Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 80. The Home Atmosphere.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 80. The Home Atmosphere.
Other Subjects in this Topic:
The Home Atmosphere.
But there's another influence so far greater than any of these that it must be put and kept in a class all by itself. The home influence in the training of the child is clear beyond all of these others put together. Indeed, most of these, if not all, are outgrowths of the home. All their roots run down here. The home is the centre and source of the power that moulds and trains the child.
It may be a very simple home. Poverty's mark may be plainly seen there, and felt more than seen. But it has the power to mould the precious child as neither Church nor school nor any other influence can do. The world's great instructors are obliged to bare their heads, and bow low in reverence of the home. It underlies and outstrips the best they can do. And, in countless instances, it completely undercuts, and to a large extent undoes their best work.
This is the training school. More is done here than in all others. What is done here goes deep in, and stays in clear to the end. The young child is utterly open and soft to impression, and never so soft and open afterwards. Father and mother have the training of the child more than pastor, teacher, librarian, or friend can have. Even if they neglect the sacred trust, and enter the child in the street-school for all or any part of the time, still what they don't do is more than what any one else can do. Their shiftless, planless not-doing is a potent factor, moulding the child more than any other that may come in later.
And by all odds the chief thing in the home-training is the spirit of the home. Out on the California coast they go into ecstasies over the remarkable products of the soil, their great trees and flowers, fruits and vegetables. And if you ask the explanation of the unusual growths the answer always refers to the atmosphere. Everything is the atmosphere. That is the secret of all home-training. The spirit of the home does the training most.
A few years ago the leading educators in the East were discussing with much earnestness the matter of shortening the college course to three years. Some urged a change to the shorter term. Others insisted just as earnestly on the present four-year term. In the discussion the president of one of the largest and oldest and highest-standard universities urged the advantage of the four-year term because of the great influence of "university residence," as he termed it. He insisted that the mere living in the university atmosphere influenced and trained the students greatly, quite apart from, and in addition to, the studies scheduled in the curriculum.
This touches at once the stronghold of the home-training, whichever way its influence may turn. The atmosphere of the home is breathed in by the child, and exerts an influence in his training more, by far, than all other things put together. The child receives more by unconscious absorption than in any other way. He is all ears and eyes and open pores. He is open at every angle and point and direction, and all between. He is an absorbing surface; he takes in constantly; he takes in what is there; and what he takes in makes him.
The spirit of the home then is the one thing on which the keen mind and earnest heart of father and mother will centre most, for the child's sake. It should be a spirit of reverence, simple, strong reverence for the unseen Father, and for each one made in His image from babe up.
The brief reading from the old Book of God, the bent knee, the giving of thanks and offering of petition in simplest speech, the table blessing, and all this touched by the reverent sense of the Father's loving presence, with the daily personal life kept true and sweet to this spirit of reverence,—this goes far toward making a home-spirit of untellable power in moulding the child.
And with this may go that which belongs with it, and can be made to grow up out of it—the mental and moral atmosphere. There can be a mental alertness, a sweet wholesomeness of tone, a cheery quiet poise of temper, in the midst of the busy round of little things that makes up the home life so largely.
The home can be kept orderly, and nothing does more in making character than wholesome orderliness. Wealth can't bring it, nor bare boards keep it away. An untidy home—the uglier word is slovenly—means untidy morals, slovenly thinking and slovenly work. And if spareness of funds compels sharp frugality, that can be made to bring a great blessing. For frugality teaches carefulness in thinking, and in moral decisions, and in speech and in action.