home

• morontia and spirit beings have homes

44:3.1There are cities “whose builder and maker is God.” In spirit coun­ter­part we have all that you mor­tals are fa­mil­iar with and in­ex­press­ibly more. We have homes, spirit com­forts, and mor­ontia ne­ces­si­ties. For ev­ery ma­te­rial sat­is­fac­tion which hu­mans are ca­pa­ble of en­joy­ing, we have thou­sands of spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties that serve to en­rich and en­large our ex­is­tence. The di­vine builders func­tion in seven groups:

44:3.21. The home de­sign­ers and builders—those who con­struct and re­model the abodes as­signed to in­di­vid­u­als and work­ing groups. These mor­ontia and spirit domi­ciles are real. They would be in­vis­i­ble to your short-range vi­sion, but they are very real and beau­ti­ful to us. To a cer­tain ex­tent, all spirit be­ings may share with the builders cer­tain de­tails of the plan­ning and cre­ation of their mor­ontia or spirit abodes. These homes are fit­ted up and em­bel­lished in ac­cor­dance with the needs of the mor­ontia or of the spirit crea­tures who are to in­habit them. There is abun­dant va­ri­ety and am­ple op­por­tu­nity for in­di­vid­ual ex­pres­sion in all these con­struc­tions.

• history › dates from Dalamatia

52:2.6On av­er­age worlds, dur­ing the lat­ter part of the prince’s rule, na­tional life be­gins to re­place tribal or­ga­ni­za­tion or rather to be super­im­posed upon the ex­ist­ing tribal group­ings. But the great so­cial achieve­ment of the prince’s epoch is the emer­gence of fam­ily life. Here­to­fore, hu­man re­la­tion­ships have been chiefly tribal; now, the home be­gins to ma­te­ri­al­ize.

• founded on full sex equality

52:2.7This is the dis­pen­sa­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of sex equal­ity. On some plan­ets the male may rule the fe­male; on oth­ers the re­verse pre­vails. Dur­ing this age nor­mal worlds es­tab­lish full equal­ity of the sexes, this be­ing pre­lim­i­nary to the fuller re­al­iza­tion of the ide­als of home life. This is the dawn of the golden age of the home. The idea of tribal rule grad­u­ally gives way to the dual con­cept of na­tional life and fam­ily life.

• history › dates from Dalamatia

66:7.4The def­i­nite or­der of fam­ily life and the liv­ing of one fam­ily to­gether in one res­i­dence of com­par­a­tively set­tled lo­ca­tion date from these times of Dala­ma­tia and were chiefly due to the ex­am­ple and teach­ings of the one hun­dred and their pupils. The home as a so­cial unit never be­came a suc­cess un­til the super­men and super­women of Dala­ma­tia led man­kind to love and plan for their grand­chil­dren and their grand­chil­dren’s chil­dren. Sav­age man loves his child, but civ­i­lized man loves also his grand­child.

• founded on male sex restlessness, female mother love
• h. is where woman is

68:2.6Hunger, van­ity, and ghost fear were con­tin­u­ous in their so­cial pres­sure, but sex grat­i­fi­ca­tion was tran­sient and spas­modic. The sex urge alone did not im­pel prim­i­tive men and women to as­sume the heavy bur­dens of home main­te­nance. The early home was founded upon the sex rest­less­ness of the male when de­prived of fre­quent grat­i­fi­ca­tion and upon that de­voted mother love of the hu­man fe­male, which in mea­sure she shares with the fe­males of all the higher an­i­mals. The pres­ence of a help­less baby de­ter­mined the early dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion of male and fe­male ac­tiv­i­ties; the woman had to main­tain a set­tled res­i­dence where she could cul­ti­vate the soil. And from ear­li­est times, where woman was has al­ways been re­garded as the home.

