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human family as a training school for this larger family of humanity.
The infant approaches social living by the pathway of the society of the
family. We all go out into life through widening circles, first the
mother's arms, then the family, the neighborhood, the city, the state,
the nation, the world-life. Each circle prepares for the next. The
family is the child's social order; its life is his training for the
larger life of nation and human brotherhood.
Just how men and women will live in society is determined principally by
the bent of their characters in the social order of the family. Their
attitude to the world follows the attitude of the family, especially of
the parents. They interpret the larger world by the lesser. The home is
the great school of citizenship and social living.
All the moral and religious problems of the family find a focus in the
purpose of preparing persons for social living. The family justifies its
cost to society in the contribution which it makes in trained and
motived lives. As a religious family its first duty is to prepare the
coming generation to live in a religious society, in one which will
steadily move toward the divine ideal of perfect family relations
through brotherhood and fatherhood. Its business is not to get children
ready for heaven, but to train them to make all life heavenly. Its aim
is not alone children who will not tear down the parents' reputation,
but men and women who will build up the actual worth and beauty of all
lives.
The realization, in the family, of the purpose of training youth to
social living and service in the religious spirit depends on two things:
a spirit and passion in the family for social justice and order, and the
direction of the activities of the family toward training in social
usefulness.
Only the social spirit can give birth to the social spirit. True lovers
of men, who set the values of life and of the spirit first, who give
their lives that all men may have freedom and means to find more
abundant life, come out of the families where the passion of human love
burns high. The selfish family, self-centered, caring not at all in any
deep sense for the well-being of others, existing to extract the juice
of life and let who will be nourished on the rind, becomes effective to
make the social highwayman, the oppressor. From such a family comes he
who breaks laws for his pocketbook and impedes the enactment of laws
lest human rights
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