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wheel will be for our friends. And the next one-a good deal larger-for patriotism, which should mean love for the people of the country in which we live. The largest circle is world brotherhood. We shall love all the people in the world as our brothers and sisters if we are truly the children of God. And the outermost circle is the love of God for us. No one can make a circle big enough to picture that. A dying Christian said: "O the ocean —Ō the ocean—O the ocean of the love of God." Wilbur F. Crafts, when a young man, wrote a hymn suggested by that story, whose first verse and chorus are:

"I stand all bewildered with wonder,
And gaze on the ocean of love.
While over its waves to my spirit,
Comes peace like a heavenly dove.

"Chorus: The cross now covers my sins;
The past is all under the blood;

I'm trusting in Jesus for all;
My will is the will of my God."

Do these wheels of love ever break? Yes, the wheel of self-love breaks when we do or say something mean and bad. We lose our self-respect. Does the wheel of family love ever break? Yes, when children are disobedient to parents. When does the wheel of friendship break? When unkind things are said and done. How can the wheel of love of country be broken? By disobeying the laws. And how is the world wheel broken? By cruel wars.1 Let us be glad that the great wheel of God's love can never be broken.

Let us promise God today that we will obey all the love commands of Jesus: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy

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1 It is unbrotherly and ill-mannered to use the epithets of race prejudices, "darkey" or "nigger." Major Moton of Tuskegee urges use of "Negro" even in place of "colored," which strictly means that something has been colored. "No, not colored," said an intelligent Negro, "I was born so." The Boy Scouts cut out the whole bunch of race epithets "nigger," "dago," "sheeney," "greaser," "Dutchey," etc. They are all violations not only of good form but of the Divine command, "Honor all men.' There are many more Bible precepts that they violate-e. g. Exod. 22: 21, Lev. 19: 34, Matt. 5: 21, 22, Acts 10: 9-35, James 2: 1-9.

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strength. This is the first and great Commandment" (Luke 10: 27; Matt. 22: 38). That is not hard to obey if we begin early-to love Him who is altogether lovely. That is the love of esteem that looks up—one of the three kinds of Christian love. And the second kind of Christian love is not hard if we begin early. It is the love of sympathy; the love of those we like; the love of our fellow Christians, who think as we do and work with us. That kind of "brotherly love" Jesus often commended and commanded, and proclaimed it the badge by which Christians should be known (John 12: 17; 13: 35; Hebrews 13, 1; I Peter 2: 17). But the third kind of Christian love-the love of pity; the love that reaches down. to lift up the degraded and wicked and unfriendly-is the most Christian, that is the most Christlike kind of love. Let me read Jesus' command, his hardest love command: "I say unto you love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven (Matt. 5: 44-48).

Now let us sing a hymn with our lips and let God hear the words in our hearts, and I will give you all the words to carry home and sing to mother and father, and then you can thoughtfully sign, if you like, the promise that will be printed below the hymn.

My Consecration

(Tune: Woodworth.)

“Just as I am, thine own to be,
Friend of the young, who lovest me,
To consecrate myself to Thee,
O Jesus Christ, I come.

"I would live ever in the light,

I would work ever for the right,

I would serve Thee with all my might,
Therefore to Thee I come."

-Marianne Farningham.

I adopt these words as my own, and will seek to be a Christian in home and school, in play and work.

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Home the Training School of Citizenship

(The preceding lesson having been taught in the Sunday school, the following would be apropos for a teachers' meeting following, to which, as to the lesson, parents should be invited. The matter may be adapted to a forum.)

The home is not only a school of love, but also the first, and still the best law school; a school of civics, a training school of citizenship. The highest function of the home, in the development of the circles of love, is to teach by daily habit, obedience to law, for it is only an obedient child that is likely to grow up to be a lawabiding citizen. Obey your parents, obey your Government, obey your God-these all go together. An English lady once said to me: "Oh you Americans are a wonderful people for making good laws, but you are just as wonderful for breaking them." Law is not often broken in ugly, defiant mood by our people, but law-breaking is often assumed to be smart, and passed off as a joke. There should be a revival of obedience to law in the home as a preventive for law-breaking elsewhere. Some are advocating the theory that 'the child must have freedom.' Unrestricted freedom is savagery. It would make of the child a wild engine, compelling everybody else to get out of the way while he rushes on to destruction. The requirement of obedience should not be made in a tyrannical spirit, but justice should be seasoned with kindness.

We often hear quoted the passage, "Children obey your parents," but not so often that verse very closely related to it, "Fathers provoke not your children to wrath." While children are young, unquestioned obedience should be the rule, for they are not sufficiently developed to be reasoned with. When they are older, it would make their obedience more willing and intelligent to set before

them occasionally the relation of their obedience to rules at home and to public obedience of the laws of the land.

Love, Law, and Liberty

The family should be a school of liberty as well as of love and of law. Liberty is not license to do as one pleases, but rather it is a circle bounded on all sides by the rights of others. Kate Douglas Wiggin, in her book on "Children's Rights," says facetiously:

"The subject of Children's Rights does not provoke much sentimentalism in this country, where, as somebody says, the present problem of the children is the painless extinction of their elders. I interviewed the man who washes my windows, the other morning, with the purpose of getting at the level of his mind in the matter. 'Dennis,' I said when he was polishing the glass, 'I am writing on the rights of children. What do you think about it?' Dennis carried his forefinger to his head in search of an idea, for he is not accustomed to having his intelligence so violently assaulted; and after a moment's puzzled thought, he said: 'What do I think about it, mum? Why, I think we'd ought to give 'em to 'em. But Lor, mum, if we don't, they take 'em, so what's the odds?' And as he left the room I thought he looked pained that I should spin words and squander ink on such a topic.

"The French dressmaker was my next victim. As she fitted the collar of an effete civilization on my nineteenth century neck, I put the same question I had given Dennis. "The right of the child, madam?' 'Yes, the right of the child.' Is it the American child?' 'Yes,' said I nervously, 'of the American child.' 'Mon Dieu, he has them!'"

Some parents undoubtedly develop selfishness in their children, to their own injury and that of society, by doing the chores their sons and daughters ought to do, and so neglecting their higher culture. This is not loving wisely but too well.

Let parents prepare their children for social justice, the great need of society today, by insisting that in the home the children shall consider the rights and privileges of parents no less than their own.1

HOME DISCIPLINE BY PHYSICAL PAIN AND OTHERWISE

To Follow up Chapter II

(We suggest the parts numbered 1 to 11 be assigned. to different mothers to read at a mothers' meeting—or to 11 parents at a meeting for fathers and mothersperhaps teachers also.)

The home as the first and best school of law is the very school in which to root firmly among first impressions the truth that all true laws, divine and human, are made by love and are helps, not hindrances, to happiness. Only by such teaching in the home can we cure the general lawlessness which is the supreme civic fault of the United States. Many boys think of the laws of the home and the school and the State, even the laws of God, as wilful efforts to curtail their happiness; and count every successful evasion of these laws as so much gained. Many girls hold the same view.

The counterpart of the truth that law is rooted in love and fruited in joy, is that law-breaking breaks

1 This and all Round Table talks to be followed by questions, and free discussion, usually under three or five-minute rule, to give all a chance. Those who want more time may speak a second time after all have had an opportunity. It is sometimes better to have questions written to make them definite, and because some might not want to be known as asking a particular question lest it betray home secrets. And besides, written questions allow chairman to see whether questions are both pertinent and courteous before handing them to the speaker who is to answer them. There should be much good nature on tap for differences of opinion, which is no crime but wholesome spice to provoke thought.

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