GIFT OF 
 
 The Argronaut 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 ITS PRACTICAL 
 
 RELIGIOUS AND ETHICAL 
 
 FOUNDATIONS 
 
 BY 
 ROBERT O. LAWTON 
 
 Chair of English in Lander College 
 Author of ''The Greatest of These," etc. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH COMPANY 
 1914 
 

 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 , FRENCH &> COMPANY 
 
TO 
 MY DAUGHTER 
 
 MARY BUCK LAWTON 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I HOME, THE CORNER STONE ... 1 
 
 II WHY PEOPLE MARRY 5 
 
 III WHOM TO MARRY 13 
 
 IV THE WEDDING DAY AND AFTER . . 20 
 
 V A HAPPY MARRIAGE: SOME ESSEN- 
 TIALS 28 
 
 VI A HAPPY MARRIAGE: MORE ESSEN- 
 TIALS 35 
 
 VII A HAPPY MARRIAGE: STILL MORE 
 
 ESSENTIALS 42 
 
 VIII FATHERHOOD 52 
 
 IX MOTHERHOOD 60 
 
 X --" AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD 
 
 THEM" 71 
 
HOME, THE CORNER STONE 
 
 The home is the center around which cluster 
 the holiest and highest associations. The idea 
 of home is invested with rare beauty and the 
 thought of home is charged with tenderest emo- 
 tions. Mother, home, and heaven are the most 
 beautiful words in our wide reaching language, 
 and the three are segments of a sacred circle. 
 The home instinct has planted itself deep into 
 the universal heart and the home idea has 
 wrought itself permanently into the fibers of 
 society. Every worthy young man dreams a 
 few dreams and sees the outlines of a few splen- 
 did visions, and one of these is a dream and a 
 vision of a home built upon the foundations of 
 a noble love. The dream stirs his heart to finer 
 issues and fires his soul with loftier ambitions, 
 and life is enriched by the sheer force of the 
 home idea and the dream of home. The char- 
 acter of the homes of a nation shapes the char- 
 acter and the destiny of that nation, for no 
 nation can rise higher than its individual homes. 
 Verily, the home is the fountain of a nation's 
 life, even as Niagara Falls finds its source in 
 
F A HOME 
 
 the Great Lakes. If we would build a great 
 nation we must first build great homes ; if we 
 would reform the politics of a country, we must 
 first reform the character of the homes that 
 produce the politicians and the voters ; if we 
 would realize the sociological dream of the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, we must proceed by the 
 way of the home; if we would reconstruct the 
 great business world and inject into it more un- 
 selfish methods and humanitarian ideals, we must 
 go back to the home. The political, the socio- 
 logical, the business world, all departments of 
 human activity, are merely projections and 
 logical expressions of the one fundamental and 
 abiding source, and this source shapes the form 
 and paints the color of the various ramifica- 
 tions of human thought and human conduct. 
 
 Occupying as it does the pivotal point in so- 
 ciety and creating as it does the modes of con- 
 duct and forms of thought of the body politic, 
 the home becomes a subject of transcendent im- 
 portance and engrossing interest alike to the 
 pulpit and the press, the school and the moral 
 reformer and even the lawmaker may enter 
 in with sane and wholesome laws, protecting the 
 right and emphasizing the sanctity of the home. 
 The pulpit, in the very nature of the case, can 
 exert the greatest influence of all the agencies 
 from without, and after the pulpit the press. 
 But the pulpit will never accomplish its ap- 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 3 
 
 pointed task nor fulfill its divine mission in this 
 vital need by investing itself with a conven- 
 tional, prudish and prim squeamishness, and 
 wrapping about itself the swaddling clothes of 
 mock modesty. It must speak out bold and 
 clear. It must rise above the evil-begotten 
 whisperings and criticisms of a few prissy, 
 squeamish, meddlesome members of every con- 
 gregation from Dan^Jbo Beersheba. It must 
 probe into the inner life of home and heart, and 
 finding the fault and the failure, fearlessly 
 administer the remedy and lay down gospel 
 standards of home purity, home duties, home 
 sacrifices, and home activities. This does not 
 mean that the pulpit must degenerate into a 
 busy body and play the role of an indelicate 
 meddler in the private affairs of men and 
 women, but it does mean that the mission of the 
 pulpit extends to the utmost bounds of human 
 thought and human life, and especially to the 
 very source of life. This being true, it is not 
 only a God given right, but a divinely com- 
 manded duty to regulate the conduct and shape 
 the thought and mold the character of indi- 
 vidual homes in love, in firmness, in judgment, 
 and in statesmanship. 
 
 In our modern age, when ideals are changing, 
 new thought is the order of the day, and a cer- 
 tain laxness and looseness characterize much of 
 present day home ethics and conduct, it is well 
 
4 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 for us to take stock, to see to it that the sacred- 
 ness of our homes is kept inviolate, and to hold 
 fast to at least a few lofty ideals and tall dreams 
 of what constitutes a home. This is an old sub- 
 ject, but like sunrise and sunset and starshine 
 and a great mother's love, it is ever new. 
 
II 
 
 WHY PEOPLE MARRY 
 
 We are born, marry, and die these are the 
 three supreme events in life. We have no choice 
 in the first and last; we have in the second. It 
 is ours to choose a life-mate, a help-mate. 
 True, many fail to win their choice, but it is still 
 theirs to choose, and after all, it is better to 
 fasten our eyes .on an unattainable white ideal 
 and go through life with a hungry heart than 
 to make an ignoble choice founded upon lower 
 motives. It is better to strive for a rare prize 
 and fail than to contend for a second rate prize 
 and win. The zest of life is in the race as 
 well as in the goal. 
 
 What shall we choose? Many, far too many^ 
 choose money. Let us see for a moment what 
 is involved in the choice of money. Love is in- 
 sulted and dethroned. The coterie of tender as- 
 sociations that cluster about the rare form of 
 love is outraged. The idyllic and poetic are 
 swept out of life. Materialism, selfish-souled, 
 ruthless-hearted materialism, enters in as king 
 and queen of the home. Self respect is lost. 
 The finer senses are blunted. The beautiful 
 5 
 
6 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 dreams once entertained as royal guests come 
 back, flotsam and jetsam. The soul shrinks and 
 shrivels. The heart loses its early lilt and 
 bound and grows sick and faint. Home life re- 
 solves itself into a miserable series of hollow 
 mockeries and barren forms masquerading in the 
 guise of eternal verities. Money is a splendid 
 thing, an absolutely necessary medium of ex- 
 change for the perfection and perpetuation of 
 all phases and spheres of human activity, and 
 when it is rightly used it becomes a powerful 
 instrument in the hands of God to carry forth 
 the divine plans and consummate the dreams of 
 Christ touching the redemption of the world. 
 And moreover, money in the home lends a cer- 
 tain dignity and relish to the home, provided it 
 is servant and not master and provided it play 
 no part in the marriage pact. But when a 
 woman is so swayed by the almighty dollar and 
 so swept away by the subtle currents of 
 materialism as to sell her body and soul for 
 money, then money becomes a conscienceless, 
 brutal, shameless instrument employed by Satan 
 to further his diabolical plans. What shall it 
 profit a woman if she gain the whole world of 
 money bought things and lose her soul to a 
 man so base-born as to buy the soul of a woman 
 with dollars? Verily, she hath chosen the evil 
 part and drawn her lines in hard places. And 
 a man who marries solely for money has no 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 7 
 
 clearer idea of the epic in life than a prairie 
 chicken has of the beauty of the Grand Canon 
 or of the grandeur of Niagara. 
 
 Many marry for prestige of one kind or an- 
 other. Comes along an ambitious youth with a 
 commercialistic dream or so and scant supply of 
 prestige and power, who sees in a certain match 
 an opportunity to further his interests and 
 increase his prestige along the lines of his 
 cherished dreams. Forgetful of the sacredness 
 and the seriousness of marriage, forgetful of 
 the sin against love, forgetful of the certain 
 penalties of a loveless marriage, he rushes into 
 an unholy alliance in order to gain prestige and 
 lay hold of power. Another man has amassed 
 a fortune, gained power, and made a name, but 
 is limited in his supply of good blood. He is 
 not happy because of his social limitations, but 
 he has the money and the prestige necessary 
 to purchase the commodity that is so commonly 
 for sale, and straightway he marries him a wife, 
 with name and lineage and another miserable 
 couple launches another empty home to the tune 
 of another series of hollow mockeries and barren 
 conventionalities. For prestige, for power, for 
 name, for position, men and women are selling 
 their bodies and their souls and living together 
 in the sacred name of love under the roofs of 
 houses they call homes. Small wonder that 
 there are so many home failures. 
 
8 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 Some men choose beauty, personal appear- 
 ance, charm of personality. A man meets a 
 woman who fascinates him by her beautiful face 
 and perfect form. He is swept away by the 
 tides of a ceiling-high passion that passes away 
 with the passing of spring. Losing sight of the 
 fundamentals, forgetful of the realities that last 
 for all time, and strangely oblivious to the 
 higher call, he plunges recklessly into a wild cat 
 scheme that must needs end in wasted, shrivelled, 
 shrunken manhood and womanhood or in a 
 modern fashionable divorce. This is not a stric- 
 ture on beauty. Nothing short of the hand of 
 God could fashion a lily, a rose, a morning star, 
 and a beautiful woman. But a rose fades and 
 a beautiful woman loses her bloom of youth, and 
 the beauty that is destined to last but a handful 
 of fleeting years. And what is more tragic, 
 more passing pitiable than a wrinkled brow, a 
 bent form, and a spent youth without the leaven 
 of a pure love and the abiding light that shines 
 in a great affection? 
 
 Then, a large number of people marry for 
 mere convenience. A woman is nearing thirty 
 or perchance has unfortunately passed that 
 dreaded age. The consciousness of possible 
 single misery dawns upon her. She has been 
 taught by her sex from time immemorial that it 
 is a disgrace to be an old maid. She has a 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 9 
 
 horror of the state. It haunts her. What zwll 
 her fellow women think of her inability to win a 
 husband? Her pride is wounded too. Other 
 women get married; why can't she? And so, 
 haunted by these ancestral fears and harassed 
 by these feminine doubts, she straightway wilts 
 when almost any old thing comes along an3 
 says : " Wilt thou ? " I have known really 
 great women fall victims to this absurd, foolish, 
 and unreasonable fear. How much more prefer- 
 able to be a single woman living a beautiful, 
 useful, and rich life than married to a stick, a 
 corn stalk, or a negative quantity dressed in 
 pants and living in a state of physical, mental, 
 and spiritual innocuous desuetude. 
 
 Another woman wants a home. She needs a 
 home. Nobody seems especially to want her. 
 She is first in no life. The future is uninviting. 
 She marries for a home. Even the love idealist 
 must grant that she might be guilty of greater 
 weaknesses. A man has lost his wife. His life 
 lies ahead of him. Perchance there are little 
 children. He marries again. Some censure 
 him ; others approve. The love idealist holds 
 that love is love forevermore, that the door of 
 the heart is locked and no other can enter in, 
 that the altar fires must be kept burning until 
 the perfect day of a reunion under celestial con- 
 ditions. But all will agree that an old, broken 
 
10 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 down, spent, and practically useless person has 
 no more business marrying again than a church 
 mouse has with a silk hat. 
 
