PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 139 



and moral shame have no opposition, but are 

 yielded to under the slightest occasion. The chil- 

 dren from such homes array their authority and 

 influence against all the rules and standards of 

 the homes that seek in the wisest way to develop 

 virtue and high character. Your little seven-year- 

 old is to be submitted to this moral blast when 

 you are not there to protect or to neutralize. 

 Surely that presents conditions of an uncertain 

 issue if not of an unfair struggle. It would lead 

 us wide afield to discuss it, but the only means 

 of combating that influence, apart from aiding the 

 school teacher, is to join with others in the effort 

 to uplift that degraded home. Its existence is a 

 menace to your child as well as to the destiny 

 of the child that comes from it. Under certain 

 circumstances it might be duty to refuse to send 

 your own child to the school if the danger were 

 imminent and too great for a child to meet with- 

 out almost certain destruction. The State has 

 no more right to harbor a moral infection in the 

 school than it has a physical one. 



During this period, if ever, the church-going 

 habit must be established. Differences of view 

 might be encountered, and some reasonable, if not 

 compelling, objections given for its neglect 

 hitherto. But all subterfuges should now be swept 

 aside. Those who believe that the Church has a 

 mission, which can be accomplished only for those 

 who attend its services, must now endeavor to es- 

 tablish a love for and a habit of Church attend- 



