270 Christian Citizenship 



healthy work, work fit for a free Republic, fit for 

 self-governing democracy, only by treading in the 

 footsteps of Washington and Franklin and Adams 

 and Patrick Henry, and not in the steps of Marat 

 and Robespierre. 



So far, what I have had to say has dealt mainly 

 with our relations to one another in what may be 

 called the service of the State. But the basis of good 

 citizenship is the home. A man must be a good son, 

 husband, and father, a woman a good daughter, 

 wife, and mother, first and foremost. There must 

 be no shirking of duties in big things or in little 

 things. The man who will not work hard for his 

 wife and his little ones, the woman who shrinks from 

 bearing and rearing many healthy children, these 

 have no place among the men and women who are 

 striving upward and onward. Of course the family 

 is the foundation of all things in the State. Sins 

 against pure and healthy family life are those which 

 of all others are sure in the end to be visited most 

 heavily upon the nation in which they take place. 

 We must beware, moreover, not merely of the great 

 sins, but of the lesser ones which when taken together 

 cause such an appalling aggregate of misery and 

 wrong. The drunkard, the lewd liver, the coward, 

 the liar, the dishonest man, the man who is brutal to 

 or neglectful of parents, wife, or children of all 

 of these the shrift should be short when we speak 