 What motive should govern the choice of a 
 husband or wife? This is easy to answer. 
 Love above all else. Indeed, marriage without 
 love is immoral. A loveless marriage is a hell 
 on earth; but a marriage for love alone makes 
 home a heaven. Love is essential. There is so 
 much to give up and so much to take on. A 
 woman must leave her home, surrender her name, 
 refrain from many forms of pleasure she loved 
 before the light that never was on sea or land 
 broke in upon her soul. Then she must sub- 
 merge her life into the life of her husband. She 
 must fall as well as rise with him, share his 
 defeats as well as his victories, and bear a thou- 
 sand little hardships that greet her ever and 
 anon in the normal workings of a normal home. 
 Nothing but love will tide her over the sea of 
 matrimony. But love will, for love suffereth long 
 and is kind. Love never faileth. Love glori- 
 fies life and dignifies the commonplace. Love 
 gives all and forgives all. There come times 
 when money loses its charm, when prestige is no 
 longer appreciated, when beauty fades away, 
 and when a marriage for convenience grows 
 monotonous, because of changed conditions. 
 But there never comes a time when love grows 
 tired, or ugly, or weary. And love never grows 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 11 
 
 old, because true love fastens its eyes upon the 
 things that do not pass away, but rather grow 
 richer and more beautiful with the passage of 
 the years. Age only softens and enriches the 
 soul. When two people love each other's souls, 
 then the passing years merely serve to bind them 
 closer together with the golden chain of love. 
 In any marriage founded upon anything less 
 than an abiding soul passion, there is at least 
 a possibility of a failure, for in every home oc- 
 casions and circumstances arise to bind closer 
 together those who love or separate with an 
 ever widening gulf those who love not. Love 
 is not dependent upon what the object loved 
 possesses, or can do, but is its own excuse for 
 being and loves for reasons far above possessions 
 or power or fame. And love covers a multitude 
 of shortcomings in the beloved object by ideal- 
 izing it, that which is loved being not the man 
 or the woman as they really are but an object- 
 ified idealization. And no other force or power 
 can accomplish this feat save love. 
 
 If two people of good character, congenial in 
 temperament, blood, and tastes, and old enough 
 to know their own minds and to recognize the 
 soul element in love, are persuaded that they 
 love each other with a quenchless passion, they 
 shall consummate their love in spite of the pro- 
 test of friends and in spite of adverse circum- 
 stances. A woman must leave her father and 
 
12 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 her mother and cleave unto her husband. She 
 is primarily concerned in the marriage. 
 Parents have no right to choose husbands and 
 wives for their sons and daughters. It is theirs 
 to object when the character of the person con- 
 cerned is vicious or when circumstances are such 
 that beyond the shadow of a doubt the marriage 
 would be a calamity. But to choose for their 
 children is beyond their prerogative. Love is 
 a subtle, unaccountable, indefinable, and elusive 
 thing. What does a parent know about the' 
 qualities that will win the heart of a girl? This 
 thing of a mother making matches for her 
 daughters by taking advantage of the maternal 
 influence, and thereby irrevocably fixing her 
 daughter's future life for all time, is not only 
 serious business, but often a vicious interference 
 with a God-given right. And this thing of ob- 
 jecting to a man of high character and moral 
 fibre on account of some 2x4 pusillanimous 
 squeamish whim is monumental in its selfishness 
 and colossal in its unwisdom. But in this age 
 with so many light, frivolous, frisky, thought- 
 less, modern girls this God-given right is so 
 sinned against by the girl herself, that without 
 unusual discernment, it is almost impossible for 
 a mother to know when her girl is possessed of 
 any high degree of soul-power. But I am 
 speaking of sensible girls, not typical modern 
 featherweights. The Lord have mercy upon 
 them, for they need it. 
 
Ill 
 
 WHOM TO MARRY 
 
 It may be of help to some to give a concrete 
 picture of the type of man and the type of 
 woman essential to an ideal home. This does 
 not mean that no home is great unless it con- 
 forms to this standard, nor yet that this is the 
 only type of man and woman capable of making 
 an ideal home. But these qualities or at least 
 similar and kindred qualities are necessary for 
 the largest and highest expression of home life 
 and home making. In choosing a man for your 
 husband, my friend, remember first of all that 
 the man you are about to marry is going to be 
 the father of your children. Are you willing for 
 that? If you are, then you want to make sure 
 that his character is above reproach, that his 
 spirit is big and white, and that his heart is 
 generous and true. You want to ascertain 
 whether he has been good to his mother and 
 sister and how he treats dumb and helpless ani- 
 mals. Then you have a right to know his at- 
 titude to sacred things, his conception of God, 
 his attitude to the Church, how he conducts 
 himself in relation to holy things of every shade 
 13 
 
14 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 and description. A young man who mocks God 
 and scoffs at religion and makes fun of the 
 ministry and laughs at holy things is funda- 
 mentally at fault, and with such your home will 
 be built upon a foundation of sand which will 
 be swept away by the first storm of adversity. 
 I do not mean to imply that nothing but a pious, 
 saintly, sanctified Church fiend can make a suc- 
 cessful husband. On the contrary, this very 
 kind sometimes fails more egregiously than the 
 out-and-out non Christians. Some folks say he 
 is so good that his thoughts are continually 
 soaring above the earth, and as the home is 
 built upon the earth, he makes a poor husband. 
 He would be a greater success in a house not 
 made with hands. But do not believe this for a 
 moment. All is not goodness that smacks of 
 piety. 
 
 The best man makes the best husband. 
 The most beautiful homes are those in which 
 dwell men and women who are holiest of heart 
 and grandest in soul. The religion of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ is peculiarly adapted to the home. 
 There above every other place in life religion is 
 needed and Christianity counts for most. 
 Show me a home whose inmates are genuine fol- 
 lowers of the Man of Galilee, and I will show 
 you a home where love is enthroned, peace has 
 its abode, kindness is a constant visitor, tender- 
 ness is practiced, and happiness knows no 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 15 
 
 bounds. The followers of the Son of God are 
 home makers. 
 
 Where there is faith 
 
 There is love. 
 
 Where there is love 
 
 There is Peace. 
 
 Where there is Peace 
 
 There is God. 
 
 Where there is God 
 
 There is no need. 
 
 Therefore^ If the man you love is *v 
 you are thrice blessed. He will render you 
 TTappy if not for your sake, for Christ's sake, 
 for Christians have a way of trying to make . 
 people happy for Christ's sake. If your pro! L/> 
 spective drinks, you will do well to let him re-l 
 main where he is, unless you feel your life work\ 
 to be a drunkard's slave and a missionary to 
 a beast. He will insist that he is going to stop. 
 And he may while he is your sweetheart. And 
 you will be flattered. And you will very likely 
 marry him in spite of the stare of the wise and 
 the world's derision. And in a sense you will 
 be doing a big, heroic, brave thing, an idealistic 
 thing. But you will also be doing a silly thing, 
 for unless your husband is thoroughly converted, 
 
 and_becomes a gpnm'np fnllnwpr nf +>IP gfqi'n, 
 
 JesJChristr"he will return to his bottle in spite 
 of the war of elements, the wreck of matter, 
 the crash of worlds, and your copious tears. 
 
16 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 Few forces short of a big slice of old time re- 
 ligion will finally and permanently save a 
 drunkard. And you had better be careful about 
 these men who think a social drink the thing, 
 for social drinking has sent more men to the 
 devil than you care to believe. 
 
 Do not marry a crank on any subject. He 
 will make you unhappy. If you are not a 
 genius plus two dreams, he will prize his fad 
 more than he does you. He is warped, twisted, 
 crooked, contorted, and unbalanced, therefore 
 is not normal, and being abnormal, will make 
 an unsuccessful husband. And you should be- 
 ware a man whose dreams hover around flesh 
 pots. Flesh pots are dangerous. A man misses 
 the glory of the stars when he keeps his eyes 
 fastened on flesh pots. And, if you are really 
 a great woman, your married life will be un- 
 endurable without an occasional joy ride of the 
 soul among the stars. You want a man grand 
 in soul ; sweet of nature ; pure of heart ; big in 
 spirit ; true to a few abiding verities ; strong in 
 principle ; refined in tastes ; gentle in his strength 
 and strong in his gentleness ; capable of fine 
 sweeps of primal emotions but constrained in 
 his expression thereof: moved to infinite reaches 
 of tenderness by sufficient cause, but free from 
 effeminacy ; loving great music and great books 
 and beautiful flowers without being a crank 
 about any ; free from any marks of laziness and 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 17 
 
 lack of ambition, for such things maketh the 
 heart of a great wife sick; and loving his wife 
 more than all else on earth this is the sort of 
 man you want for a husband if you are going to 
 make an ideal home. 
 
 And this man should not marry a typical 
 modern girl. She is a study. Her name is 
 legion. Her tribe multiplies all too fast. She 
 lives in cities generally, but the germ has 
 penetrated certain country districts. She is 
 a bunch of frills and furbelows and finery. She 
 is lightweight and fantastic. Her clothes gen- 
 erally cost more than she is worth, and some- 
 times more than her father is worth. She lives 
 on excitement and engagements and candy. 
 This young lady may evolve into a woman, but 
 all evidences and circumstances point to the 
 contrary, because she habitually, willfully, and 
 deliberately engages in such spiritually demor- 
 alizing pleasures and pastimes that her higher 
 nature is quenched, her seriousness of purpose 
 thwarted, her finer emotions atrophied, and her 
 whole nature shriveled and shrunken. To her 
 high society is a full-grown god: to her several 
 engagements at one and the same time with as 
 many men is a brilliant achievement; to her 
 a dance until twilight on the wrong side of the 
 day and much popularity at said dance is a 
 high spot in the march of progress; to her a 
 morning nap ending promptly at ten o'clock 
 
18 THE MAKING OP A HOME 
 
 while her tired mother (who, by the way, is 
 more tired than sensible, else she would train 
 her children differently) wears herself out and 
 causes her husband to wish he were worn out 
 to her this is " awfully cute." The modern 
 girl and high society are conditioned one upon 
 the other. They could not thrive apart. They 
 are the cause and the continuation of each other. 
 High society is a selfish, narrow, thirsty, god- 
 less, conscienceless monster, feeding and fatten- 
 ing upon the souls of silly, sentimental, pleasure- 
 loving, selfish, prideful, and painfully light- 
 weight young folks, whose brains, if stewed 
 down and packed into the head of an English 
 sparrow, said English sparrow wouldn't have 
 sense enough to get out of a shower of rain. 
 In all of our praying let us pray fervently and 
 devoutly to be delivered from a typical, light- 
 weight, modern, high society woman, and let us 
 pray that the good Lord may deliver them from 
 themselves. 
 