• self-maintenance and self-perpetuation real objects of h.; self-gratification incidental to

68:2.9The func­tion of mar­riage in evo­lu­tion is the in­sur­ance of race sur­vival, not merely the re­al­iza­tion of per­sonal hap­pi­ness; self-main­te­nance and self-per­pet­u­a­tion are the real ob­jects of the home. Self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion is in­ci­den­tal and not es­sen­tial ex­cept as an in­cen­tive in­sur­ing sex as­so­ci­a­tion. Na­ture de­mands sur­vival, but the arts of civ­i­liza­tion con­tinue to in­crease the plea­sures of mar­riage and the sat­is­fac­tions of fam­ily life.

• history › early h. was family gathered about fire

69:6.3Fire was a great civ­i­lizer, pro­vid­ing man with his first means of be­ing al­tru­is­tic with­out loss by en­abling him to give live coals to a neigh­bor with­out de­priv­ing him­self. The house­hold fire, which was at­tended by the mother or el­dest daugh­ter, was the first ed­u­ca­tor, re­quir­ing watch­ful­ness and de­pend­abil­ity. The early home was not a build­ing but the fam­ily gath­ered about the fire, the fam­ily hearth. When a son founded a new home, he car­ried a fire­brand from the fam­ily hearth.

72:3.1On this con­ti­nent it is against the law for two fam­i­lies to live un­der the same roof. And since group dwellings have been out­lawed, most of the ten­e­ment type of build­ings have been de­mol­ished. But the un­mar­ried still live in clubs, ho­tels, and other group dwellings. The small­est home­site per­mit­ted must pro­vide fifty thou­sand square feet of land. All land and other prop­erty used for home pur­poses are free from tax­a­tion up to ten times the min­i­mum home­site al­lot­ment.

72:3.2The home life of this peo­ple has greatly im­proved dur­ing the last cen­tury. At­ten­dance of par­ents, both fa­thers and moth­ers, at the pa­ren­tal schools of child cul­ture is com­pul­sory. Even the agri­cul­tur­ists who re­side in small coun­try set­tle­ments carry on this work by cor­re­spon­dence, go­ing to the near-by cen­ters for oral in­struc­tion once in ten days—ev­ery two weeks, for they main­tain a five-day week.

72:3.3The av­er­age num­ber of chil­dren in each fam­ily is five, and they are un­der the full con­trol of their par­ents or, in case of the demise of one or both, un­der that of the guard­i­ans des­ig­nated by the pa­ren­tal courts. It is con­sid­ered a great honor for any fam­ily to be awarded the guardian­ship of a full or­phan. Com­pet­i­tive ex­am­i­na­tions are held among par­ents, and the or­phan is awarded to the home of those dis­play­ing the best pa­ren­tal qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

72:3.4These peo­ple re­gard the home as the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of their civ­i­liza­tion. It is ex­pected that the most valu­able part of a child’s ed­u­ca­tion and char­ac­ter train­ing will be se­cured from his par­ents and at home, and fa­thers de­vote al­most as much at­ten­tion to child cul­ture as do moth­ers.

72:3.5All sex in­struc­tion is ad­min­is­tered in the home by par­ents or by le­gal guard­i­ans. Moral in­struc­tion is of­fered by teach­ers dur­ing the rest pe­ri­ods in the school shops, but not so with re­li­gious train­ing, which is deemed to be the ex­clu­sive priv­i­lege of par­ents, re­li­gion be­ing looked upon as an in­te­gral part of home life. Purely re­li­gious in­struc­tion is given pub­licly only in the tem­ples of phi­los­o­phy, no such ex­clu­sively re­li­gious in­sti­tu­tions as the Uran­tia churches hav­ing de­vel­oped among this peo­ple. In their phi­los­o­phy, re­li­gion is the striv­ing to know God and to man­i­fest love for one’s fel­lows through ser­vice for them, but this is not typ­i­cal of the re­li­gious sta­tus of the other na­tions on this planet. Re­li­gion is so en­tirely a fam­ily mat­ter among these peo­ple that there are no pub­lic places de­voted ex­clu­sively to re­li­gious as­sem­bly. Po­lit­i­cally, church and state, as Uran­tians are wont to say, are en­tirely sep­a­rate, but there is a strange over­lap­ping of re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy.

