ties, but by the rendering of its appropriate service. The husband grows more manly, the wife grows more womanly, as they realize each in the other that which they severally need and yet cannot provide from within themselves.

us.

As we dwell on these facts, we come to perceive the meaning of the Lord's words when he said of the man and the wife, with a reference to creation, "The twain shall become one flesh." This is indeed a great mystery, a great revelation, and with our present faculties we can master but little of it. Yet we can dimly feel whither it directs We can feel how marriage, by its necessary conditions, provides for the extension of fellowship through the union of different families. We can feel how this supreme relationship invests all the other relationships of life with a divine solemnity. We can feel how it shows with eloquent distinctness that absolute trust is the condition of abiding fellowship and absolute self-surrender the condition of the highest influence. If trust be incomplete, marriage, we know, cannot have its perfect work. If trust be broken, marriage perishes. But, by interchange of thought and hope and prayer, in marriage trust ripens into faith. And that faith, carried out into the world, is the secret of the blessedness of life.

Marriage, in a word, is the divine pattern and ground of human communion, the original condition of completed manhood. But the family has, as we have seen, other lessons; and, though the ideas of authority and equality, of dependence and service are included in the relation of marriage, it is in the other two relations of the family -fatherhood and brotherhood-that 'we learn most fully how these universal principles are realized under the varying circumstances of age, rank, power, which are necessary for the continuance and for the unity of the social body. Fatherhood is, so to speak, the divine pattern and ground of authority; brotherhood, the divine pattern and ground of equality. It is instructive to observe that while marriage, as the supreme sign of faith, rests upon choice, these are, in their essence, independent of it. The son is placed in a position of subjection; the brother is placed in a position of obligation, without the least power of avoiding the consequences which these positions involve. We may for various reasons withhold the confession of love by which we seek outside ourselves for the abiding completion of our own imperfect natures; but we cannot, while the world lasts, take out of it that which claims our obedience, or that which claims our help.

These relations of reverence and service are founded not upon choice, but in nature. And if once we study them as they are offered for our daily contemplation in the family, we shall be delivered from the wild strivings of rebellious selfishness in society at large, whether it is turned by the few into tyranny or by the many into lawlessness.

Fatherhood is the pattern of authority; sonship, of reverence and obedience. The necessity of the relation lies in the harmony of our constitution. If it were not so, and we must face the alternative, order could only be maintained by selfish fear, or no less selfish hope. But in a family, even the rudest and simplest, there is, we know, something different from force which gives weight to the parent's voice; something different from terror which inspires the child's answer. The relation of parent and child carries with it that which no external power can create and which no external power can destroy. There is in the very order of things a subtle influence which gives to authority its responsible privilege and to obedience its tender dignity. And this truth of the eternal majesty of authority, of the eternal loveliness of reverent obedience, commended to us still in our childhood, is not the least precious part of our social heritage. It has hitherto been hallowed and guarded in our homes; and if we take it into our hearts consciously, gladly, thoughtfully, as it is open before our eyes, we shall soon discover how it interprets other relations in life which can be regarded in their true aspect only in the light of fatherhood.

For the lesson of fatherhood passes at once within the family to the connection of masters and servants, which cannot with impunity be degraded into a mere bargain, and which may be ennobled by real sympathy. It passes on without to the connection of employer and workman, which ceases, I cannot but say, to be human if it is made to mean only so much labor for so much money. It passes to the connection of government and citizen, which is simply a compact of limited slavery unless we recognize above us that which we may modify, but which we cannot make, a manifestation of eternal authority, which we are born to treat with loyal reverence.

There is still a third essential relation of the family to be noticedbrotherhood, the pattern and original condition of equality. But this divine equality is, as we have already seen, widely different from that external equality which men have looked for in some reconstruction of the world. It is inherent and permanent; it is manifested in variety; it is consummated in sacrifice. The differences of character

and ability which are found in a family furnish, in the happy experience of us all, rich materials which a common love consecrates to the service of all. As brothers and sisters we can learn this lesson of divine brotherhood, learn it by a teaching ever present, and the lesson will remain with us for our guidance when we go out into wider fields of activity. Just as the idea of fatherhood hallows the conditions of inequality which belong to the surface of life, so this idea of brotherhood reveals to us the great depths of our being in which we are all equal. It helps us to rise slowly toward the conception of a common humanity, called into existence by one Father, redeemed by one incarnate Saviour, quickened by one infinite Spirit.

