the home once developed are now left largely to
the school; religious training is turned over more and more to the Sunday
School and the church, and much more of the time of children is now spent
in social amusements away from home than ever before.

Then, too, it is certain that the old-time home is passing. It seemed to
have higher ideals and more definite purposes in life than homes now
possess; moreover, it occupied most of the time of the child and taught
him to be industrious and proficient, and to regard life with much more
seriousness than does the home of to-day. The home or the family,
therefore, is not the great superlative factor that it ought to be in
the training and education of the child.

From the first chapter of Cope in "Religious Education in the Family,"
the following is quoted: "The ills of the modern home are symptomatic.
Divorce, childless families, irreverent children, and a decadence of the
old type of separate home life are signs of forgotten ideals, lost motives,
and insufficient purposes. When the home is only an opportunity for
self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheap boarding house, a sleeping
shelf, an implement for social advantage. While it is true that general
economic development has effected marked changes in domestic economy, the
happiness and efficiency of the family do not depend wholly on the parlor,
the kitchen, or the clothes closet. Rather, everything depends on whether
the home and family are considered in worthy and adequate terms.

"Homes are wrecked because families refuse to take home life in religious
terms, in social terms of sacrifice and service. In such homes, organized
and conducted to satisfy personal desires rather than to meet social
responsibility, these desires become aims rather than agencies and
opportunities. What hope is there for useful and happy family life if the
newly-wedded youths have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to
frivolous pleasures and guided by ideals of success in terms of garish
display?

"It is a costly thing to keep a home where honor, the joy of love, and high
ideals dwell ever. It costs time, pleasure, and so-called social
advantages, as well as money and labor. It must cost thought, study and
investigation. It demands and deserves sacrifice; it is too sacred to be
cheap. The building of a home is a work that endures to eternity, and that
kind of work never was done with ease or without pain and loss and
investment of