Home Makes the Man

“It is a common saying,” said Samuel Smiles, “that ‘Manners make the man;’ and there is a second, that ‘Mind makes the man;’ but truer than either is a third; that ‘Home makes the man.’ For the home-training includes not only manners and mind, but character. It is mainly in the home that the heart is opened, the habits are formed, the intellect is awakened, and character moulded for good or for evil.”¹ It is everlastingly true that life is a family affair, and that the family is the most important relationship of life. And the more we forget this, the more problems there are. The more young people pull away from the family, the more there is of lawlessness, of looseness, of human loss. The family is responsible for its own, for keeping, for caring for; for love, for loyalty. The chief responsibility of parents is “to bring up [their] children in light and truth”² — to love, to teach, to train, to ake the time it takes. A certain woman was heard to say as she observed a manly young man: “I would give twenty years of my life to have such a son.” And the mother of the young man was heard to say: “That’s what I have given — twenty years of my life to have such a son.” But what better purpose would there be to take time for? Where could we better invest for the future, than in our families? Any man who is too busy to enjoy his family, too busy to be closely acquainted with his children, is too busy. He is overbalanced. “The home is the source of our national life.”³ It is also the source of our personal lives, and in a sense the determiner of our everlasting lives. And so our pleas for parents to take the time to draw near to those whom God has given. Let there be love at home. Let there be tenderness and teaching and caring for and not a shifting of responsibility onto others. God grant that we many never be too busy to do the things that matter most, for it is “Home [that] makes the man!”