Our New Edens 2
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Brothers and sisters also have their part in making the home happiness. Sometimes they forget this. Some young people do not add to the joy and the sweetness of the home in which they have been brought up—as they might do.
They do not give to their parents the comfort and cheer they might give. They do not remember and practice the fifth commandment. Then they do not live together sweetly as they might do, adding to the music of the home. Children carry in their hands—the happiness of their parents. We talk of the responsibility of parenthood—did you ever think of the responsibility of children for their parents? In this home garden-making every child has a share.
The artist was painting a picture of a dead mother, and was using a photograph as his copy. But to make the face look fresher and younger, he was leaving out the lines and marks of old age and care on the face. "No, no!" said the son. "Don't take out the lines! Leave them, every one! It wouldn't be my mother if all the lines were gone." Then he told the story of her devotion to her children through their infancy and through times of sickness. The lines which seemed to disfigure the face—were love's records, telling of sacrifice and suffering. We should never forget what we owe to our mothers.
Then may I say a special word about children's thought for their fathers? Mothers are idealized much oftener and with more just recognition and praise than fathers. More children pay honor and love and attention to mothers—than to fathers. Of course, mothers do more for children than fathers do—suffer more, are gentler and sweeter, give more thought and time and strength to them—and deserve more in return. We are not in danger of ever overdoing our gratitude to our mothers or of showing them too much kindness. But fathers also hunger for love from their children.
Max O'Rell has a strong word somewhere about the beauty of a daughter's attention and devotion to her father, saying also that such love and appreciation are rare. Love your mother and give her high honor—but do not forget that you can give your father great joy by being kind to him. He loves you too—and has lived for you all the years. He needs your affection and will be cheered by your thoughtfulness and attention.
I want to say some earnest words about the home-life we must live—if we are to make our homes little gardens of Eden. As in everything, LOVE is the great master secret of home happiness. When love is left gone from the home—the peace is broken. We must remember too that love needsexpression. There are men who love their wives and would die for them—but who are not always gentle and kind to them. There are wives who love their husbands—but say little about it and do not take pains to show it. There is need for love that is affectionate, thoughtful, fond in its expression. Bring your flowers while they will do good—and do not keep them for the day of the funeral!
Parents cannot think too seriously of what they should try to make their homes—for the sake of their children. They are given to us in tender infancy to be brought up by us—for holy, worthy, beautiful lives. It is our duty to teach them and train them so that they shall be ready by and by for the positions in life they may be called to fill. The place of the home-life among the educational influences which help to mold and shape character, is supreme in its importance. It is not enough to have an opulent house to live in. It is not enough to have fine foods, and luxurious furniture, and expensive entertainments. Most of the world's worthiest men and women, those who have blessed the world the most, were brought up in plain homes, without any luxury. It is the tone of the home-life that is important. We should make it pure, elevating, refining, inspiring. The books we bring in, the papers and magazines, the guests we have at our tables and admit to our firesides, the home conversation, the pictures we hang on our walls—all these are educational.
The religious influences are also vitally important. In that first garden home the Lord came and went as a familiar friend. Christ must be our guest—if our home is to be a fit place either for our children or for ourselves. If no window opens into heaven, it is not a true home. If there is no prayer in it, it is not a home at all—it is only a heathen lodging-place!
A godly man tells of going back to the home of his childhood and of being put to sleep in the spare room. Opening a closet, he saw an old stool there, faded and worn, and noticed especially two deep dents in the cushion. Evidently they were dents made by a pair of knees. He understood at a glance. It was on that stool his mother had knelt daily through years as she prayed for her children, and prayed them one by one into the kingdom. There should be such a stool or spot in every home, where mothers and fathers bow morning and night to plead for their children.
They say that family worship is falling into disuse—and going out of fashion. It is a great loss to the world if this is true. There is a story of one man whom his wife urged to begin family prayers. It was hard the first time. A Bible chapter had been read and the two were on their knees—but there was silence—the prayer did not begin. The wife at length cried out, "O God, give John a lift!" The lift was given and the sealed lips were opened. It may not be easy to start family prayers—but if we try, God will give us a lift, and then great joy and good will follow.
There are godly mothers who every day kneel by their children's sides and pray with them—and there is great power in a mother's prayer!
We talk about the dangers of the street for our children, and God alone knows how real and how great the dangers are. What is the best way to save them from these perils? We must do it in the home. There is a tendency to roll the responsibility for the religious care and protection of children—over on the church. But we cannot evade our personal duty in this way. Parents are the custodians of their children's lives. If they would meet their responsibility and be able to look God and their children in the face at the judgment, they must make their homes as nearly 'gardens of Eden' as possible. The way to save the boys from the temptations of the streets—is to make home so bright, so sweet, so beautiful, so happy, so full of love, joy, and prayer—that the streets will have no attractiveness for them, no power to win them away. "Overcome evil with good."
The parents who are ready to do this will not be sorry for it by and by. No other work we can do—will yield larger returns. But there are some who do not care to devote themselves in this way, to the teaching and training of their children. "It is too much trouble!" they say. It is pathetic to think of how many children there are who are always in the way, whose noise always jars home nerves, who never get much love at home.
Let us live with our children! Let us take them into our lives. Let us enter into their lives. The best thing a father can do for his boy—is to be a boy again himself with him. The best thing a mother can do for her daughter—is to be a girl again herself with her. There is no revival needed today quite so imperatively as a revival of sweet, beautiful homes that shall clutch the lives of the boys and girls in them with a clutch of love, from which no power of temptation or of evil can ever tear them away.
I call upon all parents who care to heed my pleading to begin today—to make their homes more winning, more attractive, more happy, sweeter, heavenlier. Religion? Yes—but not religion made somber or distasteful, so that your children will not be influenced by it. Make your religion sunny, cheerful, full of sympathy with child-life, glad, songful—a religion for boys and girls. There is no reason why religion in a home should not be winsome, just as the life of Christ was. Bring heaven down into your homes. Try to make such a home-life as must have been in Joseph's home at Nazareth, when Jesus was a boy there. God has planted a 'new garden of Eden' for you to dress and keep. Tend it well.
There is an Eastern legend of a rose so sweet, that "even the earth which lies round its roots becomes permeated with fragrance, and little bits of it are sold as amulets and worn by princes." Make your home so sweet, so heavenly, with love and prayer and song and holy living—that all through it, there shall be the fragrance of the heart of Christ!
Thus let us make our homes little Eden gardens, in which something of the beauty, the sweetness, and the joy of heaven shall be reproduced on earth, to make the world believe in the home above in the Father's house, waiting for all the Master's friends!
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