Henry Frederick Cope

“ Why should we assume that the Fatherhood of God is for the adult alone? And why should it be that this rich concept dawns on us like a new day of freedom in truth in later years instead of becoming ours in childhood and so determining the habit and attitude of our lives? The finest, the ideal person is, to the child, the father. God in terms of fatherhood is the sum and source of all that is ideal in personality. ”

“ Just as children grow all the time in their bodies, so do adults and all others grow all the time in mind and will and powers of the higher life whenever they live normally. We grow spiritually, not only in church and under the stimulus of song and prayer, but we grow when the beauty of the woods appeals to us, when the face lightens at the face of a friend, when we meet and master a temptation, when we brace up under a load, when we do faithfully the dreary, daily task, when we adjust our thoughts in sympathy to others, when we move in the crowd, when we think by ourselves. ”

“ The choice of our own reading enters here, not only the matter of reading in sociology, but of all reading, as to whether it blinds with class prejudices, intensifies caste feeling, or atrophies social sympathy by pandering to selfishness and sensuousness. The control of our own feelings and judgment enters here. Do we sedulously cultivate charity for others? Do we stifle impatience, bitterness, class feeling? Do we guide the conversation of visitors and the family group so that antisocial passions are subdued and a spirit of brotherly love and compassion for all is cultivated? ”

“ Almost as soon as a child can talk he boasts of the valor of his father, the beauty of his mother. Here is loyalty at work. He stands for them; he resents the least doubt as to their superiority, not because they give him food and shelter, but because they are his, because to him they are worthy; in all things they have the worth, the highest good; they are, in person, the virtue of life. Therefore in fighting for the reputation of his parents he is practicing loyalty to an ideal. ”

“ A home without song lacks one of the strongest bonds of family unity, and the after-years will be deprived of a memory dear indeed to many others. Days often come when the wheels of family life seem to develop friction, when little rifts seem to throw the members far apart, but the evening song brings them together. The unity of action, of feeling, the development of emotions above the day's irritation and strife, all help to new joys in family living.
We may well think of the fine songs and the great hymns together. ”

“ Further, let the home keep this day as the one of personal values all the way through, sacred to that life of love, friendship, and joy in the presence of one another which is the essential life of the family. It has always been a good custom for friends to visit on this day, for families grown up and established around their own hearths to gather again for a few hours. It is the day when we have time to discover how much greater are the riches of friendship than aught besides, when, looking into the eyes of those we love, we see "the light that never was on sea or land," the ultimate good! ”

“ In a word, the conservation of the home is simply a program of beginning today ourselves to set first things first, to conserve the human factors that will make homes, to make education everywhere in school and church and home count first of all for character. And that broader education we ourselves must test first of all by this, whether it makes youth competent to live aright, cultivates the love of worthy ideals, and makes him willing and able to pay the price of a trained life consecrated to the service of his world, to the love of his fellows, and to the making of a new world. ”

“ The sweetest memories of our lives cluster about the scenes of family life. The rose-embowered cottage of the poet is not the only spot that claims affectionate gratitude; many look back to a city house wedged into its monotonous row. But, wherever it might be, if it sheltered love and held a shrine where the altar fires of family sacrifice burned, earth has no fairer or more sacred spot. The people rather than the place made it potent. ”

“ But it is just as easy to do precisely the opposite, to speak of the pleasures found in simpler ways, to glory in goodness and kindness, and to teach, by relating the worthy things of the day, the worth of love and truth and high ideals. The news of the day may be discussed so as to make this world a game of grab, inviting youth to cast conscience and honor to the winds and to plunge into the greedy struggle, or so as to make each day a book of beautiful pictures of life's best pleasures and enduring prizes. ”

“ Families must develop a public opinion that will demand, for the sake of their young people, a provision for amusement and recreation that, instead of poisoning the life, shall strengthen, dignify, and elevate it. If the demand for clean drinking-water is a proper one, is the demand for healthful food for the life of ideals less so?
There can be no doubt of the attitude of any home with the least conscience for character toward all forms of public amusements in which young people are herded promiscuously for the mere purpose of killing time in trivialities. ”

“ What hope is there for useful and happy family life if the newly wedded youth have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to frivolous pleasures, and guided by ideals of success in terms of garish display? Yet what definite program for any other training does society provide? Do the schools and colleges, Sunday schools and churches teach youth a better way? How else shall they be trained to take the home and family in terms that will make for happiness and usefulness? It is high time to take seriously the task of educating people to religious efficiency in the home. ”

“ Is the home striving for more than it deserves? Is it trying to get more out of life than it puts in? Evading taxes, avoiding duties, a community parasite, does it commend to children the arts of social cheating and lying? Such homes teach so loudly that no voice could be heard in them.
Given the atmosphere, ideals, and practices of the honest life in the home itself, the problems of conduct, in the realm of these rights, are more than half solved. ”