72:3.6Un­til twenty years ago the spir­i­tual teach­ers (com­pa­ra­ble to Uran­tia pas­tors), who visit each fam­ily pe­ri­od­i­cally to ex­am­ine the chil­dren to as­cer­tain if they have been prop­erly in­structed by their par­ents, were un­der gov­ern­men­tal super­vi­sion. These spir­i­tual ad­vis­ers and ex­am­in­ers are now un­der the di­rec­tion of the newly cre­ated Foun­da­tion of Spir­i­tual Prog­ress, an in­sti­tu­tion sup­ported by vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tions. Pos­si­bly this in­sti­tu­tion may not fur­ther evolve un­til af­ter the ar­rival of a Par­a­dise Mag­is­te­rial Son.

72:3.7Chil­dren re­main legally sub­ject to their par­ents un­til they are fif­teen, when the first ini­ti­a­tion into civic re­spon­si­bil­ity is held. There­after, ev­ery five years for five suc­ces­sive pe­ri­ods sim­i­lar pub­lic ex­er­cises are held for such age groups at which their obli­ga­tions to par­ents are less­ened, while new civic and so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the state are as­sumed. Suf­frage is con­ferred at twenty, the right to marry with­out pa­ren­tal con­sent is not be­stowed un­til twenty-five, and chil­dren must leave home on reach­ing the age of thirty.

72:3.8Mar­riage and di­vorce laws are uni­form through­out the na­tion. Mar­riage be­fore twenty—the age of civil en­fran­chise­ment—is not per­mit­ted. Per­mis­sion to marry is only granted af­ter one year’s no­tice of in­ten­tion, and af­ter both bride and groom pre­sent cer­tifi­cates show­ing that they have been duly in­structed in the pa­ren­tal schools re­gard­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of mar­ried life.

72:3.9Di­vorce reg­u­la­tions are some­what lax, but de­crees of sep­a­ra­tion, is­sued by the pa­ren­tal courts, may not be had un­til one year af­ter ap­pli­ca­tion there­for has been re­corded, and the year on this planet is con­sid­er­ably longer than on Uran­tia. Not­with­stand­ing their easy di­vorce laws, the pres­ent rate of di­vorces is only one tenth that of the civ­i­lized races of Uran­tia.

• history › laws and practices in continental nation

72:7.6There is lit­tle or no uni­for­mity among the tax­a­tion schemes of the one hun­dred com­par­a­tively free and sov­er­eign states as eco­nomic and other con­di­tions vary greatly in dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the con­ti­nent. Ev­ery state has ten ba­sic con­sti­tu­tional pro­vi­sions which can­not be mod­i­fied ex­cept by con­sent of the fed­eral su­preme court, and one of these ar­ti­cles pre­vents levy­ing a tax of more than one per cent on the value of any prop­erty in any one year, home­sites, whether in city or coun­try, be­ing ex­empted.

• history › evolution in design

81:2.15Man first sim­ply ap­pro­pri­ated his shel­ter, lived un­der ledges or dwelt in caves. Next he adapted such nat­u­ral ma­te­ri­als as wood and stone to the cre­ation of fam­ily huts. Lastly he en­tered the cre­ative stage of home build­ing, learned to man­u­fac­ture brick and other build­ing ma­te­ri­als.

81:2.16The peo­ples of the Tur­kes­tan high­lands were the first of the more mod­ern races to build their homes of wood, houses not at all un­like the early log cab­ins of the Amer­i­can pi­o­neer set­tlers. Through­out the plains hu­man dwellings were made of brick; later on, of burned bricks.

81:2.17The older river races made their huts by set­ting tall poles in the ground in a cir­cle; the tops were then brought to­gether, mak­ing the skele­ton frame for the hut, which was in­ter­laced with trans­verse reeds, the whole cre­ation re­sem­bling a huge in­verted bas­ket. This struc­ture could then be daubed over with clay and, af­ter dry­ing in the sun, would make a very ser­vice­able weath­er­proof habi­ta­tion.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution

81:6.238. Char­ac­ter of torch­bear­ers. So­cial in­her­i­tance en­ables man to stand on the shoul­ders of all who have pre­ceded him, and who have con­tributed aught to the sum of cul­ture and knowl­edge. In this work of pass­ing on the cul­tural torch to the next gen­er­a­tion, the home will ever be the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion. The play and so­cial life comes next, with the school last but equally in­dis­pens­able in a com­plex and highly or­ga­nized so­ci­ety.

