The Home Beautiful: Timeless Wisdom

Our elders recently read an excellent book The Home Beautiful: Timeless Words of Wisdom for Today's Family  by J.R. Miller (1840-1912). 

I use this in premarital counseling sessions and have found it to lead to a thunderous and fitting praise to God for His design and the important call God has placed upon a husband and wife entering into the sacred bonds of marriage and eventually the duties for a father and mother to pass along the true faith to one's children.

The book has many excellent parts to it and I definitely recommend you buy it and read it. Here is a long stretch of few paragraphs that stood out.  I hope and pray blesses you as it did me:

"Every home influence, even the very smallest, works itself into the heart of childhood and then reappears in the opening character. Homes are the real schools in which men and women are trained and, and fathers and mothers are the real teachers and builders of life...there is nothing in all the influences and surroundings of the home of tender childhood so small that is does not leave its touch of beauty or of marring upon the life. Even the natural scenery in which a child is reared has much to do with the tone and hue of its future character. Beautiful things spread before the eye of childhood print themselves on the sensitive heart...The mountains, the sea, lovely valleys, picturesque landscapes, forests, flowers, all have their influence in shaping the life. Still greater is the influence of the house itself in which a child is brought up...in the choosing and preparation of a home the educating power of beauty must not be forgotten. The surroundings should be cheerful and attractive. The house itself whether large or small, should be neat and tasteful. Its ornaments and decorations should be simple yet chaste and pleasing to the eye. The rooms in which our children are to sleep and play and live we should make just as bright and lovely as our means can make them...every home can at least be made bright, clean, sweet, and beautiful, even if bare of ornaments and decorations. It is almost impossible for a child to grow up into loveliness of character, gentleness of disposition and purity of heart amid scenes of slovenliness, untidiness, repulsiveness and filthiness. But a home clean, tasteful, with simple adornments, and pleasant surroundings, is an influence of incalculable value in the education of children. But the house is not all. Four walls do not make a home, though built of marble and covered with rarest decorations. A family may be reared in a palace filled with the loveliest works of art, and yet the influences may not be such as leave blessing. The home life itself is more important than the house and its adornments. By the home life is meant all the intercourse of the members of the family. It is a happy art, the art of living together in tender love. It must begin with the parents themselves. Unless their life together is loving and true it will be impossible for them to make their home life so. They give the keynote to the music If their intercourse is marked by bickerings and quarrelings they must expect their children to imitate them. If gentleness and affectionateness characterize their bearing toward each other the same spirit will rule in the family life. For their children's sake, if for no other, parents should cultivate their own lives and train themselves to live together in the most Christlike way. They will very soon learn that good rules and wise counsels from their lips amount to but little unless their own lives give example and illustration of the things thus commended...Every home takes its color and tone from its makers...No home life can ever be better than the life of those who make it. It is nothing less nor more than the spirit of the parents like an atmosphere filling all the house. What should this home-spirit be? First of all, I would name the law of unselfishness as one of its essential elements. Where selfishness prevails there can be no real happiness. Indeed there is no deep, true and holy love where selfishness rules. As love grows, selfishness dies out in the heart. Love is always ready to deny itself, to give, to sacrifice, just in the measure of its sincerity and intensity...But when there is selfishness it mars the joy. One selfish soul will destroy the sweetness of the life of any home. It is like an ugly thorn-bush in the midst of a garden of flowers...Another essential element of true home life is affectionateness; not love only, but the cultivation of love in the daily life of the family, the expression of love in words and acts...The heart's love should be permitted to flow out in word and deed. There are such homes. The very atmosphere as one enters the door seems laden with fragrance. The conversation is bright, sparkling, cheerful, coiui^ous. The warmth of love makes itself felt in continuous influence. No loud, harsh tones are ever heard. A delightful thoughtfulness pervades all the family life. Everyone is watchful of the feelings of the others. There is a respectfulness of manner and bearing that is shown even toward the youngest....The home life should also be made bright and full of sunshine. The courtesy of the true home is not stiff and formal, but sincere, simple and natural. Children need an atmosphere of gladness. Law should not make its restraints hang like chains upon them. Sternness and coldness should have no place in home life or in family government. No child can ever grow up into its richest and best development in a home which is gloomy and unhappy. No more do plants need sunshine and air than children need joy and gladness. Unhappiness stunts them, so that their sweetest graces never come out...It is to be kept in mind that the object of the home is to build up manhood and womanhood. This work of training belongs to the parents and cannot be transferred. It is a most delicate and responsible duty, one from which a thoughtful soul would shrink with awe and fear were it not for the assurance of divine help. Yet there are many parents who do not stop to think of the responsibility which is laid upon them when a little child enters their home. Look at it a moment. What is so feeble, so helpless, so dependent, as a newborn babe? Yet look onward and see what a stretch of life lies before this feeble infant, away into the eternities." -J.R. MIller

Press on in this holy endeavor fathers and mothers. Brothers and sisters in Christ who are not mothers and fathers or who are not yet or who are empty nesters pray for those of us in this phase of life when you think of your brothers and sisters in Christ who are. And praise be to God for this wonderful design from the Lord and may we all glory in the fact that we have in and through Christ a great and glorious even a perfect heavenly Father we can look to and whose Word we can trust and build our lives upon confidentiality! Soli Deo Gloria.