 She must think more of a heart than a hat 
 and less of a bank note than a soul value. Your 
 wife should know that she loves you more than 
 she ever could love any other man and she 
 must be capable of loving you so much that 
 every other consideration in life, whether of dol- 
 lars or fame, pleasure or dress, luxury or ease, 
 resolves itself into a consuming, transforming 
 passion for the man she loves, passing in music 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 19 
 
 out of sight, melting into the scale of love, 
 swelling the one, eternal, abiding, absorbing love 
 of her life. (Then, of course, if you fail to 
 give her all the incidentals, provided you can, 
 and she would relish them, you are an ingrate.) 
 You do not want your wife actually to give up 
 anything or everything for you, but you want 
 to know that she is made of the sort of stuff 
 to do it, provided it were necessary. She 
 should be a woman of rare spirit ; spotless soul ; 
 crystalline honor ; lily -pure heart ; sweet nature ; 
 beautiful character; a quenchless thirst after 
 righteousness ; an abiding allegiance to the 
 beautiful and the true; an exquisite refinement 
 of sympathy; a triumphant resolve to conquer 
 adversity and misfortune ; a passion for mother- 
 hood ; vast sweeps of compassion and pity ; a 
 burning hatred of evil and sham and baseness ; 
 a rare appreciation of the aesthetic; and a 
 peace that is born of daily fellowship and com- 
 munion with God. With two such people as 
 principals in a home, life will be highly worth 
 living, the Christ will be a frequent visitor, the 
 whole community will be blessed by the gracious 
 currents of life that flow from it, and those who 
 enter will go away refreshed in spirit and lifted 
 in soul. Such homes are the dreams after 
 which the idealists are reaching, but they will 
 never be realized until such qualities or kindred 
 qualities are found in the makers of homes. 
 
IV 
 THE WEDDING DAY AND AFTER 
 
 Marriage is a beautiful conception, a noble 
 institution, a divinely approved custom. It be- 
 gins with the idyllic union in the Garden of 
 Eden and will be in force until the last vestige 
 of human life is swept from the face of the 
 earth. Marriage is sacred in the sight of God. 
 There is nothing holier on earth than the blend- 
 ing of two kindred souls and the binding of two 
 kindred spirits in the holy bonds of wedlock. 
 The marriage ceremony legalizes the union, but 
 the real marriage ceremony is performed in the 
 celestial cathedral with God as priest, the angels 
 as audience, and the choir invisible rendering 
 the wedding march. That is, if two people fol- 
 low the Christ as nearly as possible and look to 
 God for guidance and direction in both large 
 and small things. Surely God will lead us in 
 this the most important step in life if we trust 
 Him. Why not? All marriages are not made 
 in heaven for the simple reason that so many 
 people shut God out of their lives, but if we 
 trusted Him as we should, all marriages would 
 be made in heaven. But that does not mean 
 20 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 21 
 
 that God would do everything, any more than 
 He runs His Church on earth. It simply 
 means that under the leadership of God we 
 would be enabled to choose a God-given soul- 
 mate, and the happiness and peace and success 
 of our home would be insured. 
 
 When people truly and genuinely love each 
 other and the primal, elemental powers of the 
 ^ soul are brought to play in their love, then in 
 the highest sense they are already married, for 
 the marriage of souls is a greater and grander 
 conception than the legal ceremony. The soul 
 is the summwm bonum of human life. It stands 
 alone as the only abiding entity in the whole 
 sweep of created entities. It is in reality of the 
 same substance as God, for in our souls we are 
 fashioned like unto Him. The body passes 
 away with the passage of a few fleeting years. 
 Therefore, when two souls marry, the ceremony 
 is more far reaching and vital than when a 
 preacher pronounces them man and wife. Can 
 the preacher's saying " I pronounce you man 
 and wife " make the woman you love any more 
 the soul of your soul? A number of things _ 
 might break the legal ceremony, but the cere- 
 mony of the soul is eternal. Those whom God 
 hath joined together man cannot put asunder. 
 But in the very nature of the case the legal 
 ceremony is not to be minimized. It plays its 
 part; likewise the soul. They are comple- 
 
22 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 mentary. Neither can live without the other. 
 A mere legal marriage is a travesty, a miserable 
 mockery ; a mere soul union is a transgression 
 of human and divine law, and invites alike the 
 disapproval of man and the wrath of God. 
 This being the case, an engagement becomes in 
 a sense as sacred as a marriage. This fact 
 needs to be stressed in these times of broken be- 
 trothals and lightly contracted engagements. 
 In society today an engagement with many 
 young men and women means no more than a 
 promise to go joy riding next week. This does 
 very well among birds of a feather, men and 
 women whose souls are so shrunken by the con- 
 tracting influences of modern society life that 
 they are no longer capable of a grand passion. 
 But when one of these burnt out, warped, twisted 
 hybrids comes into contact with a man or a 
 woman whose heart is potential and whose soul 
 is capable of rare sweeps of love, then a lightly 
 contracted and an equally lightly broken en- 
 gagement becomes a grave thing. Indeed, there 
 is such a possibility as a broken heart with a 
 broken engagement and a broken heart is no 
 spectacle to call forth laughter but rather a 
 sight to weep over. Some young people pride 
 themselves upon the number of hearts they can 
 break. (God have mercy upon their souls!) 
 But a broken heart means a broken spirit, and 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 23 
 
 a broken spirit means a withered life, and a 
 withered life means a lost life, therefore the 
 heart breaker in a sense becomes a grim, vicious, 
 heinous reality, a hellish instrument in the hands 
 of an irresponsible, inflated, small-souled, hard- 
 hearted, canary-brained being, causing clouded 
 vision, sleepless nights, dreary days, and ex- 
 quisite pain. When people plight their troth 
 each to other, they should regard the promise 
 the most serious and sacred of all the promises 
 of life, unless it be a foolish or a wrong promise, 
 and their loyalty to each other should be as 
 true and as binding as if they were indeed and 
 in truth husband and wife. They should natur- 
 ally prefer their society to that of others, and 
 it is indeed a passing strange type of man or 
 woman who craves the society of other women 
 and other men after they become engaged, and 
 not only are loath to give up old friends but 
 are not happy unless they can keep them dan- 
 gling until the wedding day is actually in sight. 
 This is a phenomenon of human nature which 
 resolves itself into an enigma and refuses to be 
 analyzed by the normal, average mind of mortal 
 man. How can our homes be great centers of 
 character building and soul culture when so 
 many of them are built upon such flimsy, slight, 
 sandy, mushy foundations? As soon expect 
 grapes to grow from thorns and figs from this- 
 
24 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 ties, the Ethiopian to change his color and the 
 leopard his spots, as to expect great results from 
 such sorry beginnings. 
 
 The wedding day should be the greenest 
 memory in after life. Around it should cluster 
 the tenderest, the most sacred associations and 
 memories. There is nothing to be afraid of if 
 there is perfect love, perfect trust, and perfect 
 faith and if these elements are lacking there 
 had better be no wedding day until they are 
 forthcoming, for single misery is preferable 
 to double torment. The wedding ceremony is a 
 sacred thing, and the arrangements for the oc- 
 casion should be in keeping therewith. Sim- 
 plicity of taste and simplicity of performance 
 should be the dominant note. This does not 
 mean that handsome clothes and even a complex 
 array of attendants should be debarred, but it 
 does mean that a gaudy, showy, thrilling, un- 
 necessarily expensive, and tasteless wedding is 
 a sacrilege and a sin, and the contractors are 
 selling their birthrights for a mess of pottage 
 by converting the most sacred occasion of their 
 lives into a free-for-all show to win the applause 
 of a wondering, jealous, envious, delighted 
 gathering of onlookers who would go and 
 straightway do likewise if they could afford 
 it. 
 
 When two people have loved, won, and mar- 
 ried each other, there is a temptation to rest 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 25 
 
 on their oars, to let up in their efforts to please, 
 to hold each other's love. It is so natural to 
 think they " have got " each other. The 
 preacher pronounced them man and wife, there- 
 fore there is no danger of either losing the other. 
 But this is false reasoning and a grave mistake. 
 Nearly any two people can hold each other's 
 love and each other several times a week 
 in a parlor, dressed in good clothes and a planet's 
 distance away from the work and worries and 
 cares and common-place affairs of life. When 
 they see each other the circumstances are ideal, 
 the environment propitious, and the halo of 
 romance and perchance the mystery and the 
 poetry of night are wrapped about them as a 
 rare, beautiful garment. There is nothing to 
 do but love. But wait until after the wedding 
 when real life greets you, when the eternal com- 
 monplace speaks to you persistently, when the 
 mystery and the poetry of night resolve them- 
 selves into the common open-eyed day with its 
 round of prosaic duties and its seeming lack 
 of poetry and star shine and star dust. If you 
 are not very careful and if you are not abid- 
 ingly in love with the soul of your husband, 
 when you look at your husband at table three 
 times a day he may seem just an ordinary, 
 every day human being instead of the dream- 
 like angelic being you idealized him to be in the 
 days and nights called halcyon. And if your 
 
26 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 love is founded upon anything less than the 
 soul, you may wake up to find that your wife 
 is only a woman with a woman's faults and 
 failures and not the exquisitely fashioned crea- 
 ture (the pattern of whom is forever lost) you 
 idealized her to be. While the temptation to 
 lapse after marriage is great, the real reasons 
 for being more watchful and more continually 
 attractive in the eyes of each other are greater 
 than before marriage. Your wife may not 
 leave you it is highly probable she will not, 
 especially if there are children but you can 
 lose the love of her heart and you can lose the 
 loyalty and allegiance of her soul and what 
 do you want with a woman whose heart does 
 not thrill with an abiding love for you and whose 
 soul is not stirred and fired by a great passion 
 for you? 
 
 Most people who are happily married are apt 
 to think others are likewise happily married, 
 and vice versa. But in reality there are too 
 few ideal homes. How many homes have you 
 known that were characterized by perfect love, 
 perfect congeniality, perfect harmony, perfect 
 understanding, and perfect happiness? Of 
 course, everybody is lovely and harmonious 
 and wreathed in smiles when you pay a short 
 visit to a home, but that is not knowing the 
 character and the complexion of a home. The 
 real home is the life that is lived day after day 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 27 
 
 and night after night when there is no strange 
 eye to look on and no visitor for whom appear- 
 ances must be kept up. Perfect love, congenial- 
 ity, harmony, understanding, and happiness 
 are far too rare in the real home, not the home 
 life that is presented to the casual visitor. 
 But God evidently meant homes to be happy 
 and successful, else He had not launched them. 
 There are certain fixed laws governing happi- 
 ness and success in marriage, even as there are 
 fixed laws governing the movements of stars and 
 ocean tides, and ideal marriages are condi- 
 tioned upon the observance and the practice of 
 certain requirements even as growing crops and 
 flowers are conditioned upon sunshine and rain. 
 These will be stated and elaborated in the fol- 
 lowing chapters. 
 
