purpose of the lives in it and the household for the
purpose of a salon.[39]

Sec. 2. RELIGIOUS SERVICE

In the religious family there is valuable opportunity to train youth to
one form of participation in the religious life. Whatever the family
gives or does for social service, for philanthropic enterprises, for the
support of the church or religious work, ought to be, not the gift of
one member or of the heads alone, but of the whole family, extending
itself in service through the community, the nation, and the world. The
form and the amount of the gifts ought to be a matter of family
conference and each member ought early to have the opportunity and the
means of determining his share in such extension. The child's gifts to
the church should not be pennies thrust into his hand as he crosses the
threshold of home for the Sunday school, but his own money, from his own
account--partly his own direct earnings--appropriated for this or for
other purposes by himself and with the advice of his parents. Family
councils on forms of participation in ideal activities, by gifts and by
service, bind the whole life together and form occasions in which the
child is learning life in terms of loving, self-giving service.[40]

The boy needs friendship. Not all his needs can be met by the schoolboys
whom he may bring into his room, nor can they all be met by his mother's
affection. He needs a father. The most serious obstacle to the religious
education of boys is that most of them are half-orphans; intellectually
and spiritually they have no fathers. The American ideal seems to be
that the man shall be the money-maker, the woman the social organizer,
and the children shall be committed to hired shepherds or left to shift
for themselves.

Sec. 3. THE FATHER AND THE BOY

No one else can be quite the teacher for the boy that his father ought
to be. No man can ever commit to another, still less to some tract or
book, the duty of guiding his boy to sanity and consecration in the
matter of the sex problems.

The first word that needs to be said on this subject is that such
problems receive safe and sufficient guidance only in the atmosphere of
affection and reverence. Do not attempt to teach this boy of yours as
though you were dealing with a class in physiology. The largest thing
you can do for him is to quicken a reverence for the body and for the
functions of life. By your own attitude, by your own expressions and
opinions, lea