ood
sacred. It tended to center national hopes and religious ideals about
the family.[9]

There are a few glimpses of ideal family life in the Old Testament. They
are all summed up in the eloquent tribute to motherhood in the words of
King Lemuel in the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It must be
remembered, however, that such ideals did not belong to the Jews alone,
that Plutarch shows many pictures of maternal fidelity and wifely
devotion, that Greek and Roman history have their Cornelia, Iphigenia,
and Mallonia.[10]

The Jews are an excellent example of the power of the family life to
maintain distinct characteristics and to secure marked development.
Practically throughout all the Christian era they have been a people
without a land, a constitution, or a government, and yet never without
race consciousness, national unity, and separateness. Their unity has
continued in spite of dispersion, persecution, and losses; they have
remained a race in the face of political storms that have swept other
peoples away. Their unity has continued about two great centers, the
customs of religion and the life of the family.

The results of Jewish respect for family life can also be seen in
the health of their own children. In 1910, for instance, among poor
Jews in Manchester the mortality of infants under one year of age
was found to be 118 per thousand; among poor Gentiles, 300 per
thousand; and comparisons made some six years ago between Jewish
and Gentile children in schools in the poorer parts of Manchester
and Leeds (England) have shown that the Jewish children are
uniformly taller, they weigh more, and their bones and teeth are
superior.[11]

Sec. 2. THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY

The Christian family is a type peculiar to itself, not as a new
institution, for it has developed out of earlier race experience, but as
controlled by a new interpretation, the spirit and conception of the
home and family given in the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. He did not
give formal rules for the regulation of homes; rather he made a
spiritual ideal of family life the basic thought of all his teaching. He
said more about the family than concerning any other human institution,
yet he established no family life of his own. He is called the founder
of the church, yet he scarcely mentions that institution, while he
frequently teaches concerning home duties and family relations. He
glorifies the relat