A HAPPY MARRIAGE: SOME 
 ESSENTIALS 
 
 1. As already remarked, love is an absolute 
 necessity for an ideal relationship between hus- 
 band and wife. A home without love is as a 
 ship without a rudder, Niagara without the 
 Great Lakes, a rainbow without the influence of 
 the sun. As well try to strike divine music 
 from a harp out of tune as to try to establish 
 a great marital relationship without a great 
 love. The greatest artist could not make music 
 on a banjo that would stir the soul in such 
 fashion that time and place would be forgotten 
 in a sort of divine ecstasy of delight, neither 
 can two people, tho individually strong in char- 
 acter and grand in soul, project a beautiful, 
 ideal home life without the pregnant foundation 
 of love. Love is the fulfilling of marriage. 
 Love is life and life is love, and nowhere is this 
 truer than in the home. Love is a miracle. It 
 does not behave itself in conformity to any 
 natural law. It is supernatural. It tran- 
 scends and comprehends all law. Love is the 
 fulfilling of the law. It is as old as the human 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 29 
 
 heart and as young as the last wedding a mo- 
 ment since. Strange, passing strange, is the 
 mystery that engages our attention whenever 
 two people separated by space and material 
 realities, often never laying eyes on each other 
 until the light that never was on sea or land 
 breaks in on their souls, are suddenly as the 
 lighting flashes or gradually as the day 
 dawns swept away from old moorings by the 
 tides of a great and resistless love, giving all in 
 the prodigality of a beautiful abandon of soul 
 and demanding all in a sort of divinely incon- 
 sistent larger selfishness. The man is now 
 moved by a passion stronger than life and 
 greater than death. The old order of things 
 passes away and the new passion takes posses- 
 sion, resolving all thoughts, all activities, and 
 all conduct into the likeness of itself. What 
 was once hard now becomes easy; what was 
 foolishness is now rarest wisdom ; what was most 
 worth while after which to strive seems not so 
 important after all. He is not only willing, 
 but ready to make any sacrifice and he doesn't 
 even call it sacrifice, but rather a rare privilege. 
 Life is painted in new colors, more radiantly 
 beautiful and richly hued than he had dreamed 
 of in his wildest flights of imagination. Noth- 
 ing is worth while, nothing counts, unless he 
 can win the heart of the woman he loves. And 
 the woman she is not only willing and ready 
 
30 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 to leave home, pleasures, parents, her all, and 
 follow him anywhere, everywhere, but she suffers 
 a quenchless thirst until she is privileged to 
 make the great surrender for the infinitely 
 greater reward, the mystic reward of love. 
 Stirred by this divine passion, fired by these 
 splendid motives, and swept by this tide of ele- 
 mental, primal love-consciousness, they become 
 one in soul, one in purpose, one in life. And 
 without this, there cannot be largest success, 
 purest happiness, and richest home life. 
 
 2. Next to love, as an essential to wedded 
 happiness comes congeniality, congeniality of 
 temperament, tastes, ideals, purposes, and char- 
 acter. Incompatibility of nature and interests 
 are hot beds for the growth of all sorts of 
 noxious weeds which choke and stifle growth in 
 wedded harmony and success. A materialistic, 
 commercialistic, of-the-earth-earthy man mar- 
 ries a rare, radiant spirited, highly poetic, 
 delicately constructed and exquisitely refined 
 woman. By some strange freak and idiosyn- 
 crasy of love and by the response of a super- 
 ficial chord or so, they love each other, or think 
 they do. But their lives were projected along 
 entirely different lines and their tastes, tem- 
 perament, dreams, purposes, and conception of 
 relative values are vitally different in their gen- 
 eral make up. The result is continuous clash 
 and jar and discord that mar the harmony of 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 31 
 
 the relationship, which means no abiding happi- 
 ness. Her ways are not his ways and his ways 
 are not her ways. If she tries to conform to 
 his standards, conceptions, tastes, ideals, she 
 becomes an actress, a false entity, not herself 
 nor yet another, and furthermore she must 
 needs sacrifice her ideals, her dreams, and even 
 her principles, and submerge herself wholly into 
 his life. But the cost is too great. The re- 
 ward is not sufficient. That sort of business is 
 highly in order in our relationship with the 
 Master, because in losing our life we gain a 
 larger, richer, fuller life, infinitely more valuable 
 and more beautiful than the old life, but not 
 so with a mere man of-the-earth-earthy in order 
 to establish a more congenial and more perfect 
 bond of fellowship. In such a case the only 
 possible solution is constant striving of the man 
 to identify himself with the several segments in 
 the circle of his wife's tastes, life, dreams, and 
 purposes, and finally to attain unto the point 
 where he becomes harmonized with the entire 
 circle and therefore in perfect accord with his 
 wife. Under such circumstances, she becomes 
 to him an angel with healing in her wings and 
 his love for her has transformed him into a 
 higher order of creation. But this is so rare 
 that it is exceedingly perilous for the above type 
 of woman to rush into a hasty marriage with 
 the above type of man in the face of such 
 
m THE MAKING OP A HOME 
 
 tremendous odds without testing his love and 
 loyalty and potentiality by every known test. 
 Even when people are equally strong in char- 
 acter and grand in soul, it is a strain on 
 love to overrule and overcome all minor incom- 
 patibilities of temperament and uncongeniality 
 of tastes, but when the fundamentals also are 
 at variance, then love is strained to snapping 
 and cosmos becomes chaos. In the marriage 
 relationship more than anywhere else con- 
 geniality is at a premium, and congenial mar- 
 ried people are thrice blessed, for the whole 
 tenor of life is vitally affected, and there is 
 an added zest and relish over the folks who are 
 not naturally congenial. 
 
 3. After congeniality comes confidence or 
 trust, without which there can be no abiding 
 happiness in marriage. Faith props the world 
 up on its shoulders. The business world could 
 not operate without confidence; friendship 
 could not exist without faith; the smallest de- 
 tails of everyday life are conditioned upon 
 trust. How much more so the relationship of 
 all others the most intimate, the most dependent 
 upon the highest qualities. If there is not per- 
 fect faith on both sides, there cannot be lasting 
 happiness, for married people must trust each 
 other. There must be no secrets. The door 
 of either heart must be kept ajar. There must 
 be perfect confidence and a mutual exchange 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 33 
 
 of thoughts, interests, incidents, and purposes. 
 A man sins against his wife when he refuses to 
 let her into Es" business Iife7 and in fact, into 
 anything that touches his life even remotely; 
 and a woman should conceal nothing from her 
 husband. The birthright of love accords to 
 them this privilege. And the woman who 
 thoughtlessly tells to outsiders the business, pro- 
 fessional, or private secrets revealed to her by 
 her husband in the sacred name and under the 
 divine protection of love is monumentally stupid, 
 colossally silly, and stupendously lacking in the 
 elements of sense, tact, and judgment. In 
 many instances the apparent reprehensible lack 
 of communicativeness on the part of husbands 
 is due to a certain rare display of unwisdom 
 on the part of wives in publishing upon house 
 tops secrets that have been whispered to them 
 in bedrooms. But often times men fail to talk 
 of their business affairs to their wives because 
 they erroneously imagine they are not interested 
 in such things or perchance they are lacking in 
 business acumen. Could they shuffle off the 
 masculine coil of egotism and condescend to ask 
 advice of their wives, they would often find that 
 their business would prosper more under the 
 direction of two than single handed. The 
 conceit of some men is monstrous; their ways 
 past finding out. 
 \ In order to establish the highest bond of 
 
34 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 faith and fellowship, it is absolutely necessary 
 for husband and wife to deal frankly and can- 
 didly with each other. There should be crys- 
 talline honor, guileless confidence, and large- 
 hearted lack of suspicion. As soon as one of 
 the contracting parties is so thoughtless and 
 criminal as to deceive the other, then a gulf is 
 fixed, barriers are set up, and the foundations 
 of love, which are always out of sight, are 
 being shaken and eaten away. It is not even 
 necessary for the other party to know of the 
 deception, it is only necessary to deceive the 
 results are certain. It is a sin against love, a 
 crime against marriage, a slur on the soul of 
 our soul, and the reflex influence on our soul 
 and our own love is what pinches most. After 
 all, it is more important to love than to be loved, 
 more blessed to give than to receive, and when 
 we deceive the one who loves us, we damage our 
 own soul and blight our own love through the 
 subtle but powerful law of reflex action. 
 
 People have no business marrying unless they 
 mean to trust each other implicitly and tell 
 each other everything, for if they do not, it 
 simply means a glaring lack of faith, and if 
 faith is lacking, it were better had they never 
 married, for faith is the evidence of things not 
 seen in the married as well as in the spiritual 
 life. 
 
VI 
 
 A HAPPY MARRIAGE: MORE 
 ESSENTIALS 
 
 4. The next essential to an ideal relationship 
 is unselfishness. This is a divine gift. There 
 is nothing more beautiful in the whole sweep of 
 Christian graces, and unselfishness is a Christian 
 grace. A self centered, selfish person has no 
 business marrying, for in the very nature of 
 the case marriage means a projection of one life 
 into another, an emptying of self into another 
 self, a surrender of selfish rights and liberties 
 for greater rights and fuller liberty. The 
 selfish minds can form no concept of marriage. 
 They are not permitted even to stand on the 
 outer edges and catch a glimpse of its rare joys 
 and its rich luxuries. At best their idea of the 
 most beautiful relationship on earth is sordid, 
 materialistic, sensuous. " Give and it shall be 
 given unto you " is abundantly true in this mys- 
 tic relationship. The more people give each 
 other, the more their married life will mean to 
 them. We get out of it what wj>uiJntojt ; no 
 more, no less. Young" people are often heard 
 
 wishing for such a husband or such a wife as 
 35 
 
86 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 some friend is so fortunate as to possess, who 
 lavishes a great love, bestows rare gifts, thinks 
 in terms of tender acts, and is ever kind and 
 thoughtful and considerate, but it seems never 
 to occur to them to render divine gifts out of 
 their own lives and to arrive at conjugal bliss 
 by enjoying the reflex influence of such godlike 
 gifts. The typical modern girl seems to be 
 cursed with the exaggerated notion that some 
 plumed knight owes her an ideal existence in a 
 beautiful home, while she, strangely fortunate 
 creature, owes no man such happiness. And the 
 typical modern young man busies himself too 
 much asking what will be given him by the 
 woman he marries, instead of ransacking his 
 heart and soul to see if there are any gifts beau- 
 tiful enough for the woman who consents to 
 place her life in his keeping. 
 
 When selfish people marry, they take care of 
 themselves in a measure by looking after the in- 
 terests of number one, but the pity of it is that 
 a selfish animal so often marries a beautiful- 
 souled, unselfish, divinely fashioned opposite, 
 and there is the inevitable discord and the re- 
 sult of sickness of heart. Our joy is never so 
 full as when we give in love to beloved objects, 
 therefore, the sane, practical, and sensible thing 
 as well as the poetic, idyllic, and idealistic, is 
 for married people to project themselves heart 
 and soul into each other's lives, giving all and 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 37 
 
 demanding nothing, receiving in turn a large 
 measure of happiness. The very nature of love 
 is to show forth a rare quality of unselfishness, 
 and in a sense there is no such thing as love 
 where there is unselfishness. 
 
 " Love took up the harp of life and smote on 
 
 all the chords with might; 
 Smote the chord of self, which, trembling, 
 
 passed in music out of sight." 
 
 Love is not happy unless it is permitted con- 
 stantly to lavish itself upon the object loved. 
 Therefore, if even a semblance of love is to exist 
 selfishness must be dethroned and self must ab- 
 dicate, for it is only as we abandon self and 
 launch out into the deep of our larger self that 
 we can attain unto wedded joy that is full and 
 success that is not measured. 
 