The constitution of the family illuminates the social relations of men; and the life of the family illuminates the meaning and the use of property. In the earliest ordering of the family all the resources of the household were absolutely at the disposal of the head; wife and child were "in his hand." Even now the father practically controls, either by right or by natural influence, the disposal of the common store. But he dispenses it, so far as he obeys the common voice of mankind, not arbitrarily, still less for personal ends, but as the trustee of those bound to him. His wealth, in means, in leisure, in power, is the measure of responsibility. He provides, not by benevolence, but by duty, for the education, for the adequate development of the character and endowments, of all who are dependent on him. He guards them, as far as he can do so, from unforeseen consequences of the failure of health or strength. The fulfillment of these obligations is required by his position, and it crowns his authority with blessing. It reveals to us how the concentration of riches, material or spiritual, becomes a social good, fruitful beyond any equality of possession. It is obvious that the principle has a wider application, through which we may yet hope to see the variety of external circumstances harmonized in the fullness of time.*

This Christian idea of the family is in completest harmony with the best teachers of sociology, all of whom regard the family as the social unit and the epitome and type of all social life.

II. ITS IMPORTANCE TO SOCIETY.

The family is the most important social institution in our world. Says Professor H. B. Adams: "The family, oldest of institutions, *Abridged from Westcott's "Social Aspects of Christianity."

perpetually reproduces the ethical history of man, and continually reconstructs the constitution of society. All students of sociology should grasp this radical truth, and should also remember that the school and college, town and city, state and nation are, after all, but modified types of family institutions, and that a study of the individual elements of social and political life is a true method of advancing sociology and politics in general."

A similar statement is made by Dr. S. W. Dike: "I do not fear contradiction from any competent scholar in political science when I say that the study of the single family on its homestead would yield richer scientific knowledge and more practical results in the great social sciences than almost any other single object in the social world. Pursued historically, the student would find himself at the roots of property, separate ownership of land, inheritance, rent, taxation, free trade and tariff, and discover the germs of international law and the state." The great questions of the day, as we call them, are little more than incidents to the working of the great social institutions; and these, we have already seen, are the expansions and modified forms of the family, amid its increasing support and activity. "Sociology," the late Dr. Mulford used to say, "is the coming science, and the family holds the key to it." "The family," he also wrote, "is the most important question that has come before the American people since the war."

Professor Arthur Fairbanks writes to the same effect when he announces that "the family is the basis of the state, because the citizen is the product of the family. For the state in particular, as for society in general, the principle of continuity and of progress finds its strongest support in the family. Here alone do the civic sentiments and virtues find a natural soil favoring their growth; loyalty to the state and love of one's country must be developed in the home if their roots are to penetrate deeper than self-interest. The sense of civic responsibility has no genuine vigor if it waits to be called out by wrongs actually suffered from a corrupt administration. To-day public evils persist under every form of government, because men can hardly ever be made to realize their duty to the state until the burdens brought upon them become excessive in each individual case. Again, the power of self-sacrifice in behalf of one's country is developed with other forms of self-sacrifice in the family. From the parents are learned both the value of the ends which call forth self

devotion, and the moral energy which does not hesitate at any cost when the end justifies the sacrifice. Finally, the power to act with others is best learned in the family. This must be learned elsewhere, if not in the family; but he who goes into the world without it must acquire it in the battle of life and at the cost of many severe blows." Why is the family so important to society? The answer is not far to seek. The family has in itself the three greatest agents for the formation of right character.

1. The family is the legitimate gateway of the coming generation into life and society, and whatever of good heredity can confer is at the disposal of the wise and upright parents.

2. The advantages of a proper environment for the right nurture of the child is largely under the control of the family. "The child's first teacher is the one who first loves it." This usually is the mother. It gets its first and most influential knowledge by imitation from the example and lips of the parents. However humble the home, love may make an environment about the life of the child which will transform it day by day into noble, virtuous character.

3. God dwells in the Christian home as the great transformer and creator of character. Through the parents' obedience to the laws of heredity and environment; through their exalted Christian daily living; through their sacrificial service for the welfare of the children; through God's Word read and his praises sung around the home altar, the Spirit of God works to regenerate and sanctify the children, for "the promise is unto you and your children." Thus, bringing up the child in the nurture and admonition of the Lord is not only to it the greatest individual, but it is also the greatest social blessing.

III. ITS MEMBERS AND LIFE.

1. Marriage is the union, through a supreme affection and sense of duty, of one man and one woman for life. This is the highest ideal of marriage in all civilized lands to-day, whatever may have been its previous forms. The facts that this ideal is held by the most progressive peoples of the world, and that the sexes are born in about: equal numbers, are a sufficient justification of it as against all forms. of polygamy.

Joseph Cook tells us that both the Christian and highest pagan. ideals of marriage include the following items:

"(1) Make a supreme affection its only natural basis.