nd it. Israel did." But it is not
enough to laud the Jewish home of old. If Jews are to rest satisfied
with praises of the Jewish home that was instead of seeking to beautify
and ennoble the Jewish home that is, then, remembering the word of
Juvenal, virtue is the sole and only nobility, may it truly be said of
the Jew in the language of the rabbis: "As the dust differs from the
gold, so our generation differs from the generations of the fathers."

And yet there is no Jewish question here, though there be a Jewish
aspect of the wider problem we are considering. Jewish parents have in
the past for reasons given or hinted at been almost Chinese in their
adoration of a child. And when the day of parenthood dawns, these may
be as unwisely adoring and hopelessly indulgent touching their
children as were their parents. It may be that in the past Jewish
parents have given more to their children than have non-Jewish. Let
less be given parentally and more be asked,--Jewish parent and Jewish
child need this counsel most.

CHAPTER XV

THE SOVEREIGN GRACES OF THE HOME

The home lies somewhere between the outer and the inner life of man
and its life touches and is touched by both. It is one of the highways
through which one passes from the inner to the outer life, the place,
to change the figure, where the inner life is touched by the outer
world and by it tested and searched and challenged. The place of the
home in relation to the inner life is shown forth by the truth that
nothing which the world can give balances the hurts and wounds one may
suffer within the home. Yet such is the magic and mystery of the home
that it can heal every wound, which the world without inflicts. It is
in the home that the peace of the inner life most clearly reveals
itself, that one's soul finds itself most nearly invulnerable to the
wounds of the world without. Shakespeare is true to the facts, if
facts they may be called, in his tremendous picture of the storm on
the heath, which in its terror is less terrible than the storm in the
home-life of the banished and broken Lear.

The relations of the home constitute a test which nearly every one of
us must meet and unhappiest is he who is outside of their range. No
school, no testing-place like that of the home! And it is well to bear
in mind that no man greatly succeeds in life, who fails in his own
home, not merely because the rewards of the world cannot compensate
for the failure of home-