culture.

It is often made a reproach to the modern church that it is so much a
supplement of the home, so largely a social opportunity rather than a
controlling moral force. In some sense the reproach may be a just one,
but in a very real meaning of human service, the church that aids
young people to find themselves and each other in a friendly circle of
the like-minded, like-mannered, and like-spirited, within the circle
of whom a really good marriage choice may be made, can claim
recognition as of those functionaries that meet a need not met so well
by any other social agency. The straining of this point by advertised
"courting parlors" for the friendless and homeless may not be the
right thing, but what is needed is an opportunity providing the right
atmosphere and chaperonage for easier acquaintance among young people
away from home.

The sad fact that so many young men and young women never meet the
right mates in youth and marry perforce, if at all, any one that
"comes along," makes any organization that naturally and simply
enables those who need it to make acquaintance with those among whom a
congenial mate may easily be found socially useful.

Either as substitute for home surroundings or as supplement to unhappy
or inadequate family life, the church home may be a benefactor in this
direction of enabling young people to find what all need, friends and
possible chosen ones among those friends.

The prophetic mission of the church, laments an earnest reformer, is
now too much in eclipse. Perhaps so, but it may be truer to say that
the prophetic mission has now escaped all walls, even of grandest
cathedrals, and is now busy at organizing that mission into
specialties of social reform and social progress. However that may be,
the church as a home-extension meeting-place of the higher, broader,
and finer friendly association, in which all ages can come together,
in a friendly spirit and for worship of all that is lovely and of good
report;--the church as such a home-extension service has a noble place
to fill in modern life.

=Easy Divorce Does Not Lessen Marriage Responsibility.=--At any rate,
by whatever means of help, or however left to struggle alone with its
problems, the youth of to-day has taken all life's choices in its own
hands, especially the choice that puts one friend above all others and
takes the first step in the founding of a home. If any one thinks that
it is so slight a thing to do this no