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Ministry of the Home
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effort for those who would work for the uplifting of their fellow men.
There is no more important field of effort than that committed to the
founders and guardians of the home. No work entrusted to human
beings involves greater or more far-reaching results than does the
work of fathers and mothers.
It is by the youth and children of today that the future of society
is to be determined, and what these youth and children shall be
depends upon the home. To the lack of right home training may be
traced the larger share of the disease and misery and crime that curse
humanity. If the home life were pure and true, if the children who
went forth from its care were prepared to meet life’s responsibilities
and dangers, what a change would be seen in the world!
Great efforts are put forth, time and money and labor almost with-
out limit are expended, in enterprises and institutions for reforming
the victims of evil habits. And even these efforts are inadequate to
meet the great necessity. Yet how small is the result! How few are
permanently reclaimed!
Multitudes long for a better life, but they lack courage and res-
olution to break away from the power of habit. They shrink from
the effort and struggle and sacrifice demanded, and their lives are
wrecked and ruined. Thus even men of the brightest minds, men of
high aspirations and noble powers, otherwise fitted by nature and
education to fill positions of trust and responsibility, are degraded
and lost for this life and for the life to come.
For those who do reform, how bitter the struggle to regain their
manhood! And all their life long, in a shattered constitution, a
wavering will, impaired intellect, and weakened soul power, many
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reap the harvest of their evil sowing. How much more might be
accomplished if the evil were dealt with at the beginning!
This work rests, in a great degree, with parents. In the efforts
put forth to stay the progress of intemperance and of other evils that
are eating like a cancer in the social body, if more attention were
given to teaching parents how to form the habits and character of
their children, a hundredfold more good would result. Habit, which
is so terrible a force for evil, it is in their power to make a force for
good. They have to do with the stream at its source, and it rests with
them to direct it rightly.