USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The Religious Education Association : proceedings of the first annual convention, Chicago, February 10-12, 1903 > Part 9
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3. There is a new home. The old home, with its family room, evening lamp, regular life, and community of interests, has given place to a home in which the fam- ily are all together for the first time in the day at the evening meal, and then only for a brief hour, after which they scatter to their several engagements. A little boy was asked by a neighbor, as his father was leaving the house one morning, who that gentleman was, and he replied : "O. I don't know ; he's the man who stays here nights." This might well be a leaf from the actual home life in our cities. In some cases fathers and moth-
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ers too seldom see their children. Business claims their daylight hours; committee, board, or lodge meetings claim their evenings ; and so the fathers are unavoidably, as it would seem, away from home. The church and sun- dry organizations for social service or self-improvement leave the mothers little time for their own needy but uncomplaining households. The children have their own friends and social life, in which the parents have all too small a place and influence.
In any effort to solve our problem this far-reaching change in the home life, which has its bearing in so many directions, must be reckoned as one of the important factors.
4. The Sunday school must not be held responsible for the decline in family religious instruction. It is quite the fashion to charge the Sunday school with the sin of supplanting the home in the training of the child, and for evidence our attention is called to the growing promi- nence of the one and the simultaneous decline of the other. But it might be just as good logic to reverse the order of causal sequence and say that the church, noting the decline of family religion, developed and perfected the Sunday school as at least a partial remedy for the resulting evils. This, indeed, is the more common order of events. Rarely does one good influence supplant another and better influence, while not infrequently does it occur that as the one set of influences loses its efficacy and wanes, another set arises and carries forward the advancement of human interests with fresh vigor.
May it not be that there is comparatively slight causal connection between these two methods of religious in- struction, and that the rise of the one and the decline of the other are due to simultaneous but independent causes ? If this be the case, then the solution of our problem is not to be found in weakening the influence or degrading the position of the Sunday school in the interest of home training.
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5. The home is the whole pedagogical system in min- iature. Here are to be found the child in the beginning of his training, and the field for the exploitation of all kindergarten theories; and here is the sophomore in college, whom some educators are talking of gradua- ting. The father and mother are the president and the board of control and the whole faculty of instruction. This requires a constant change of methods and material of instruction and their adaptation to the rapid, the kaleidoscopic progress of the child from the cradle to college. You cannot in the home-nor anywhere for that matter-take the same course with the boy of ten and the boy of seventeen.
6. There is a considerable amount of religious and moral education obtained in the home, for which the home may be said to be indirectly responsible. There are a large number of religious newspapers, and a vast amount of religious matter in secular newspapers; and the sphere of influence for these papers is at home. There are innumerable books, professedly or actually religious, which through Sunday-school, parish, and other libraries, or by actual purchase, find their way into the home. This religious reading may be thought to a large extent poor in quality and worse in effect. Yet it may be safely said that its influence is on the whole good and potent. No one properly understands the problem of home religious education who does not give a large place to the power-the vast power, actual and potential -of the religious periodical and book press.
The causes which have worked for the decrease of parental instruction in religion have not wrought the same havoc with parental instruction in morals. Unques- tionably there is much moral training in the home. It may not be of the formal sort, not as deliberate in pur- pose nor as conspicuously labeled as was the older
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instruction ; but as real, as purposeful, as wholesome, and as resultful as any that has preceded. Truthfulness, sobriety, cleanness in speech, unselfishness, service, good manners, these and all other virtues are taught in Christian homes today as earnestly and possibly as effect- ively as in any other day. Sometimes, as we study the moral situation of the present, there comes the fear that our distinctively Christian ideals of virtue and conception
of right and duty are giving place to the Grecian. If such be the fact, then of course the moral training in the home must suffer a like deterioration. But this hardly enters into our present problem, and the fact remains to cheer us that the home is an active and potent force in the moral development of the children.
These considerations-the conspicuous absence of formal family religion, the new Sunday habits, the new home life, the fact that the Sunday school is not respon- sible for the neglect of religious training in the home, but may be an aid to it, the wide area of the home cur- riculum, the power actual and latent of the religious press for home religious training, and manifest moral education now actually given-these considerations at least must be kept prominently in mind in any attempt to solve our problem.
With these considerations before us, we now ask: How can we promote religious and moral education through the home ?
The influences which make for the answer to this question in life, and not in the library, are so varied, so subtle, so many, that one who has made the attempt to answer the question, not in his study only, but in his own home and the homes of others, has learned to speak with modesty and many misgivings. Nevertheless, certain general suggestions may be made with some confidence . in their practical value.