 5. Next to unselfishness is tangible expression 
 and demonstration of abstract affection. Un- 
 der this head would be included affectionateness, 
 tenderness, consideration, gentleness, thought- 
 fulness. It is not enough to know that the 
 person that we sit opposite to at the table three 
 times a day loves us with a quenchless, abiding 
 love ; it is not enough to have heard a generous 
 expression of such love once, twice or ten times ; 
 we want to hear the old, old story over and over 
 and over. We listen eagerly for the ever new I 
 love you, and look intently for the tender glow in 
 
38 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 the eye of love. Men especially should speak 
 frequent words and show manifold signs of af- 
 fection to their wives, for several good reasons : 
 1. Women are creatures of love. They are de- 
 pendent upon love. With man love is a thing 
 apart ; it is woman's whole existence. She was 
 designed for love and home. She may attain 
 unto loftiest heights of fame and worldly suc- 
 cess, and she may win the merited applause of 
 an admiring and appreciative world, because 
 she has taken her seat in the gallery of the 
 world's illustrious sons and daughters, but she 
 is never satisfied in heart and soul, and her 
 largest success is not realized, until a great love 
 stirs her soul and a worthy object in turn fills 
 and thrills her life with affectionate expressions 
 and tender acts of an equally great love. This 
 being true, if a man really desires to render the 
 woman he loves happy, he must needs speak to 
 her often, very often, in words of tender, sincere 
 affection, and by his conduct translate such 
 words into terms of practical expression. 
 
 2. Men are prone to neglect this function. 
 For this reason they should zealously guard 
 against it. Many women are unhappy in heart 
 and in soul because of the proneness of men to 
 neglect to express their love. If men really 
 knew this, the chances are that there would be 
 fewer hungry hearts. But men misplace em- 
 phasis. They stress big things, practical 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 39 
 
 things, what they call sensible things, and not 
 the little nameless, unremembered acts of kind- 
 ness and of love that really count for more in 
 the happiness of women than all that money, all 
 that fame, can ever bestow. Many men imagine 
 they have been expressive and demonstrative 
 quite enough if they give their wives the neces- 
 saries and some of the luxuries of life. They 
 fail to realize that it is not what they have or 
 can do or can give them that women desire, 
 but rather themselves, their hearts and souls, 
 their frequent expressions of love and practical, 
 tender demonstration of the same. (Let it be 
 remembered that the women spoken of in this 
 connection are real, genuine, great women, and 
 not grasping, greedy, sordid creatures, who 
 think they have gained a notable victory when 
 they squeeze and coax a handsome dress or a 
 swell hat out of their reluctant husbands. 
 They have their reward when they get their 
 dress and hat. May the Lord have mercy upon 
 their souls!) 
 
 3. By use and exercise talents are developed. 
 Love is a talent, a God-given talent. The prac- 
 tice of love is a noble profession. Love can 
 be educated, developed, perfected, even as other 
 talents, and it is worth developing and perfect- 
 ing. What the current is to the electric light, 
 the unseen force to the elevator, love is to the 
 operation and movements of the home then 
 
40 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 why not perfect love, why not use a God-given 
 talent in order to enjoy a larger and richer 
 talent, in order to render the person of all others 
 the dearest on earth supremely happy and in 
 order to be rendered resultantly happy? 
 
 Love between man and wife should con- 
 tinually translate itself into beautiful thoughts 
 of consideration, beautiful acts of tenderness, 
 and beautiful forms of gentleness. There is 
 no necessity for humiliating quarrels and harsh 
 language between people who love enough and 
 who are properly mated. Such things do not 
 happen on the heights. The skies up there are 
 clear. And it is possible to live on the heights 
 of love, above bickerings and strife and dis- 
 cordant clashes. After all, the serene, beautiful 
 fellowship of two souls is to be coveted above 
 the price of material considerations, and if we 
 give ourselves pause to consider, we shall all 
 conclude that most of the ignominious quarrels 
 and ignoble clashes in marriage directly or in- 
 directly grow out of some pusillanimous, irrele- 
 vant, materialistic consideration that should not 
 be allowed to disturb the half wakeful slumber 
 of a watchful chanticleer. How many hungry 
 hearts are pining for a touch of tenderness, a 
 stroke of gentleness, an act of thoughtful love- 
 inspired consideration, from men who were all 
 smiles, all tenderness, all gentleness, and all 
 thoughtful consideration in the days that were 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 41 
 
 halcyon before the marriage ceremony! If 
 every husband who has been rough, complain- 
 ing, harsh, thoughtless, and inconsiderate, would 
 for one month be affectionate, kind, tender, 
 thoughtful, and considerate, the desert in mul- 
 titudes of homes would blossom as the rose, the 
 bloom of immortal youth would return to faded 
 cheeks, and a song of infinite happiness would 
 sing itself in the hearts of hungry women, un- 
 matched for melody in the harmonies of the 
 world. 
 
VII 
 
 A HAPPY MARRIAGE: STILL 
 MORE ESSENTIALS 
 
 Sympathy and understanding are powerful 
 aids to ideal wedded life. By this is meant not 
 only sympathy and understanding in the com- 
 monly accepted sense, but in a deeper, more far 
 reaching sense. Sympathy is a divine thing and 
 understanding is an essential thing. Sym- 
 pathy finds expression in rejoicing with them 
 that do rejoice and weeping with them that 
 weep. In the more intimate relationship be- 
 tween husband and wife it consists in entering 
 fully, freely, and heartily into each other's joys, 
 sorrows, aspirations, purposes, cares, fancies, 
 work, play, and everything that directly or in- 
 directly touches the thought or life of either. 
 All of us need sympathy. Some cannot live 
 without it. It tides us over many inevitably 
 rough places, lightens our sorrows, increases our 
 joys, and restores our souls. We do not ask 
 for sympathy ; it must come unsought in order 
 to be efficacious. Too much that passes under 
 that sweet name is mere lip-exercise and cant 
 and hollow mockery. Sympathy has one source 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 43 
 
 the heart. If one has no heart, one cannot 
 sympathize with another, in joy or in sorrow, 
 for it requires more heart power to rejoice with 
 the rejoicing than to weep with those who weep. 
 Indeed, it is a test of real goodness. Even from 
 those outside the charmed circle of home we 
 crave sympathy, but it comes to us charged 
 with much greater force and comfort when those 
 we love most tear a leaf out of their hearts 
 and pass it on to us. And sweetest of all sym- 
 pathy is that which comes from the one woman 
 or the one man. If married people fail to 
 render each to the other due sympathy in every 
 thought and act of life, then the relationship 
 cannot be complete in its fulness and rare in its 
 richness. It adds zest and relish to life to en- 
 joy the approbation of those nearest to us. 
 Even in such an apparently small thing as 
 clothes, a woman is rendered happier or less 
 happy as her husband approves or disapproves 
 of her taste and selections. And naturally so. 
 We love to please those we love. Then those we 
 love most we love to please most. Therefore, 
 what the best loved thinks of what we wear, do, 
 say, and dream, affects us vitally. More sym- 
 pathy is needed in the home. Many an un- 
 leavened lump would be leavened by its gracious 
 influence and oftentimes cosmos would reign 
 where only chaos exists. 
 
 We have said that understanding is an essen- 
 
44 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 tial. It is closely allied to sympathy, and in a 
 sense there can be no understanding unless there 
 is sympathetic understanding. When a kindred 
 spirit discovers its soulmate and soul calls unto 
 soul and there is an answering of souls through 
 the agency of a beautiful understanding, then 
 the mystic bond of fellowship welds them fast, 
 and understanding becomes a very strong link in 
 the golden chain of love, an indispensable link. 
 The majority of warped, twisted relationships 
 grow out of misunderstandings. At first there is 
 a slight lack of sympathetic understanding, which 
 creates a small gulf and builds a little barrier. 
 Then another misunderstanding arises, and the 
 gulf is widened, the barrier is enlarged and 
 then another, and another, until the gulf is im- 
 passably wide and the barrier is insurmountably 
 high, and two hearts that beat as one are sev- 
 ered and two souls that held high fellowship on 
 the clear heights of love are torn asunder. 
 But the daily, hourly presence of a gracious 
 sympathetic understanding would have averted 
 such a catastrophe. Ignorance is vicious and 
 criminal ; understanding is knowledge ; knowl- 
 edge is essential to largest success in any realm 
 of life. A lack of understanding, then, is a 
 paucity of knowledge, which is always attended 
 with danger. 
 
 Renunciation, sacrifice, abandonment. 
 
 One of the most profound and farseeing state- 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 45 
 
 ments ever spoken or written is found in those 
 seemingly paradoxical words of Christ : " He 
 that loseth his life shall find it." In a spiritual 
 sense this means that the way of progress is 
 through abandonment, the way of life through 
 the portal of death, the way of victory through 
 defeat. That is, the cords that bind us to the 
 old, the natural, the carnal life must be snapped 
 and the tendrils that bind us to the new, the 
 spiritual, the Christ life will be proportionately 
 tightened. This is a very potent and at the 
 same time a most beautiful truth, one that 
 causes some to stumble and leads others into a 
 larger, richer, and fuller life. In somewhat the 
 same sense this law, this great truth, holds good 
 in the conjugal relationship, for marriage is 
 indeed a renunciation, a sacrifice, an abandon- 
 ment of many things, and this is not merely the 
 case once for all at the ceremony, but it is con- 
 tinuous. In addition to leaving home and par- 
 ents, surroundings, girlhood pleasures, and 
 renouncing all to follow her husband whither- 
 soever he leads her, a woman is called upon con- 
 tinually to submerge her life in the life of her 
 husband, to share his adversity as well as his 
 good fortune. And the man is called upon to 
 support and protect and care for his wife, whom 
 he has promised to love, cherish and cling to, 
 even though such action interrupts his best 
 laid plans, breaks his most cherished dreams, 
 
