact she 
 managed to remind him of a scene some years 
 before, when he had kneeled at the bedside of 
 his dying mother, who reached out a trembling 
 and emaciated hand and laid it on his head and 
 expressed the hope that he would some day 
 become a minister, and told him that if he did, 
 she would be there on the day he preached his 
 first sermon — “And, oh laddie, speak a gude 
 word for Jesus Christ.” 
 
 When the young minister was reminded of 
 that scene, his face went white and he arose 
 and withdrew to his study and took the elab- 
 orate discourse on which he had expended so 
 much toil and put it into the glowing grate and 
 saw it disappear in flame and smoke, recogniz- 
 ing on a charred fragment the mocking words, 
 “Semitic Environment,” and^then set himself 
 to prepare his mind and heart to “speak a 
 gude word for Jesus Christ.” On Sunday 
 morning, when he rose in the pulpit, he was 
 so much agitated that he omitted two petitions 
 
 17 
 
from the Lord’s Prayer, but the people thought 
 none the worse of him for that; and when he 
 began to deliver his message, within five min- 
 utes the people had lost sight of the man in 
 the pulpit and saw only the holy and loving 
 face of the Man of Nazareth and His pierced 
 hands outstretched over them in benediction. 
 As the preacher proceeded, the women were 
 weeping softly here and there, and the rugged 
 faces of those Scottish peasant men were 
 softened as when the evening light falls on the 
 granite cliff. When the service was over, and 
 some one asked Donald Menzies, the mystic, 
 what he thought of the new preacher — the 
 preacher’s name was John Carmichael — he 
 would only answer, “There was a man sent 
 from God whose name was John.” And when 
 John Carmichael got back to the manse and 
 was expressing wistful regrets that his sainted 
 mother could not have been there to hear his 
 first sermon, his loving aunt threw her arms 
 around his neck and kissed him and said, 
 “Never mind, laddie, yon was your mother’s 
 sermon, and she heard every word of it.” 
 
 I am quoting from memory, after the lapse 
 of years, not being able just now to lay my 
 hand on the volume, and I have probably not 
 done the story justice, but even so it will indi- 
 cate the estimate formed by one of the most 
 gifted of contemporary authors of the posthu- 
 mous influence of a Christian mother. 
 
 Dr. Cuyler says that when he was in the 
 Seminary, a visiting minister, addressing the 
 students, said : “All you men that had praying 
 mothers, stand up,” and in a moment nearly 
 the whole of the one hundred and fifty were on 
 their feet, and there they stood, living wit- 
 
 18 
 
nesses of the power of a mother’s example 
 and a mother’s prayers. 
 
 The real reason for the alarming decrease in 
 the number of candidates for the ministry dur- 
 ing the last ten or fifteen years is the decline 
 of family religion — the failure of fathers and 
 mothers to throw around their sons the spir- 
 itual atmosphere most favorable to the devel- 
 opment of true ministers of God. 
 
 Specific Instruction 
 
 So much for the atmosphere of the home 
 and the example of father and mother — the 
 influences by which the ideals are fixed, the 
 character set, the trend of the life determined, 
 the habit of virtue formed, and the love of 
 righteousness rendered instinctive, so that even 
 when there is no time for reflection, the child 
 decides for the right — and when the perilous 
 period of adolescence is reached and new de- 
 sires are born and new temptations assail, the 
 truth and purity inhaled in that Christian home 
 still hold the youth to virtue’s path. 
 
 But, in addition to this, specific instruction 
 is required, definite teaching must be given. 
 Fdr, after a while “the understanding will 
 begin to assert itself ; the desire to question, to 
 criticise, to prove, will awake. And then, 
 unless the truths of the heart have been ap- 
 plied to the conscience in such a way as to 
 satisfy the reason, there may come the deso- 
 late time in which, while the habits of practical 
 life remain pure, and the unconscious influence 
 of early training continues to be effective, the 
 mind is shaken by doubt, and the hope of the 
 soul is shrouded in a murky cloud.’’ 
 
 Now, how is this definite teaching, which 
 will steady the mind and satisfy the intellect 
 
 19 
 
of the man as well as the heart of the child, 
 to be given? 
 
 The Pulpit 
 
 The pulpit has a duty here. Our Church is 
 pre-eminently a teaching Church. It has al- 
 ways exalted the sermon as a part of public 
 worship because it recognizes the reasonable- 
 ness of faith and the value of truth clearly 
 apprehended and firmly grasped for the per- 
 manent control of the life. But the specific 
 duty of the pulpit in regard to the matter 
 before us, as we shall presently see more 
 fully, is to stimulate and guide and help the 
 parents in the teaching of religion in the home. 
 
 The Sunday School 
 
 The Sunday school also has a duty here, and 
 we should be blind and recreant indeed if we 
 did not give it our constant and careful over- 
 sight and our constant and cordial support. 
 But let us remember that the Sunday school 
 was designed to be a supplement to home 
 training, and not a substitute for it. As no 
 preacher can ever take the father’s place, so 
 no Sunday school teacher can ever take the 
 mother’s place. “The natural and the ap- 
 pointed place for children to make the ac- 
 quaintance of God is their own home. The 
 most powerful and persuasive lips for declar- 
 ing the awful sanctities of religion are the 
 priestly lips of the ordained parent.’’ T® the 
 parent God has given the psychological op- 
 portunity when revealed truth can best be 
 taught and spiritual guidance can best be given. 
 Those early years of spiritual receptiveness 
 and special susceptibility to educating efforts — 
 that long minority of the child under the 
 father’s roof — these constitute the supreme op- 
 
 20 
 
portunity which God has given to the parent 
 and to the parent alone. The Sunday school, 
 valuable as it is in a supplementary way, can- 
 not do the work of the home, because, as has 
 been said, it does not get the child early 
 enough, and because when it does get him, it is 
 not able to repeat its impressions with sufficient 
 frequency. 
 