I. Let there be agitation. This important matter
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must be brought to the attention of Christian parents. They must be made to feel, and to feel keenly, their solemn and ever-present duty to teach their children. Their consciences must be awakened, their obligation must be made plain, their hearts must be deeply moved, and in every possible way and throughout their whole being they must be made to understand how to discharge this duty to their children and must be quickened to dis- charge it. Pastors must preach upon it ; church councils and conferences and assemblies must give heedful atten- tion to it; the religious press may well devote to it conspicuous space and forceful words ; conventions of Christian workers, such as this, must give it a dignified place in their programs.
It is a large part of the problem of religious educa- tion, and it must not be neglected by those charged with the religious education of the youth of our land. Par- ents must not neglect it, or pastors, or the officers in the local church, or the members of various ecclesiastical bodies. The imperative obligation to make religious education in the home real, vital, potent, rests upon par- ents in the first instance and then upon us all. The voice of duty must be heard above all other voices. Its mandates must be obeyed. Agitation will help to accomplish this.
We may not agree upon a program for this agitation. Some may think there ought to be a revival of the formal family religion of other generations, while others may feel that in the present conditions of family life this would be impossible, and still others may feel that the good results of this method of religious training were so mingled with ill results as to condemn the method. And so it might be with any other portion of the pro- gram. Personally I entertain certain views as to the methods that ought to be advocated. I have a convic- tion, for example, that the family altar ought to be
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erected in every home. I believe that gathering the household together at stated and frequent intervals for the reading of God's Word, the singing of Christian hymns, and the common prayer has an incalculable and incomparable result in the religious nurture of the chil- dren. There is nothing equal to it. Of course, it should be real, hearty, wholesome, formal without stiffness, gladsome without levity, for every member of the family, and a firmly fixed fact in the household economy. Not- withstanding the difficulties-apparently insuperable in many homes-and notwithstanding the objections, I have not the slightest doubt as to the practicability of the family altar for every home-if not on every day, certainly at some stated and regular time. Nor have I the slightest doubt as to its inestimable value.
Nevertheless that which I feel to be necessary at this time to insist upon is not the program, but the agitation. The need is great. The duty is clear. The welfare of the next generation, the religious progress of the world, the spiritual welfare of mankind wait upon the home's fidelity in the Christian nurture of the young.
Let everyone who appraises highly these great inter- ests set his heart thus to further them, and lift up his voice in season and out of season to call his Christian brethren to promote religious and moral education in the home.
2. Let the Sunday school be used as an agency for promoting home instruction. Efforts in this direction are now made, as for example with the home readings appointed for each day, which are unquestionably effect- ive in good results. These efforts ought to be extended in every available direction, until the Sunday school becomes an appreciable power in the nurture of the children, not only through its own immediate work, but also through its appreciable influence in the home educa- tion of the children.
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Here again there may be difference of opinion as to the program to be observed, and indeed many experi- ments may have to be made, not only for the work at large, but also for the particular school, before any really resultful method can be hit upon. The best method may be a changing method. Certain suggestions as to details occur to me. For example, the lesson-helps might make provision for this joint activity of home and school in the preparation of the lesson, a part of the lesson being prepared at home in the way of a subject to be studied up, or written answers to questions to be pre- pared, or a book to be read, or a short essay to be written.
Constant efforts should be made to impress both par- ent and teacher with the necessity of co-operation in the nurture of the child. The church might arrange for con- ferences between the teachers and the parents upon this subject. The home department, in its lesson, in its helps, and in its administration, might have as a prime object the promotion of the religious education of the children. It might lend itself in a most effective way by inspiring the parents to the careful instruction of their children, and by putting into their hands the equipment for giving it.
These are mere hints to indicate certain ways in which the Sunday school may possibly be utilized for promo- ting home instruction. The hints, I trust, will not obscure the main suggestion that the Sunday school offers a really valuable agency for advancing home training. Let the home understand that it is to co-operate with the school, and let the school understand that it is to exalt the home as an educational agency, and let both dis- charge their full duty to each other.
3. Let there be devised curricula for home Bible study and Bible teaching. Bible study never received the attention it now has. In the college, in the Christian
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associations, in the young people's societies, in the Sun- day school and in the home, there are earnest and effect- ive efforts in this direction, and these should fill our hearts with cheer and hope. Other of these efforts are to have the attention of this Convention; just now we are thinking of the home and its Bible study and teach- ing. "Disciplines," to speak pedagogically, are the desiderata here.
