... Home And Family The Basis of Society ...

White Ribbon, Volume 29, Issue 10, 1 June 1958, Page 1

... Home And Family The Basis of Society ...

The family was God’s first institution on earth; the cradle alike of C hurch and State. Here human life begins; here the first lessons for good or ill are learnt; here the'earliest influences are exerted. In the home, the character is moulded and formed. It is the studio or workshop where the unformed block of costly marble is slowly to be chiselled, but to what pattern? We all know how impressionable is the early life of the child; how plastic the little character; how soft to. the touch of sympathetic influences; how ready to imitate; how responsive to loving appeals that can gently guide it along a safe and straight path. In the daily life of the home, those influences frc possible from the earliest days of infancy. They can never be entirely removed, even when the family have grown up and left the immediate close surroundings of home. Throughout the world .there are signs of diminishing influences of home life. It is a cause of great concern to every serious-minded citizen, when thinking of the future condition of society, to see this tendency to regard filial obedience as old-fashioned and to minimise parental responsibility. This is not an age of driving, but'of leading by love. We have the opportunity of a softer relationship, that can evolve out of a spirit of true comradeship. A bond that can be strengthened year by year. A love that should grow so deep and true, that when the family have grown up, it will still bind them together. An affection that responds to loving care in the aged parents by children, \yho wish to show their appreciation of the home of their earlier years. Nothing should be more natural when home affection has been allowed the Divine inspiration of God front infancy. Thank God for the many homes where the love of God is so expressed in the love of one another. Such homes tit naturally into their right relationship to the authority of both Church and State. Obedience to the laws and rules of thgse institutions is the natural expression of loyal members of that smaller bond of unity—the HOME. v , —The Rev. C. Mortimer Jones, M.A.