 The Decisive Factor 
 
 The home, then, is the decisive factor in the 
 problem of religious education. It is interest- 
 ing to note that some of the voluntary move- 
 ments which are so characteristic of our time 
 have recognized this and are endeavoring to 
 aid the Church in rousing parents to a sense 
 of their duty. The platform of one of these 
 organizations runs thus: 
 
 “For upbuilding individual faith, for de- 
 veloping the home as an ally of the Church, 
 and for strengthening the Church in the midst 
 of world-wide missionary responsibilities and 
 activities, the World’s Morning Watch urges 
 a policy of systematic religious instruction of 
 the young 
 
 In the Home 
 
 By the Parents 
 
 Seven Days in the Week” 
 
 Why is it that with all our increase of ac- 
 tivity in Sunday school work and all our 
 improvements in Sunday school methods, the 
 children know so much less of the Bible than 
 those of fifty years ago? The time was when 
 nearly every child in a Presbyterian home, by 
 the memorizing of the great capital passages 
 of Scripture, made them an everlasting and 
 priceless possession: The Ten Command- 
 
 21 
 
ments; the 1st Psalm, and the 8th, and the 
 19th, and the 23rd, and the 27th, and the 91st, 
 and the 103d, and the 121st; the 53d chapter 
 of Isaiah, and the SSth ; the Sermon on the 
 Mount; the 15th of Luke; the 14th of John, 
 the 13th of I. Corinthians — the time was when 
 the children knew these — and knew also that 
 marvelous compendium of Biblical doctrine, 
 the Shorter Catechism, to which even John 
 Morley ascribes the intellectual pre-eminence 
 of the Scottish peasantry and “about which 
 there is so much ignorant ribaldry abroad 
 today.” 
 
 Is it so now? Do the children of our time 
 know them? If not, what is the reason for 
 the deterioration? Is it not that parents have 
 discarded the high prerogative of the teacher? 
 Nor is that all. For, as Mr. Jowett has said, 
 “With the household teacher has gone the 
 household priest ! It is not only that the home 
 is no longer a school ; it is no longer a temple ! 
 The altar is overthrown !” 
 
 Fathers and brethren, I have selected this 
 subject for your opening meditation in this 
 great Assembly because, of all the subjects 
 that can engage your attention as leaders of the 
 Church, this is the most important. The Chris- 
 tian home is the hope of the world. And the 
 Christian home in our land is threatened as it 
 has never been threatened before. In tens 
 of thousands of nominally Christian homes 
 the parents have abdicated the seat of pro- 
 phetic instruction and forsaken the altar of 
 priestly intercession. Can we not as ministers 
 recall them to a true appreciation of their 
 supreme function? Can we not rouse them 
 to a sense of their duty? And shall we not 
 
 22 
 
give them the requisite guidance as to what 
 to teach and how to teach? Shall we not 
 make this a main point of our ministry? 
 
 A keen observer of our modern Church ac- 
 tivities speaks of “the diffused triviality of 
 many of our meetings,” the spending of our 
 strength on minor purposes which might be 
 serving a greater, the covering of the whole 
 field with a multiplicity of little, shallow mines 
 which only scratch the surface, instead of sink- 
 ing a limited number of deep shafts with con- 
 centrated strength and equipment to reach the 
 buried ore; and he adds, “There is nothing 
 which would so revive the modern Church as 
 to diminish the oppressive multitude of our 
 meetings and to concentrate upon more radical 
 aims and labor. We might appear to be doing 
 very much less, while, in reality, we should be 
 doing infinitely more.” 
 
 These are wise words, and the most funda- 
 mental of these large tasks calling for the con- 
 centration of our energies is the task of mak- 
 ing the Christian home once more both a sanc- 
 tuary and a school. Why should we not give 
 the whole subject of home training a larger 
 place in our pulpit work? Why should it not 
 be presented systematically in the regular Sun- 
 day services from time to time? Why should 
 it not be a frequently recurring subject for 
 study and prayer in the mid-week meetings? 
 Why should we not hold special meetings for 
 mothers and special meetings for fathers in 
 which we might consider in detail the prin- 
 ciples and methods of teaching? Why should 
 the subject not have the place of honor in our 
 summer schools for Christian workers? Why 
 should we not use every legitimate method 
 
 23 
 
that can be devised to revive the teaching of 
 religion in the home? 
 
 Is any task more imperative? Is any work 
 more fruitful? Let us remember that if we 
 take care of the home, the church will take 
 care of itself, that the measure of the church’s 
 power of self-propagation is the spiritual life 
 of the homes that compose it, that no amount 
 of activities at the ends of the earth can com- 
 pensate for the deadening influence of neg- 
 lected homes, that no amount of diligence and 
 care in the gathering of fruit can compensate 
 for the impoverishing neglect of the roots of 
 the tree. A ministry makes its largest contri- 
 bution to a community or a country or the 
 world when it teaches effectually the divine 
 conception of a fatherhood and motherhood, 
 and when it vitalizes and deepens the sense of 
 parental responsibility. To accomplish this in 
 the case of even a single home “is to redeem 
 any ministry from the commonplace and to 
 open out perspectives of possibility which 
 stretch beyond our dreams.” 
 
 May God give us wisdom and grace to meet 
 the solemn obligation which rests upon us as 
 pastors of the parents, as guides and helpers 
 of those who are the God-appointed teachers 
 in the home! 
 
 Used by permission of Presbyterian Church, 
 U. S., Department of Christian Education and 
 Ministerial Relief, Louisville, Ky. 
 
 24 
 
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