AN INTERPRETATION OF THE FAMILY§ 1. TAKING THE HOME IN RELIGIOUS TERMSThe ills of the modern home are symptomatic. Divorce, childless families, ir-reverent children, and the decadence of the old type of separate home life aresigns of forgotten ideals, lost motives, and insufficient purposes. Where thehome is only an opportunity for self-indulgence, it easily becomes a cheapboarding-house, a sleeping-shelf, an implement for social advantage. Whileit is true that general economic developments have effected marked changesin domestic economy, the happiness and efficiency of the family do not de-pend wholly on the parlor, the kitchen, or the clothes closet. Rather, every-thing depends on whether the home and family are considered in worthyand adequate terms.Homes are wrecked because families refuse to take home-living in religiousterms, in social terms of sacrifice and service. In such homes, organized andconducted to satisfy personal desires rather than to meet social responsibili-ties, these desires become ends rather than agencies and opportunities.3 HENRY FREDERICK COPEThey who marry for lust are divorced for further lust. Selfishness, even inits form of self-preservation, is an unstable foundation for a home. It coststoo much to maintain a home if you measure it by the personal advantages ofparents. What hope is there for useful and happy family life if the newlywed-ded youth have both been educated in selfishness, habituated to frivolouspleasures, and guided by ideals of success in terms of garish display? Yetwhat definite program for any other training does society provide? Do theschools 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 willmake for happiness and usefulness? It is high time to take seriously the taskof educating people to religious efficiency in the home.§ 2. THE RELIGIOUS MOTIVEThe family needs a religious motive. More potent for happiness than coursesin domestic economy will be training in sufficient domestic motives. It willtake much more than modern conveniences, bigger apartments, or even bet-ter kitchens to make the new home. Essentially the problem is not one ofmechanics but of persons. What we call the home problem is more truly afamily problem. It centers in persons; the solution awaits a race with newideals, educated to live as more than dust, for more than dirt, for personalityrather than for possessions. We need young peoplewho establish homes, notsimply because they feel miserable when separated, nor because one needsa place in which to board and the other needs a boarder, but because thelargest duty and joy of life is to enrich the world with other lives and to givethemselves in high love to making those other lives of the greatest possibleworth to the world.The family must come to a recognition of social obligations. We all hope forthe coming ideal day. Everywhere men and women are answering to higherideals of life. But the new day waits for a new race. Modern emphasis on thechild is a part of present reaction from materialism. New social ideals arepersonal. We seek a better world for the sake of a higher race. The emphasison child-welfare has a social rather than a sentimental basis. The family is