advantages of parents. What hope is there for useful and happy family
life if the newly wedded youth have both been educated in selfishness,
habituated to frivolous pleasures, and guided by ideals of success in
terms of garish display? Yet what definite program for any other
training does society provide? Do the schools and colleges, Sunday
schools and churches teach youth a better way? How else shall they be
trained to take the home and family in terms that will make for
happiness and usefulness? It is high time to take seriously the task of
educating people to religious efficiency in the home.


§ 2. THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVE

The family needs a religious motive. More potent for happiness than
courses in domestic economy will be training in sufficient domestic
motives. It will take much more than modern conveniences, bigger
apartments, or even better kitchens to make the new home. Essentially
the problem is not one of mechanics but of persons. What we call the
home problem is more truly a _family_ problem. It centers in persons;
the solution awaits a race with new ideals, educated to live as more
than dust, for more than dirt, for personality rather than for
possessions. We need young people who establish homes, not simply
because they feel miserable when separated, nor because one needs a
place in which to board and the other needs a boarder, but because the
largest duty and joy of life is to enrich the world with other lives and
to give themselves in high love to making those other lives of the
greatest possible worth to the world.

The family must come to a recognition of social obligations. We all hope
for the coming ideal day. Everywhere men and women are answering to