Chapter 2—Fundamentals of True Homemaking
The Most Attractive Place in the World—While there are
weighty responsibilities devolving upon the parents to guard care-
fully the future happiness and interests of their children, it is also their
duty to make home as attractive as possible. This is of far greater
consequence than to acquire estates and money. Home must not lack
sunshine. The home feeling should be kept alive in the hearts of the
children, that they may look back upon the home of their childhood as
a place of peace and happiness next to heaven. Then as they come to
maturity, they should in their turn try to be a comfort and blessing to
their parents
The home should be to the children the most attractive place in
the world, and the mother’s presence should be its greatest attraction.
Children have sensitive, loving natures. They are easily pleased, and
easily made unhappy. By gentle discipline, in loving words and acts,
mothers may bind their children to their hearts
Clean, Neat, Orderly—Cleanliness, neatness, and order are in-
dispensable to the proper management of the household. But when the
mother makes these the all-important duties of her life, and devotes
herself to them, to the neglect of the physical development and the
mental and moral training of her children, she makes a sad mistake
Believers should be taught that even though they may be poor,
they need not be unclean or untidy in their persons or in their homes.
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Help must be given in this line to those who seem to have no sense
of the meaning and importance of cleanliness. They are to be taught
that those who are to represent the high and holy God must keep their
souls pure and clean, and that this purity must extend to their dress
and to everything in the home, so that the ministering angels will have
evidence that the truth has wrought a change in the life, purifying
the soul and refining the tastes. Those who, after receiving the truth,
1
The Review and Herald, February 2, 1886
.
2
The Ministry of Healing, 388
.
3
The Signs of the Times, August 5, 1875
.
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