“ Fatherhood is our chance to become. It is our chance to grow into our finest selves. The measure of its gains to us depends upon the measure of our gifts to its opportunities and duties. It is our chance to be what we should like our children to be, our chance to find ourselves. All that it costs, all the self-denial, labor, and often pain it must mean, is just the process of developing a fine, rich life. Now, that life is just the greatest gift that any man can make to his home and his world. ”

“ If the church fails in an adequate ministry for children, shall we condemn it as we would a bridge that failed to carry a reasonable load? We do but condemn ourselves. If my church is not fit to send my children to, then I must help to make it fit. Before falling back on the lazy man's salve of caustic ridicule, before taking the seat of the scornful, before setting in the child's mind an aversion to this institution, based on my opinion, let me be sure I have done all that lies in my power to better it. ”

“ The separate home, each family a complete social integer, each with its own circle of activities and interests, its own group, and its own table and fireside, seemed too fine and beautiful, too fair and helpful, to perish under economic pressure. Indeed, one felt that the village home furnished a setting for life and a soil for character development far higher and more efficient than could be afforded by any other domestic arrangement—that it approached the ideal. ”

“ They would always rather play than be played to; they would rather, where early labor has not sapped vitality, play outdoors than sit in a fetid atmosphere watching tawdry spectacles. But play, the idealization of life's experiences, they will find somewhere. To this need the home must minister by the provision of space, time, opportunity, and the means of play. If through either sloth, selfishness, preoccupation, or a mistaken idea of an empty innocence of life you make recreation and social intercourse impossible in the family, the young people will find it on the street or in the crowd. ”

“ The whole attitude of life is determined by the thought-atmosphere of the family. The greedy family makes the grafting citizen. The grasping home makes the pugnacious disturber of the public peace. Greater than the question whether you are a good citizen in your relation to the ballot box is the one whether you are a cultivator of good citizenship in your home. No amount of Sunday-school teaching on the Beatitudes or week-day teaching on civics is going to overcome the down-drag of envious, antisocial thought and feeling and conversation in the home. ”

“ True we sacrifice lawns, gardens, natural places for children to play; we lose birds and flowers and the charm of evening hours on porches, or galleries, but think of what we gain in bricks and mortar, in labor saved from splitting wood and shoveling coal, in janitor service! The transition is now complete; the home is simply that item in the economic machinery which will best furnish us storage for our sleeping bodies and our clothes!
We are undoubtedly in a period of great changes in family life, and no family can count on escaping the influence of the change. ”

“ Order and quietness in eating are not separable from the rest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the whole level. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift up the level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of the entire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convert it into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should be in all things worthy of the unseen guest. ”

“ There are two outstanding aspects of the asking of a blessing—the desire to express gratitude for the common benefits of life, and the expression of a wish, with the recognition of its realization, that at each meal the family group might include the Unseen Guest, the Infinite Spirit of God. That wish lifts the meal above the dull level of satisfying appetites. Just as, in good society, we seek to make the meal much more than an eating of food, "a feast of reason and a flow of soul," so does this act make each meal a social occasion lifted toward the spiritual. ”

“ At some time every child of church-attending parents will want to know whether he "belongs to the church." One must be very careful here, regardless of the ecclesiastical practice, to show the child that he is essentially one with this body, this religious family. He may be too young to subscribe his name to its roll, but he belongs at least to the full measure of unity appreciable by his mind. He must not be permitted to think of himself as an outsider. Indeed, no matter what our theology may hold, every religious parent believes that his children belong to God. ”

“ There is danger that our emphasis on child-welfare may be that of the tools instead of the man; that we may become enmeshed in the mechanism of well-being and lose sight of the being who should be well. To fail at the point of character is to fail all along the line. And we fail altogether, no matter how many bathtubs we give a child, how many playgrounds, medical inspections, and inoculations, unless that child be in himself strong and high-minded, loving truth, hating a lie, and habituated to live in good-will with his fellows and with high ideals for the universe. ”

“ Here men and women have opportunity to give evidence of a change of heart; here they need that awakening to social consciousness which is a new birth, a regeneration into the life of the Son of Man who came to give his life.
By its active ministry the family is training for social living. When a child carries a bowl of soup to some sick or needy one, he learns a lesson never to be forgotten. The memories of hours of planning and preparation for some neighborly service—the making of bread, the packing of a box, the preserves for the sick—shine out like sunshine spots along childhood's ways ”

“ Just here parents, especially many religious parents, meet the temptation thoughtlessly to use God as their ally by reminding the child that, though they could not see him in the pantry, God was there watching him. In the vivid memory of a childhood clouded by the thought of a police-detective Deity, may one protest against this act of irreverence and blasphemy? True, God was there; but not as a spy, a reporter of all that is bad, anxious to detect, but cowardly and cruel in silence at all other times! ”

“ Surely no one contends that family life has deteriorated, that human character is one whit the poorer, because we have discarded the family spinning-wheel. Through the changes of a developing civilization, as man has moved from the time when each one built his own house, worked with his own tools to make all his supplies, to these days of specialized service in community living, the home has changed with each step of industrial progress, but the family has remained practically unchanged. ”