• modern civilization at standstill in safeguarding

81:6.25The great­est twen­ti­eth-cen­tury in­flu­ences con­tribut­ing to the fur­ther­ance of civ­i­liza­tion and the ad­vance­ment of cul­ture are the marked in­crease in world travel and the un­par­al­leled im­prove­ments in meth­ods of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. But the im­prove­ment in ed­u­ca­tion has not kept pace with the ex­pand­ing so­cial struc­ture; nei­ther has the mod­ern ap­pre­ci­a­tion of ethics de­vel­oped in cor­re­spon­dence with growth along more purely in­tel­lec­tual and sci­en­tific lines. And mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion is at a stand­still in spir­i­tual de­vel­op­ment and the safe­guard­ing of the home in­sti­tu­tion.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution

82:0.1Mar­riage—mat­ing—grows out of bi­sex­u­al­ity. Mar­riage is man’s re­ac­tional ad­just­ment to such bi­sex­u­al­ity, while the fam­ily life is the sum to­tal re­sult­ing from all such evo­lu­tion­ary and adap­ta­tive ad­just­ments. Mar­riage is en­dur­ing; it is not in­her­ent in bi­o­logic evo­lu­tion, but it is the ba­sis of all so­cial evo­lu­tion and is there­fore cer­tain of con­tin­ued ex­is­tence in some form. Mar­riage has given man­kind the home, and the home is the crown­ing glory of the whole long and ar­du­ous evo­lu­tion­ary strug­gle.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution
• value of the home › h. building should be center of all education

84:0.1Ma­te­rial ne­ces­sity founded mar­riage, sex hunger em­bel­lished it, re­li­gion sanc­tioned and ex­alted it, the state de­manded and reg­u­lated it, while in later times evolv­ing love is be­gin­ning to jus­tify and glo­rify mar­riage as the an­ces­tor and cre­ator of civ­i­liza­tion’s most use­ful and sub­lime in­sti­tu­tion, the home. And home build­ing should be the cen­ter and essence of all ed­u­ca­tional ef­fort.

• value of the home › embraces 3 essential functions of human existence

84:0.3The home is ba­si­cally a so­ci­o­logic in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage grew out of co-op­er­a­tion in self-main­te­nance and part­ner­ship in self-per­pet­u­a­tion, the el­e­ment of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion be­ing largely in­ci­den­tal. Nev­er­the­less, the home does em­brace all three of the es­sen­tial func­tions of hu­man ex­is­tence, while life prop­a­ga­tion makes it the fun­da­men­tal hu­man in­sti­tu­tion, and sex sets it off from all other so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution

84:6.8Mar­riage is the mother of all hu­man in­sti­tu­tions, for it leads di­rectly to home found­ing and home main­te­nance, which is the struc­tural ba­sis of so­ci­ety. The fam­ily is vi­tally linked to the mech­a­nism of self-main­te­nance; it is the sole hope of race per­pet­u­a­tion un­der the mores of civ­i­liza­tion, while at the same time it most ef­fec­tively pro­vides cer­tain highly sat­is­fac­tory forms of self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. The fam­ily is man’s great­est purely hu­man achieve­ment, com­bin­ing as it does the evo­lu­tion of the bi­o­logic re­la­tions of male and fe­male with the so­cial re­la­tions of hus­band and wife.

