228 MORAL ASPECTS OF HOME. 



empty semblance of what the home should be. The complete home 

 embraces within it limits a perfect system of social government, and 

 it is in these integers of the aggregate community that there is to 

 be found the highest guarantee of the stability of the whole socia. 

 fabric of the state. It is not only the temple of domestic virtue, but 

 it is the school in which men and women are qualified for their ul- 

 terior duties of citizenship. Here in youth are learned the princi- 

 ples of obedience to constituted authority, which in manhood are 

 carried into the wider sphere of social duties. Here the edifice of 

 character is founded; the moral stature trained to grow apace with 

 physical and intellectual development, and the impress given which 

 stamps its seal of expanding influence upon the future life, and its 

 ever broadening associations. 



Domestic Discipline Nothing is more absolutely essen- 

 tial both to the future well-being of children and to the proper har- 

 mony of the household than that the youth should be thoroughly 

 trained in the habits of obedience, and taught to honor and respect 

 the parental authority. Filial respect is the surest foundation of an 

 upright character, and.it is the chief guarantee of the parents for 

 tne realization of the rewards to which they look forward for the 

 care and labor expended upon the infancy and youth of children. 

 Yet in no respect are parents as a rule more careless than in this. 

 The true foundation of filial obedience is affection, which makes the 

 duty a pleasure, and renders its performance doubly grateful to both 

 parent and child. In order to insure the proper cultivation of this 

 trait, the habit should be carefully inculcated from the earliest dawn 

 of intelligence, until it becomes by custom a part of the nature of the 

 child and is crystallized into character in the development of youth. 

 Too commonly carelessness and indifference on the part of parents 

 allow the child to drift without guidance in this respect, until they 

 find themselves confronted with a hardened will set up in opposition 

 to the demands of duty. True, the parental authority may then be 

 asserted; obedience may still be enforced; but then a charm in the 

 household is broken which can never be restored, a chord of har- 

 mony severed whose music will never again vibrate in the heart of 

 Earent or child, and one of the sweetest of domestic pleasures will 

 ave been banished from the family hearth. That obedience of 

 children which is founded from earliest infancy on love and respect, 

 will blossom perennially in the hearts of both parents and children, 

 and shed enduring fragrance upon every relation of life. 



The Sense of Honor It may be assumed that all parents, in 

 discharging the solemn responsibility of forming the character of 

 those whom they have brought into being, and whom they are 

 called upon to equip physically, mentally and morally for the vicis- 

 situdes of life, will take care that the character of the youth IQ 

 founded in honesty, industry, sobriety, integrity, fidelity, economy, 

 perseverance and self-reliant determination, which are the weapons 

 in the armory of character by which success is to be wrested from 



