t certainly it is not difficult for us to note the
general direction of the movement. It is upward.

In all this, wherein does the home come, and what is its function? Is it
not, has it not been from the very beginning the Divine agency used for
doing this great work? Was not the home instituted, endowed with the
divine power of love, and consecrated for the perpetuation of the race?
"Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth." True, as many times
pointed out, our toils and our struggles, our earnings and our
productions, incidentally give us pleasure and satisfaction and power,
but yet even these are but a means to an end,--that parents may beget,
rear, and educate their children in such a way that they can carry the
banner of civilization a little higher--lift society to a higher level
and draw mankind nearer to God.

So it is that the center and circumference of the home is the child. In
the child the home finds its meaning, its excuse, and its justification.
It exists, then, that the child may be adequately prepared for doing its
great work in the world. Whatever else it may do, on the side, it has
one great problem. The child! The child! The best crop the farmer
raises, the best article the manufacturer puts on the market, the best
ware the merchant handles, the best case the lawyer pleads, the best
sermon the minister preaches--or at least that which gives meaning to
all of these--the child! "The fruit of all the past and the seed of all
the future." God bless the home and God bless its best fruitage--the
child!

THE CHURCH

Thus the home--God's simple yet mighty agent in His great work of
developing the human race. Its work was accepted and for a time all went
well. Such preparation, mostly physical, as the child needed for its
future work the home gave without difficulty. But this simple life could
not continue indefinitely. One of the fundamental principles of life
absolutely forbade man's standing still. The laws of growth and
development pushed him on. Whether he would or not, he was compelled to
move forward, just as the acorn, obeying the law of its being, changes
its form, its size, and adds to its complexity. Little by little man,
obeying these inexorable laws, began to develop. His mental, his moral,
and his physical natures gradually assumed new forms--new needs and
desires were born. More and more his vision became expanded until he
could see into and mesurably appreciate the forces of nat