The American Institute of Sacred Literature has rendered exceptionally valuable service in this direction in its courses for Bible study adapted to all grades of ability and shades of personal desire. These courses, or others designed for the private home study of parents and the older members of the family, should be made a part of the educational equipment of every Christian church. The daily Bible readings arranged so that the whole Bible may be read in course within a definite period, used in many churches, is an effort in this direc- tion-a rather feeble effort, but not without its value. The home department, now being pushed by the Sunday- school organizations, is another effort in the same direc- tion which, excellent as it is, might be greatly improved in its value to the educational effectiveness of the home.
But in addition to these efforts there ought to be a distinct curriculum for home teaching as well as for home study. There is no reason why the two purposes should not be combined in one effort. For example, as the home teaching begins the education of the child, there ought to be provided for mothers a usable course of Bible lessons for the young children. This would be a series of Bible stories. There are now child's Bibles, Lives of Jesus for children, and books of Bible stories. These have varying degrees of merit; of the poorest it can doubtless be said that it is better than nothing, and of the best that it hardly meets the demands of the situ- ation with which we are confronted. But surely such a
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series of Bible stories could be prepared in the very words of the Bible, except where occasional departures from the words of Scripture were necessary in the inter- ests of clearness or brevity. One series might be made up of stories from the Old Testament, another from the life of Jesus, another from the lives of the apostles and the early church. These should be printed in the most attractive form of the modern children's books, with illus- trations. It should be part of the plan that the stories should be read and re-read to the child, and if possible by the child, until they are known by heart. Anyone with experience in reading to children knows that the familiar story, the story they have heard every day for a month, is the story of all others they want to hear on the first night of the next month. They never tire of a good story, and the Bible is full of good stories.
Another advance in the same direction should be made in the matter of hymns and prayers. There are certain well-known hymns of the church which every child nurtured in a Christian home ought to know, and there are certain forms of prayer of which the same may be said. Some of these, both hymns and prayers, are in the Bible, and some are in use in Christian churches. These ought to be put together in an available and attract- ive form for the use of mothers who should have their children commit them to memory.
You perceive that I am old-fashioned enough to believe that the teaching of objective truth is a function of the home. The pathway to freedom is a knowledge of the truth. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
We desire much the conversion of the children, but our desire is only to be accomplished through a knowl- edge of the truth as it is in Jesus Christ. I confess I do not have that fear of explicit forms of truth which is sometimes thought -mistakenly, I believe - to be incon-
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sistent with wise pedagogical methods. The antithesis is not between a creed and no creed, but between a good creed and a bad one. It is not the experience of the world that as a home swings away from a creed it swings nearer to God. I therefore believe that the formularies of our Christian doctrine to be found in Scripture, in hymns, in liturgies, and in creeds and catechism have their persisting value in the home instruction of the child. To teach objective truth must always remain a most effective method for the formation of character.
4. Let the home have Christian parents who know God and are under the power of his Spirit. "The best way to secure good health is to select your grandfather," and the best way for a child to obtain the wisest and most resultful home training is to be born into the society and under the transforming influence of a Christian mother and a Christian father. The daily life of a man who walks with God will bring the daily life of his child into the presence of God. The daily life of the woman who is a friend of Jesus will bring her children into the society of Jesus.
This piety must not be artificial, nor sentimental, nor intellectual, nor formal, nor supra-mundane, nor unmind- ful of the value of wise means. It must be all that it is possible for human piety to be-warm, thoughtful, sym- pathetic, unselfish, tactful, real, genuine. But what I am now saying is that there must be such piety. It is indispensable, if there is to be any effective rearing of the child in religion through the agency of the home.
The besetting sin of today is the leaving of God out of the account. The dangerous heresy of today is the notion that men may find God without Jesus Christ. The beginnings of both are to be found in the home, even Christian homes. Through the neglect by parents of the outward formalities of religion in the home, as seen in the family altar and a blessing at the table,
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through the more serious neglect of giving religious instruction, through the fatal neglect of showing in character and conduct to their children that they know God, that they regulate their lives by his will, that their supreme desire is to love the things he loves and hate the things that he hates, that Jesus Christ is their Savior, Friend, and Lord of Life-through this neglect the children grow up in the sin of sins and heresy of heresies ; God is not in their thoughts and Jesus Christ is not in their lives. The home where Christ is enthroned and God is known is the home in which moral and religious education is best promoted and brings forth its most perfect fruit.