46 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 and smashes his finest air castles of material 
 conquest (I say material, for no great love and 
 marriage ever interfered with any spiritual con- 
 quest, even tho it may sometimes interfere with 
 material conquests or intellectual acquire- 
 ments). But these are the big sacrifices, the 
 lamp light renunciations, the grand stand 
 strokes in abandonment. And they really look 
 larger, but in reality, as in all life, the greatest 
 things are the unseen things, and so here men 
 and women are called upon to sacrifice most 
 where the world sees least and to give up most 
 in the every day, prosaic life of the home. A 
 man, for instance, is fond of the society of his 
 fellowmen. He also has a passion for secret 
 orders of one kind and another. He experi- 
 ences great delight in going out at nights for 
 a harmless round with the men or for a visit to 
 a much-loved lodge or club or order. It is 
 perfectly all right for him to go per se, but hold 
 a moment : has he a wife ? Are there little chil- 
 dren, or big ones? What has his wife been do- 
 ing all day? It may be that she is more tired 
 and weary than he. He has been out in the 
 great, busy, whirling world ; she confined closely 
 in the home with a thousand grinding cares and 
 nerve racking duties. Shall he go out and leave 
 her to battle with the children and continue 
 to eke out one shut in, lonely day after another? 
 Shall he go off and enjoy himself, while the 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 47 
 
 woman he solemnly promised to love and cher- 
 ish and render happy is at home weary in body 
 and broken in spirit and sick at heart? To be 
 sure it might cost him something to stay away 
 from the society of his fellowmen and from the 
 various orders he has joined and help his wife 
 with his children as well as hers, but does it not 
 cost her infinitely more? Who is he that he 
 should feed on the fat of the land and be car- 
 ried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, while 
 his poor, tired, weary, hungry-hearted, broken- 
 spirited wife spends her life energies raising 
 children and keeping house and mending clothes 
 and entertaining company and doing a thousand 
 other things for her high and mighty lord and 
 master, for whom he seems to think such a life is 
 a very great honor and even a high privilege? 
 Men of this stripe have no more business with 
 wives than a guinea pig has with a silk cravat. 
 A woman may be literary, or she may be pos- 
 sessed of a positive dislike for the daily round of 
 home duties, or perchance she may be filled with 
 a consuming passion for the society of other 
 women and for women's clubs, etc., etc. She 
 finds children a bore and her husband a nuisance, 
 when she is called upon to make any sacrifices 
 for him or for his comfort and pleasure. She 
 would so much rather read a book or go to a 
 club or go out somewhere, anywhere. Such 
 a woman may listen enraptured to eloquent ser- 
 
48 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 mons on service or beautiful discourses on self- 
 sacrifice or moving appeals for missionary en- 
 deavor, and very likely she will think she is mak- 
 ing great sacrifices and rendering beautiful serv- 
 ice when she straightway offers to join herself 
 to various church committees and bestir herself 
 mightily in behalf of others' orphan children 
 and heathen husbands, to the neglect of her own 
 unsaved husband unsaved because her perni- 
 cious over activity in church work at the ex- 
 pense of home duties has rendered him bitter 
 against the Church and religion in general. 
 But as a matter of fact, her sacrifices should be 
 directed towards her husband and children and 
 she should find her largest life by first losing 
 her life for her home. These two examples of 
 many others that might be given suggest the 
 necessity of renunciation as a condition of home 
 happiness. 
 
 Religion. By placing religion last, I do not 
 mean to imply that its influence is least in bind- 
 ing together in harmonious fashion man and 
 wife. As a matter of fact, it is neither first nor 
 yet last; it is everything and comprehends all 
 else that has been said. This does not mean 
 that there can be no happiness in homes where 
 there is no religion, for such a statement would 
 be absurd, but it means that there can be noth- 
 ing but happiness where there is genuine religion, 
 on bothsjdesi In other words, some homes may 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 49 
 
 enjoy happiness without religion, but no home 
 can experience unhappiness with religion and 
 all homes are rendered happy by religion. This 
 may seem an extravagant statement at first sight 
 the utterance of an over-zealous advocate 
 rather than the statement of a calm seeker after 
 truth. Suppose we examine for a moment the 
 real nature of the case, using the proposition 
 that religion comprehends all else and insures 
 conjugal harmony and happiness. When two 
 people are possessed of a vital, living, trans- 
 forming type of religion or Christianity, and the 
 kingdom of heaven is so overwhelmingly estab- 
 lished in their hearts that they are in fashion 
 like their Lord, loving the things He loves and 
 hating the things He hates and emulating in 
 every possible way His matchless example, they 
 have attained unto that blessed state of mind, 
 heart, and conduct where love is the watch word 
 of their life ; a beautiful bond of congeniality is 
 established because of the gracious community 
 of interests ; perfect faith, trust, and confidence 
 characterize their dealings one with the other; 
 unselfishness flourishes as the green bay tree; 
 tenderness and affection and gentleness find a 
 ready and receptive soil; sympathetic under- 
 standing abides uninterrupted ; and no sacrifice, 
 no renunciation, will be lacking, for these are 
 the very languages that are spoken by religion, 
 the steps it takes in its journey to the celestial 
 
50 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 city. Therefore, furnishing, as it does, the 
 very essence of the ingredients and conditions 
 necessary to marital success and happiness, re- 
 ligion lays claim to being the one, never failing 
 solution of the all important question. It is 
 hard to convince most people of this fact, and 
 especially some religious folk, and that for the 
 reason that they have less religion than many 
 who make no professions or pretentions. But 
 it is religiosity and piosity rather than religion. 
 Outward show of religion without the inner real- 
 ity and experience will do more to cause a dis- 
 turbance of any sort on earth than a total lack 
 of it. And there is always a weak link in the 
 chain, a skeleton in the closet, of those who have 
 failed with religion as an aid. It was not the 
 real thing, or there was not a complete surren- 
 der, or there were conflicting desires, or the 
 claims of the world and the flesh and the wiles 
 of the devil were too strong something was 
 wrong. God is not limited except as He limits 
 Himself. Some good people think if they have 
 a well seasoned case of religion, it suffices, re- 
 gardless of the faith and conduct of their hus- 
 bands or wives, but this is false doctrine, for a 
 clash is more likely than ever and a diversity of 
 spirits tends to create friction. Our claim is 
 
 that both must be unfeigned Christians then 
 the~~problem is solved. And I challenge the ci- 
 tation of a single failure. It does not even take 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 51 
 
 the exception to prove the rule in this case. 
 Nothing so sanctifies the homes of any land as 
 ttie""religion oj_jyie-JLdaj^-J^&us---Christ. The 
 young preacher who allows himself to marry an 
 irreligious woman presents himself as one who 
 sleeps. The young woman who submerges her 
 life completely into the life of an avowedly ir- 
 religious man assumes a grave responsibility. 
 Thojarents who nnHprt.fl.lce to make a home and 
 rear afamily without the^jdLM_ 
 
 are sublimely Jgno rant of .the jrelativ_e values of 
 life. The home problem is the greatest of all 
 the problems that vex the mind of man and 
 this great problem will be solved only as men 
 and women accord to the Master the hospitality 
 of their Tipmes. 
 
, VIII 
 FATHERHOOD 
 
 Parenthood is a rare and sacred privilege, a 
 gift from God to be used as faithful stewards, 
 rendering back to Him the gracious gift with an 
 hundred fold increase. Nothing so stirs the 
 latent, dormant possibilities in men and women 
 as this greatest of trusts. How often do we see 
 a young, reckless, wayward, irresponsible man 
 suddenly sobered and transformed in thought, 
 words, and conduct by the advent of a little 
 child in the home ! And how suddenly, how mi- 
 raculously, does the gay, giddy, thoughtless, 
 pleasure-loving girl pass over into the glorious 
 realm of womanhood by the sacred way of 
 motherhood ! The new responsibility, the here- 
 tofore unrealized joys, the world-old appeal 
 change the form and the complexion of things 
 and henceforth life's relative values and mani- 
 fold messages are interpreted in terms of child- 
 hood. That marvelous law of possession is 
 brought to play in its most subtle and powerful 
 form. When a man says to another, " This is 
 my dog, my horse, my house," the law of posses- 
 sion is at work in no uncertain fashion, but when 
 52 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 53 
 
 he says, " this is my child," the elemental prin- 
 ciples of the mystic operations of the law of 
 possession are at high tide. It means something 
 to be a parent. God is a parent, our Father. 
 Man exercises an office of (rod when fog frf^mpg 
 a parent. And the responsibility is in direct 
 proportion to the honor, the privilege, the 
 pleasure. Thprp is 710 
 
 so great as that of a parent., A king's power is 
 awful, and his responsibility in proportion; the 
 president of our country labors under grave re- 
 sponsibility ; the law makers of the land are 
 charged with a heavy trust ; a jury deliberating 
 over a murder case with the shadow of the gal- 
 lows in sight carries a fearful load of responsi- 
 bility ; and a general leading thousands of men 
 into the jaws of death is confronted by duties 
 and responsibilities that are indeed grave: but 
 greater than any or all of these is the responsi- 
 bility attached to the moulding and shaping of 
 a little child. The potter has no greater power 
 over the soft clay than the parent over this un- 
 developed lump of possibilities for good or for 
 evil. Who is equal to the task? The load of 
 responsibility is enough to crush any parent who 
 thinks seriously over life's problems, were it not 
 for a merciful God who partially draws a cur- 
 tain over the responsibilities and grants grace 
 enough to meet each new problem when par- 
 ents trust Him. 
 
54 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 We shall consider first the father in the home, 
 because he is head of the Vfnme. or^ should be. 
 This does not mean that he is head in an ob- 
 noxious sense nor yet does it mean that his is the 
 privilege of domineering over his wife and chil-* 
 dren. On the contrary a domineering father* 
 is a monstrosity, an inharmonious combination 
 of repellent elements, having no higher concep- 
 tion of parenthood than a beast of the field, a 
 bird of the air, or a fish of the sea. But the 
 father is head of the home in a very real sense, 
 and in love and gentleness, and also in firmness, 
 it is not only his privilege but his duty to exer- 
 cise this office. The father who is not head of 
 his home is as pitiable as the domineering father 
 is despicable, and his weakness becomes vicious- 
 ness so far as results are concerned. The 
 woman who is not willing and anxious for the 
 man to be head of the home is strangely lacking 
 in one of the most essential elements/- \ In fact, 
 she has missed her calling ; she should have been 
 a man. God meant every father to be a priest, 
 By this is meant his religious function in the 
 family. He is divinely expected to minister to 
 his family in spiritual as well as in temporal 
 things and to dispense the bread of life as well as 
 provide nourishment for the body. It there- 
 fore becomes his duty to erect a family altar in 
 his home, to dedicate himself and his family to 
 the service of God, to intercede with God for his 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 55 
 
 , ? amily, to carry the burden of each child on his 
 leart to the throne of grace, to be a pastor to 
 lis children, and to exercise himself to the ut- 
 most in right living, right acting, and right 
 working, to the intent that they may be brought 
 up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, 
 ;horoughly furnished unto all good works and 
 ight living. Of course, this refers to the Chris- 
 ian fathers. The man of the world, the non- 
 confessor of Christ, would also find help in the 
 solution of home problems along such lines. 
 I 3ut even if all Christian men would perform the 
 (religious duties that they so unmistakably owe to 
 jtheir family, the kingdom of heaven on earth 
 would move with wonderfully increased rapidity. 
 In these modern days of din and noise, glare 
 and glitter, tumult and shouting, rushing and 
 bustling, the family altar has been ruthlessly 
 relegated to a back seat. Some men are too 
 busy making money to thank the most High for 
 His bounties ; some too indifferent to their 
 priestly functions ; some, too luke warm in their 
 religious zeal, some too timid and bashful to 
 hold family prayer before their families ; and 
 some too stifled by the subtle, insinuating, ser- 
 pent like influences of the world ; and then the 
 devil is especially active right at this point be- 
 cause he has more sense than the above indicated 
 Christians, realizing that this is a most power- 
 ful way to promote the kingdom of God on earth 
 
56 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 and to develop stalwart, virile manhood and 
 lofty womanhood, and realizing further that the 
 elimination of millions of priests in millions of 
 homes is far more destructive work than the 
 weeding out of thousands of preachers in the 
 pulpits. Furthermore, the character of the 
 ministry is shaped and colored largely by the 
 character of the individual homes, for does not 
 the ministry enjoy its earliest, and therefore, 
 most important, training in the homes? And 
 what influences are powerful enough to eradicate 
 the training and impressions of early youth ? 
 
