188 KUKAL LIFE IN CANADA 



- .. . 



Hb**g i 



the past. The means of recreation and of social plea- 

 sures are being commercialized as a consequence. The 

 church must lead the home to supply an ordered pro- 

 vision for social as for other needs a provision to 

 include all its members, the tired mother as well as the 

 eager daughters. The chief responsibility for the social 

 life of youth rests not with the church or the school but 

 with the home, and the fundamental social duty of the 

 church is to maintain the social integrity and activity 

 of the home. And our age of world-wide interests 

 demands a fuller recognition of responsibility, of the 

 worth of character, of the supremacy of conscience and 

 the duty of service, than ever before. The home has 

 therefore a more emphatic call than ever to provide for 

 social religion and personal faith. In a word, all of 

 those deficiencies which make conservation, progressive 

 farming, co-operation, social satisfaction and commun- 

 ity service difficult of attainment must first be grappled 

 with in the home. What Oberlin achieved, what Grunt- 

 vig secured, is what our modern life demands and Christ 

 commands the use of the home as the first agency in 

 upbuilding the kingdom of heaven. 



The church must avail herself of the next great 

 agency, the School. By this is not meant any formal 

 control of the one institution by the other, but that the 

 church should inspire the school to freely fulfil more 

 adequately its tasks, and inspire the people to respond 

 more fully to the advantages offered by the school. Our 

 standpoint is that of the Christian Conservation Con- 

 gress, which " postulated the church as the agency and 

 the force that is to do the work which the twentieth cen- 

 tury demands," and " that it is the business of the 

 church to face fearlessly all the new problems of our 



