Home Education
127
be avoided if temperance in all things were practiced, and patience
cultivated. Self-control on the part of all the members of the family
will make home almost a paradise. Make your rooms as cheerful as
possible. Let the children find home the most attractive place on earth.
Throw about them such influences that they will not seek for street
companions, nor think of the haunts of vice except with horror. If the
home life is what it should be, the habits formed there will be a strong
defense against the assaults of temptation when the young shall leave
the shelter of home for the world.
Do we build our houses for the happiness of the family, or merely
for display? Do we provide pleasant, sunny rooms for our children, or
do we keep them darkened and closed, reserving them for strangers
who are not dependent on us for happiness? There is no nobler work
that we can do, no greater benefit that we can confer upon society,
than to give to our children a proper education, impressing upon them,
by precept and example, the important principle that purity of life and
sincerity of purpose will best qualify them to act their part in the world.
Our artificial habits deprive us of many privileges and much enjoy-
ment, and unfit us for usefulness. A fashionable life is a hard, thankless
life. How often time, money, and health are sacrificed, the patience
sorely tried, and self-control lost, merely for the sake of display. If
parents would cling to simplicity, not indulging in expense for the
gratification of vanity, and to follow fashion; if they would maintain a
noble independence in the right, unmoved by the influence of those
who, while professing Christ, refuse to lift the cross of self-denial,
they would by this example itself give their children an invaluable
education. The children would become men and women of moral
[156]
worth, and, in their turn, would have courage to stand bravely for the
right, even against the current of fashion and popular opinion.
Every act of the parents tells on the future of the children. In
devoting time and money to the outward adorning and the gratification
of perverted appetite, they are cultivating vanity, selfishness, and lust
in the children. Mothers complain of being so burdened with care and
labor that they cannot take time patiently to instruct their little ones,
and to sympathize with them in their disappointments and trials. Young
hearts yearn for sympathy and tenderness, and if they do not obtain it
from their parents, they will seek it from sources that may endanger
both mind and morals. I have heard mothers refuse their children