REV. JEAN F. LOBA, D.D., PASTOR FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
It is well that in the preceding addresses attention has repeatedly been called to the sacredness of personality, for this fact lays emphasis on the sacredness of the family through which alone the individual is integrated in society. For man does not become directly a member of society, but mediately through the family. He is first a member of the family, and that becomes the unit of society. A quaint and fresh old writer of Geneva has said that every man sees the world over the threshold of his own shop. We may modify this by saying that every man must see the world over the threshold of his own home; for the family is not only the cradle of the human race, it is also the mightiest of the schools of humanity. It is the school of schools. Not only do children receive from parents their flesh and blood, their color and frame, but their spirits- not only the fibers of their bodies, but the very tone and temper of their souls. The habits of thought and speech formed in the home are more persistent than those they may learn under any other influence. The grammar spoken in the schools by the
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children is not that taught by the most careful and painstaking of teachers, but is generally that spoken with father and mother, with brother and sister; and all the efforts of the teacher to cultivate in the pupils a prac- tice of correct English, when the custom of the home is other than this, reaches but a little way. It is interest- ing in this connection to notice the fact that in the Swiss and German universities the lectures are generally given by the professors in the noblest tongues, in the purest French or German; but the moment the pupils turn from the lecture-room they speak to one another and to their teachers in the patois or dialect of the home, the street and the market-place. So persistent are the habits inculcated in the home that far into mature life and into different countries man betrays the character of the home whence he sprang. Families are the nucleated centers of civilized, or barbarous, forms of social life. They are the centers of civilization or of heathenism. What these are in the aggregate, society is.
We are coming to realize that it is almost useless to reach after and uplift men one by one in our slums; that if the slums are to be cleansed at all, it must be by creat- ing in them homes of purity and elevation in moral and mental life. We are coming to see that the character of the individual is largely but the expression of the char- acter of the family from which he came. It is for this reason that every effort is now being made to establish settlements as social centers in the wretchedness and density of our cities. They are the organized centers of home life and pure ideals. But the family is not only the school of character; it is also the very citadel of either virtue or vice, of Christianity or heathenism. Our missionaries, both at home and in foreign lands, are coming to feel that churches and schools are of them- selves insufficient to create a new civilization, and that they must be supplemented by homes of the highest
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Christian ideals. A Hindu gentleman, educated in the Christian College at Madras, recently said, "If you wish to reach India, you must reach our women and our homes. Until Christianity lays its hand upon wives and mothers it cannot hope to reach the men." This truth is as applicable to our own as to any other land. The home is the citadel of our civilization.
One of the most instructive facts of history is found in the conditions which were discovered in the valleys of Piedmont and Dauphiny in France. Here for centuries subsisted a people of the simplest character and of the loftiest morality and piety. They had neither schools, libraries, nor churches, outside of the family. Through- out the Middle Ages, during the chaos and confusion, the feuds and wars between state and church, the storms raged about these secluded valleys; politics changed, ecclesiastical power waned. But when the storm began to lull at the opening of the Reformation, here were found centers of life and light which had been kept untouched either by the political ambitions or the moral corruptions which had invaded every other part of Europe. The families of the Waldenses had proved to be the cradle and the citadel of the simplest faith and the purest morals, the heart and the inspiration of which had been the Bible.
We hear these days very much about the power of education. The school, the college, and the university are at the front; but Herbert Spencer in his recent book, which he tells us is to be his last, calls our attention to the utter failure of education, as it is now conducted, to create any high and dominant ideals. He says he is weary of the cry, " educate, educate, educate !" Is this not due to the fact that the source of our social and national life is not in the school, but in the home? Here is formed that which is more precious than any intellectual treasure or the treasures of the library-character, without
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which no people can long exist. But when we come to the question of reaching the home with religious and moral instruction, we meet with serious obstacles. The very sacredness of the family, which we dare not violate and must protect, is itself a bulwark against our efforts to reach and change its ideals.
And yet the question is not hopeless -it must not be hopeless. If the highest civilization is to be reached and saved, the family must be reached. And already many instrumentalities are being employed to carry even into the sacred precincts of the home the saving power of a pure religion and a high ethical ideal. Home cir- cles are being formed, home schools organized. The church and Chautauqua circles are reaching the families of our land, and are clearly efforts toward accomplish- ing the thing which most of all needs to be accom- plished. It is vain for us to expect that our boys and girls will come from homes of low, material, commercial ideals with noble aims. And we are discovering that the slums are not the only sources whence our prisons and penitentiaries are being recruited, but that too frequently homes of so-called culture and refinement send forth sons and daughters without due moral and religious training into the well-nigh irresistible temptations of the world.
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