 The kingdom of God on earth would encircle 
 the globe and leaven the nations and transfigure 
 human nature in one half the time if it could 
 begin a grand forward march on its knees in a 
 million Christian homes around a million family 
 altars. And this is only what is due to God, to 
 each family, and to the world by all professing 
 Christians. " Will a man rob God? " Yes, he 
 will. Will a Christian rob God? Yes. Will 
 a man rob his family, his children? Yes. Will 
 a Christian man rob his children, bone of his 
 bone and flesh of his flesh? Yes, he will. All 
 honest men are not honest then? No, many 
 honest men, many Christian gentlemen are dis- 
 honest, dishonest before God and before their 
 families. No man is completely and entirely 
 honest until he pays all of his debts and all of 
 his vows to God as well as to man. More fa- 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 57 
 
 thers fall down at this point than at any other 
 in their relation to their children. World con- 
 ventions to promote missionary activity are very 
 necessary and highly in order ; great conferences 
 to inspire laymen to higher and grander reaches 
 are admirable; and magnificent gatherings in 
 the name of Jesus for the spread of His gospel 
 are inspiring : but these mighty works will never 
 enjoy their richest results until the individual 
 homes that lie back of them are homes of prayer 
 and Christian culture. 
 
 The average father fails to realize the vast- 
 ness of his influence in his home. He does not 
 comprehend fully the power of a good and great 
 life silently and quietly lived among his children 
 not only on Sunday in sanctimonious fashion, 
 but day after day and night after night, week 
 after week and month after month and year 
 after year. One of the saddest things I know 
 is the disillusionment of children in the all-good- 
 ness and all-greatness of their fathers. Why, 
 bless your life, man, don't you know that your 
 little boy thinks you are just the best man in 
 the whole world? And don't you know that 
 your little girl, when she circles your neck with 
 her tender, white little arms, believes that there 
 is no other man quite so good and quite so won- 
 derful as her father ? The trust of a little child 
 in his father is one of the most beautiful* one 
 of the inosFTouching, one of the most inspiring 
 
58 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 sights_jH^j&arth. I read of a little boy who 
 missed his father from the house, and knowing 
 that he often went out to the barn, the little fel- 
 low started out in the snow to find his father. 
 The snow was deep and he did not see his father, 
 but was perfectly content to follow in the steps 
 of his father through the snow. It is recorded 
 that the father, looking back and seeing his lit- 
 tle boy following in his steps in such trustful 
 fashion, was overwhelmed with the seriousness of 
 his responsibility, the power of his example, and 
 the imperfection of his life, and resolved from 
 that day to live such a life and be such a man 
 that he would be willing for his son to be like 
 him and follow in his steps. Are you willing 
 for your children to be the man, to live the life, 
 that you are living? This thought should give 
 us pause, for it is food for thought. 
 
 Too many fathers refuse to do their part in 
 the training of their children. They leave that 
 to their wives. They are occupied with more 
 important, larger duties and responsibilities. 
 But what is it? Is any thing more important 
 than the shaping and the molding of a pliable, 
 potential, flexible human soul into the stature 
 of a strong man or a great woman? This glar- 
 ing omission resolves itself into a question of 
 laziness, indifference, a sense of unworthiness, or 
 triflingness in general. Do not the children be- 
 long to you as well as to your wife? Why should 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 59 
 
 she bear the burden and carry the load alone? 
 She needs a strong arm to help her lift it. She 
 needs co-operation and sympathy and moral 
 backing. Some fathers go so far as to hinder 
 their wives in their efforts to train aright their 
 children by taking the side of the child against 
 the mother when she would justly and wisely 
 administer discipline. He resolves himself into 
 tin undesirable citizen, because good citizenship 
 begins in the home. 
 
 The ideal father is a priest in his home. He 
 holds family prayer. He dedicates his children 
 to God at an early age. He is careful of his 
 Christian life. He thinks seriously of his silent 
 example. He co-operates with his wife in the 
 actual training of his children. He works hard, 
 and if necessary, wears patched clothes, in order 
 that his children may enjoy a college education. 
 He is the friend of his boys, the friend of his 
 girls. He is no tyrant. He is a four-square 
 man unashamed for his boys to be like him when 
 they become men. May God give us grace and 
 wisdom to be the fathers He would have us be! 
 
 \ 
 
IX 
 MOTHERHOOD 
 
 A man's idea of the word MOTHER is colored 
 by his relationship to his own mother. The 
 word loses its peculiar sacredness if one is so 
 unfortunate as to have an undesirable mother. 
 A great mother is the finest legacy, the test for- 
 tune possible, to the children of men. A delinA 
 quent father does not necessarily mean delin-1 
 quent children. Not so with the mother. In a 
 peculiar way she molds the character and shapes 
 the destiny of her children. She suffers with 
 them and for them. She cares for them and 
 bears with them. She lives with them and too 
 often dies with them. Hers is the watchful eye ; 
 hers the sympathetic touch. Hers is the load 
 of care; hers the midnight vigils. Out of her 
 heart are poured her richest treasures of high- 
 est and holiest womanhood. Her children love 
 . her because she first loved them. She knows no 
 music so sweet as baby feet making melody in 
 her heart. She knows no voice so beautiful as 
 the broken words of her little children. In the 
 life of her children she finds her largest life; 
 
 the success of her children is the fruition of her 
 60 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 61 
 
 finest dreams. For them she will delve and for 
 them she will toil ; for them she will live and for 
 them she will die. She is the finest concrete 
 illustration of the heart life to be found on 
 earth. No other love is like unto the love of 
 a great mother; no other influence so great. 
 How soft were her hands when she stroked away 
 the pain from our wasted bodies so often 
 more efficacious than the costliest drugs ! How 
 sweet was her voice when with baby lullabies at 
 the close of the day she sang us to sleep ! How 
 beautiful were her feet when at midnight we 
 heard her softly approach our sick bed to watch 
 with us until the long, long night was gone 
 so long and so dark! How ample was her 
 breast when tired and sleepy after the long 
 day's play, we curled up and were rocked into 
 slumberland ! She is growing old now. There 
 are wrinkles on her brow and her step is not so 
 light. Her hair is gray and her form is bent 
 and sometimes her hands tremble and even her 
 voice is different. In the service of her children 
 she has worn herself out. As she stands upon 
 the western porch of life, the halo of the living 
 God is gathered about her form. No soldier on 
 field of battle, no statesman in halls of State, 
 no mariner on chartless seas can claim a richer 
 meed of praise, a larger share of honor. She is 
 greater than the greatest sculptor, because out 
 of a bundle of possibilities she carves an angel 
 
62 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 form. She is greater than the greatest painter, 
 because on the canvas of the souls of her children 
 she paints pictures which shall live forever and 
 forever. She is greater than the greatest poet, 
 because in the hearts of her children she writes 
 poetry and sings songs which help to swell the 
 anthems of the angel choir of God. She loses 
 her life in high and holy fashion for her chil- 
 dren and finds a rarer, richer life because she 
 gives her all. 
 
 This is the true mother, the real mother, the 
 great mother. Were all mothers like her, the 
 millennium would be upon us, for, verily, the 
 mothers of the world would leaven the world. 
 But unfortunately there are a great many so 
 called mothers who are not really worthy the 
 sacred name. They fail to measure up to the 
 vast responsibility. They do not catch a vision 
 of their function and high mission. They see 
 the routine, the drudgery, the sacrifices, the un- 
 pleasantness ; they refuse to fasten their eyes 
 upon the glory, the privilege, the beauty of 
 motherhood. They are not willing to pay the 
 price, to live the life, to do the deeds. There 
 are too many restrictions, too many exacting 
 duties, too much swallowing of self. The easy- 
 going, pleasure-loving, worldly-minded woman 
 finds herself in the wrong pew with several chil- 
 dren to love and train and empty self for. 
 True she has a certain animal instinct which 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 63 
 
 might be called love by the thoughtless, but in 
 reality her capacity for the love and joys and 
 service and sacrifice of motherhood is as the ca- 
 pacity of a pint measure for a gallon of water. 
 She lives and moves and has her being outside 
 of the sacred and wonderful realm of mother- 
 hood. 
 
 Some mothers care more for automobiles, and 
 fine clothes, and clubs, and little dogs, and high 
 society than they care for the bodies and minds 
 and hearts and souls of their children. They 
 are the sordid of soul. They cannot determine 
 the relative values of life. They are attracted 
 by things external, show, paraphernalia. They 
 are vulgar women, not in the ordinary sense of 
 the word, but really in a worse sense. To them 
 a bank note has a definite soul value. To them 
 a joy ride is sweeter than the lisp of a little 
 child. To them a little dog and a little child 
 are two little things. They profane the name 
 of mother. They rob life of much of its fra- 
 grance and zest and relish. They compromise 
 the high things qf the spirit for the low things 
 of the flesh, and a little child shall not lead them. 
 These women should have refrained steadfastly 
 from matrimony. But the pity of it is, that 
 good men so often are attracted by this kind of 
 woman and leave the really great women to 
 marry any old thing or wisely to remain un- 
 claimed blessings. 
 
64 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 Some mothers are so busy with Church and 
 public duties and so solicitous about the tem- 
 poral and eternal well being of others, that they 
 are strangely forgetful and negligent of the 
 welfare of their own children. This type of 
 woman is restless and meddlesome. She 
 wouldn't admit it, but she is. She would be 
 offended, because she thinks she is doing the 
 Lord's work. She cannot rest until she is a 
 member of every important Church committee 
 and she would experience deep humiliation if 
 she failed to attend a single funeral or occupied 
 a prominent place as a helper and sympathizer 
 in times of death. Indeed, she has an obses- 
 sion that prefuneral arrangements could not be 
 arranged without her, and that no neighbor 
 could bear sorrow or endure grief unless she is 
 on hand. This is not a stricture on the Christ- 
 like ministrations and tender sympathy of 
 beautiful women of the spirit who, like their 
 Lord, go about doing good. They are the elect 
 of God. They are the salt of earth. They 
 bear upon their bodies the marks of their Lord. 
 Without them this world would be a dreary 
 place. But it is a criticism of those mothers 
 who have an itch for publicity, who neglect their 
 children in order to gather gossip and retail 
 the same, who are never so happy as when away 
 from home attending to other people's business 
 when their own is sadly in need of attention, 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 65 
 
 who lavish themselves and their treasure upon 
 heathen across the water while their husbands 
 and children are developing skepticism at home 
 because of their poiseless, balanceless, and sense- 
 less activities. It sometimes requires more of 
 the grace of God to stay at home and live a 
 Christlike life and rear Christian families than 
 to leave the cares and duties of home and mix 
 with congenial action. The gadaboutist is a 
 sorry excuse for a mother. There is a time for 
 all things. 
 
