The dearest and most sacred spot on earth is home. Around it are the
most sacred associations, about it cluster the sweetest memories. The
buildings are not always palatial, the furnishings are not always of
the best, but when the home is worthy of the name ladders are let down
from heaven to those below, the angels of God come down, bringing
heaven's blessing and ascend, taking earth's crosses. Such a home is
the dearest spot on earth, because there your father worked and your
mother loved. There is no love which surpasses this.

Some years ago, when the English soldiers were fighting and a Scotch
regiment came to assist, the Scotchmen, strangely enough, began to die
in great numbers. The skill of the physicians was baffled. They could
not tell why it was that there seemed to be such a rapid falling away
of the men. But at last they discovered the cause. The Scotch pipers
were playing the tunes that reminded the Scotchman of the heather and
the hills, and they were dying of homesickness. When the music was
changed the deaths in such large numbers almost instantly ceased.

We are drifting away from our old-fashioned homes; fathers have grown
too busy, mothers have delegated their God-given work to others. We
have lost instead of gained. Wherever the homes are full of weakness
the government is in danger. The homes of our country are so many
streams pouring themselves into the great current of moral and social
life. If the home life is pure, then all is pure. I stand with that
company of people today who believe that we are at the beginning of a
great revival of religion, and I am persuaded that this revival is to
be helped on not so much by preaching, though that is not to be
ignored; nor by singing, though that in itself is useful; but it is to
be helped or hindered by the condition of the homes in our land.

I

I have a friend, George R. Stuart, who says that when God himself would
start a nation he made home life the deciding question. He selected
Abraham as the head of the home, and in Genesis, the eighteenth chapter
and the nineteenth verse, he gives the reason for this in these words:
"For I know him, that he will command his children and his household
after him."

There are two great principles which must prevail in every home:

First: _Authority_, suggested by the word "command."

Second: _Example_, suggested by the expression, "He will command his
children and his household after him."