first steps aright
through the loving influence of a good home.

LESSON XIV

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What four great agencies are concerned in training and education?

2. Which is most important and why?

3. What is the indictment of the home?

4. What change has taken place respecting the relative importance of these
developing agencies?

5. The home is responsible for what physical habits?

6. What moral habits and virtues?

7. What mental habits and virtues?

8. What religious habits and sentiments?

9. What is the future outlook for the home and family?

It will be well at this point to review briefly the three beginning
chapters from "Religious Education in the Family," by Cope. The "Peril and
Preservation of the Home," by Jacob Riis, will also be found helpful
reading here.

TRAINING BY THE CHURCH

_The Influence of the Church Is Essential to Aid the Home in Developing the
Religious Instincts and Emotions of the Child_

Religious emotions and belief are among the most deeply imbedded instincts
of the race. They are also some of the earliest manifestations of
childhood. They accompany the individual throughout his entire life,
exercising a profound influence over his thoughts and conduct, and they
become the chief anchor of the soul when sorrow or old age comes. It would
be a great calamity, therefore, if religious instincts and sentiment
should suffer eclipse or disappear.

Rightly cultivated and trained, these natural feelings of religion grow
to spiritual power within us. Without such power, man is of little
consequence.

Upon the home naturally falls the duty of fostering the first feelings of
reverence towards God. The child who learns to lisp his prayers at his
mother's knee is started aright. The home must give the first lessons in
the love of God and goodness. If it fails, they are likely never to be
learned.

But the home needs the influence of the church here. It must have it to
round out the child's religious development. The church can do many things
for the child that the home cannot accomplish. It introduces him to
religious ceremonies and observances that satisfy his soul, and it helps
greatly to train him in religious habits.

One cannot estimate the value of all this upon the character of the child.
As a restraint from wrong conduct and an encouragement to right action, the
work of the church is most salutary. The solemn ceremonies, the sacred
music, the