 The ideal mother need not be a college gradu- 
 ate, a leader in literary clubs, a brilliant con- 
 versationalist, a social star, or a big worker in 
 the Church. These things are well and good 
 and are not to be despised. If a woman can be 
 a great mother and make an ideal home and in 
 addition be and do these things, she presents 
 herself as a more versatile woman than her 
 neighbor who can only be a great mother 
 and wife. But in this age, when there are so 
 many perverted conceptions of the functions 
 and the rights of women, it is in order to em- 
 phasize the fact that the 
 
 the^acjof__woman, that her chiefjimrf.inns 
 Home functions, that her 
 
 The 
 
 feminist inovement is one phase of our modern 
 unrest, which unrest is growing at an alarming 
 
66 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 rate. This unrest is felt in the theological, the 
 social, the political, and the industrial realms 
 as well as in the realm of so-called woman's 
 rights. Revolution and evolution are in the 
 atmosphere. The old order of things is being 
 violently assailed. Modern thought has perme- 
 ated the body politic. In our rush to cast off 
 old garments we are in danger of finding our- 
 selves improperly and sparingly clothed. Poise- 
 less radicalism is in a way more undesirable than 
 hopeless conservatism. The extreme reaction- 
 ary and the extreme radical are alike undesira- 
 ble citizens. 
 
 The feminist movement in England relegates 
 to a back seat the highest and holiest associa- 
 tions of womanhood and motherhood. If women 
 are overwhelmingly convinced that the ballot is 
 necessary to protect their rights and guarantee 
 happiness and exalt the home, it might not be 
 a bad idea to accord to them the high privilege 
 of voting if for no other reason than to prove 
 to them in peaceful fashion the futility of their 
 dreams and the unwisdom of their position. In 
 a comparatively short time they will automati- 
 cally adjust themselves to their normal life and 
 functions and regard their much coveted privi- 
 lege as a nuisance, a bore, and a burden. Most 
 women want to vote because they can't. It re- 
 solves itself largely into a question of Eve and 
 the apple. Ennui will follow acquisition. 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 67 
 
 God in His wisdom gave to woman greater 
 rights than He accorded to man and in a 
 sense higher gifts. She is a more delicate spir- 
 itual instrument. She is more susceptible to 
 divine impressions. She is naturally more reli- 
 gious. She is capable of greater love. She can 
 bear pain and suffering with more grace. Her 
 ideals are higher, her life purer, her compassion 
 vaster. In deeds of mercy, in acts of love, in 
 expressions of sympathy she outranks us. She 
 is more beautiful and more winsome, more ten- 
 der and more gentle, more long suffering and 
 more kind. These gifts beget rights and insure 
 privileges. They invest her with peculiar 
 charm. They render her well nigh sacred in 
 our eyes. About her is thrown the protection 
 of the stronger sex. She is idealized, apotheo- 
 sized. In her normal relationship she rules as 
 queen, but when she tries to operate in realms 
 beyond the confines of her own vast realm she 
 compromises her dignity, loses much of her 
 charm, and forfeits her tender grace and win- 
 some attractiveness. Woman's rights may be 
 defined as the God given privilege of marrying 
 the choice of herJhg 
 
 reigning as queen with 
 her husband jind children in her home, pouring 
 iinlimitedlv the treasures^qf hfr life info-thf* lifr 
 ren, and being free at any time_to_ 
 mingle hei^life_and talents with the life and 
 
68 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 talents of thejoutside world, provided such ac- 
 tion be compatible with home duties and privi-^ 
 leges^ 
 
 ~~~TE strikes me that these are holy and high 
 rights, sacred privileges, enough responsibility, 
 food for happiness. The rights of a mother 
 are as measureless as is the stupendousness of 
 her responsibility. Who can fathom her joy 
 when her little child nestles close to her? Who 
 can know the height and the depth and the 
 length and the breadth of love as she is given 
 to know it? Who can hold such close fellow- 
 ship with God as she holds, when, with a moth- 
 er's heart and a mother's trust, she dedicates 
 her child to God and begs for wisdom and good- 
 ness to meet the awful responsibility? She has 
 rights enough and to spare. 
 
 The ideal mother is above all a woman, a 
 womanly woman. She is a follower of Christ, 
 an open confessor of Him, a woman of deep 
 and sincere religious experience, knowing her 
 Lord as Friend, walking and talking with Him, 
 living from day to day in His presence and un- 
 \der the shadow of His wing. (For how can she 
 'be an ideal mother, if she is not a 
 
 woman?) The ideal mother places a higher 
 premium upon the welfare of her children than 
 upon all that the world can give in the way of 
 pleasures, power, notoriety, fame, or any other 
 creature. The ideal mother has a great big 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 69 
 
 conception of motherhood. She magnifies her 
 office. She enlarges her calling. She appre- 
 ciates her responsibility. She is ready for the 
 sacrifice, the suffering, the abandonment. Her 
 life belongs to her children. It is not hers. 
 She finds her life by losing it. She shall lose 
 it if she try to save it. She knows that this 
 great law is peculiarly applicable to her. The 
 ideal mother is not lazy, not selfish, not jealous 
 natured, not supersensitive, not over careful of 
 her " rights," not a pessimist, for these short- 
 comings are certain and logical inheritances and 
 acquisitions of her children. She must live 
 beautifully, serve graciously, love wondrously, 
 suffer cheerfully, sacrifice willingly, and sympa- 
 thize readily and demand respect, obedience, 
 consideration, service and love from her chil- 
 dren. Some mothers claim so much love for 
 their children that they find themselves unable 
 to exact obedience, to administer discipline, to 
 punish, or to deprive their children of any pleas- 
 ure, whether wholesome or harmful. They 
 think this is exalted love, but in reality it is a 
 lesser love. They do not love them enough to 
 withhold the harmful or to demand the help- 
 ful thing. The ideal mother does not love her 
 children after this fashion. She loves them 
 enough to administer discipline if need be. 
 
 For fear that I shall be misunderstood in re- 
 gard to what I have said on woman's rights, let 
 
70 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 me add this: I glory in the pluck and will 
 power of the great company of worthy women 
 who, for one or many reasons, have not married, 
 but who have refused to live lives of idleness or 
 to be a burden on loved ones or society and have 
 launched boldly out into the great big critical 
 world of action, living lives of usefulness, ren- 
 dering a high order of service, doing their part 
 of the world's work, and meanwhile keeping 
 themselves unspotted from the world. And I 
 am thinking that the men of the world should 
 accord to such brave women a peculiar degree 
 of business hospitality and extend to them the 
 right hand of fellowship. 
 
" AND A LITTLE CHILD SHALL LEAD 
 THEM " 
 
 There are some wonderfully tender and far- 
 reaching sentiments in the Bible. The Bible 
 tells us that God is going to wipe away all tears 
 from our eyes and there will be no night there. 
 The Bible tells us that at eventime there will be 
 light, and God even marks a little sparrow when 
 it falls to the ground. The Bible tells us that 
 God will tenderly wrap His arms around us and 
 we may hide ourselves in the secret of His pres- 
 ence. The Bible tells us that Christ, even 
 Christ, will come as Guest into the homes of our 
 hearts and live with us, if we let Him and it 
 tells us that a little child shall lead them. 
 
 A little child shall lead them. How? Where? 
 How can a little child lead when it can't even 
 walk? Where can a little child lead when it 
 knows not where to go itself? And yet a little 
 child shall lead, for the Book says so. How? 
 By its guilelessness, and purity, and trust. 
 Where? Into guilelessness, and purity, and 
 trust. 
 
 The most guileless thing in the world, because 
 71 
 
72 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 the most innocent, a little child in guileless 
 fashion leads us into a more winsome guileless- 
 ness. They know no deceit, they have no 
 schemes, they are free from the duplex life. 
 The world is full of guile. Its motives are com- 
 plex. Deceit is a common commodity. How 
 refreshing, how inspiring, amid it all, to watch 
 a little child in whom there is no guile live its 
 little life from day to day with the shine of 
 God's face on it and the beauty of God's life in 
 it! In such contemplation we are led from 
 guile into guilelessness by the beckoning hand 
 and the gesturing heart and the winsome eye of 
 a little child. Oh, that our Father may give to 
 us at the hands of the little children of the 
 world more of their guilelessness ! 
 
 The purity of a little child is proverbial. 
 No impure thoughts flit through their little 
 minds. No bad night dreams of daylight ex- 
 periences disturb their little sleep, so sound and 
 so sweet. No impure and unholy desires rack 
 their little frames and end in unrest of soul. 
 They are as pure as the dew of the night which 
 hides itself in the bosom of a white rose. They 
 are as pure as the lily of the field the spotless- 
 ness of whose raiment attracted the notice of 
 the Master of the world. To live with this in- 
 carnated purity day after day, to breathe its 
 fragrance, and to contemplate its beauty ren- 
 ders us more pure and more spotless. And how 
 
THE MAKING OF A HOME 73 
 
 we do feel the need of some lily-white purifying 
 influence ever and anon as we pass through the 
 mud and scum of life with garments which God 
 gave us to keep unspotted from the world! 
 Men are naturally so impure of thought, im- 
 pure of speech, impure of life. The double 
 standard has played havoc with us. We men 
 God help us are not worthy to touch the 
 seamless robe of our glorified Lord, and some 
 of us are not even worthy to hold in our soiled 
 hands the radiantly white form of a little child. 
 But a little child shall lead us into the purer life. 
 May our Father help us to bow our heads by the 
 cradles of the world and catch a splendid in- 
 spiration to live lives of stainless purity! 
 
 The trust of a little child is the sweetest of 
 sights. They do not doubt anything. With 
 wide-eyed wonder they believe all we tell them. 
 The world to them is so various, so beautiful, so 
 new, so wonderful. Life is radiant and rich and 
 a beautiful poem. Little children are flowers 
 that bloom in the spring. They are little flow- 
 ers that open their eyes and ears and mouths 
 all day, drinking in in trustful fashion all of 
 the good things sent by God and at twilight 
 they close their eyes and follow God into the 
 land of sleep. They are not naturally afraid 
 of the dark or ghosts or any other evil creature. 
 It is only when some ugly natured or thought- 
 less person brings into their little lives these evil 
 
74 THE MAKING OF A HOME 
 
 guests that they are afraid. The trust of a 
 little child ! To them Jesus is so real, so near, 
 so natural. To them God is so good, so good. 
 To them mother and father with all of their sins 
 are without fault, without blemish. Small won- 
 der that Christ said it were better that a mill 
 stone be hanged about our neck and we be cast 
 into the deep sea than to offend one of these 
 little ones ! How much we need the trust of lit- 
 tle children ! We are so wise in the accumu- 
 lated wisdom of the world that we cannot trust 
 our Father as little children. We are so burnt 
 out and calloused by contact with the world and 
 with our evil natures that life has lost most of 
 its early charm and freshness and poetry. We 
 grope feebly in mist and in fog and in black 
 night for proofs, proofs, proofs. But a little 
 child just walks up to Jesus, reaches up its lit- 
 tie hand, takes hold of His large hand, and walks 
 along with Jesus, knowing that He will lead 
 gently over the rough places and encouragingly 
 through the dark night. May our Father 
 grant us, who have not faith even as large as a 
 mustard seed, a richer and simpler and fuller 
 trust in Him, through the leading of the little 
 children of the world! 
 
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