service--the making of bread, the
packing of a box, the preserves for the sick--shine out like sunshine
spots along childhood's ways; they direct manhood's steps.

We are gradually learning that social duties are not learned save
through social deeds; that even the most carefully prepared and
perfectly pedagogical systems of instruction fail, standing alone. The
college student uses the laboratory method in his sociology--though we
know that sociology may be as far from social living as the poles are
apart. The Social Service Association of the Young Men's Christian
Association has given up attempts to teach social duty in favor of the
plan of undertaking specific pieces of social activity. The home must
adopt the laboratory method. The important thing is, not what the father
or mother may systematically teach about the social duties of the
children, but what kinds of service, of ministry and normal activity
they may lead the children to; that is, in what ways they may all
together discharge their functions in society.

Sec. 5. FAMILIES AS COMMUNITY FACTORS

Each family must clearly see its normal relations to its community, to
the social whole; first, as an association of social beings having
social duties, obligations, and privileges; then, to see that the
ordering of the daily life is the largest single factor in determining
the value of the family to the development of the community, fitting
harmoniously into the larger community, and rendering its share of
service.

The disorderly home spreads its immoral contagion beyond its walls, out
into the front yard, out and up and down the street, and all through the
village and city. The City Beautiful cannot come until we have the Home
Beautiful. Training each one to play his part in keeping the house in
order, picking up and setting in place his own tools and playthings,
preventing and removing litter, scraps, and elements of disorder and
discomfort, acquiring habits of neatness based on social motives--these
things make more for the city of beauty and health than all our lectures
on clean cities.

No family lives to itself. Young people need to see clearly how their
homes and their habits in the home impinge on other homes and lives.
This is impressed upon us in an accentuated and acute degree in city
living. One can hardly imagine a finer discipline of grace than
apartment living, though one may well question whether it is not morally
and hygienically flying in