• history › mores designed to stabilize

84:7.3Sex as­so­ci­a­tion is nat­u­ral, but mar­riage is so­cial and has al­ways been reg­u­lated by the mores. The mores (re­li­gious, moral, and eth­i­cal), to­gether with prop­erty, pride, and chivalry, sta­bi­lize the in­sti­tu­tions of mar­riage and fam­ily. When­ever the mores fluc­tu­ate, there is fluc­tu­a­tion in the sta­bil­ity of the home-mar­riage in­sti­tu­tion. Mar­riage is now pass­ing out of the prop­erty stage into the per­sonal era. For­merly man pro­tected woman be­cause she was his chat­tel, and she obeyed for the same rea­son. Re­gard­less of its mer­its this sys­tem did pro­vide sta­bil­ity. Now, woman is no longer re­garded as prop­erty, and new mores are emerg­ing de­signed to sta­bi­lize the mar­riage-home in­sti­tu­tion:

84:7.41. The new role of re­li­gion—the teach­ing that pa­ren­tal ex­pe­ri­ence is es­sen­tial, the idea of pro­cre­at­ing cos­mic cit­i­zens, the en­larged un­der­stand­ing of the priv­i­lege of pro­cre­ation—giv­ing sons to the Fa­ther.

84:7.52. The new role of sci­ence—pro­cre­ation is be­com­ing more and more vol­un­tary, sub­ject to man’s con­trol. In an­cient times lack of un­der­stand­ing in­sured the ap­pear­ance of chil­dren in the ab­sence of all de­sire there­for.

84:7.63. The new func­tion of plea­sure lures—this in­tro­duces a new fac­tor into racial sur­vival; an­cient man ex­posed un­de­sired chil­dren to die; mod­erns refuse to bear them.

84:7.74. The en­hance­ment of pa­ren­tal in­stinct—each gen­er­a­tion now tends to elim­i­nate from the re­pro­duc­tive stream of the race those in­di­vid­u­als in whom pa­ren­tal in­stinct is in­suf­fi­ciently strong to in­sure the pro­cre­ation of chil­dren, the prospec­tive par­ents of the next gen­er­a­tion.

• history › dates from Dalamatia
• history › institution not much before Nodites and Adamites

84:7.8But the home as an in­sti­tu­tion, a part­ner­ship be­tween one man and one woman, dates more specif­i­cally from the days of Dala­ma­tia, about one-half mil­lion years ago, the monog­a­mous prac­tices of An­don and his im­me­di­ate de­scen­dants hav­ing been aban­doned long be­fore. Fam­ily life, how­ever, was not much to boast of be­fore the days of the Nod­ites and the later Adamites. Adam and Eve ex­erted a last­ing in­flu­ence on all man­kind; for the first time in the his­tory of the world men and women were ob­served work­ing side by side in the Gar­den. The Edenic ideal, the whole fam­ily as gar­den­ers, was a new idea on Uran­tia.

• value of the home › progenitor of true morality
• value of the home › stabilizes personality through compulsion of necessitous adjustment to diverse personalities

84:7.30Fam­ily life is the pro­gen­i­tor of true moral­ity, the an­ces­tor of the con­scious­ness of loy­alty to duty. The en­forced as­so­ci­a­tions of fam­ily life sta­bi­lize per­son­al­ity and stim­u­late its growth through the com­pul­sion of ne­ces­si­tous ad­just­ment to other and di­verse per­son­al­i­ties. But even more, a true fam­ily—a good fam­ily—re­veals to the pa­ren­tal pro­cre­ators the at­ti­tude of the Cre­ator to his chil­dren, while at the same time such true par­ents por­tray to their chil­dren the first of a long se­ries of as­cend­ing dis­clo­sures of the love of the Par­a­dise par­ent of all uni­verse chil­dren.

• love of h. not augmented by unwise pursuit of pleasure

84:8.4There is real dan­ger in the com­bi­na­tion of rest­less­ness, cu­rios­ity, ad­ven­ture, and plea­sure-aban­don char­ac­ter­is­tic of the post-And­ite races. The hunger of the soul can­not be sat­is­fied with phys­i­cal plea­sures; the love of home and chil­dren is not aug­mented by the un­wise pur­suit of plea­sure. Though you ex­haust the re­sources of art, color, sound, rhythm, mu­sic, and adorn­ment of per­son, you can­not hope thereby to el­e­vate the soul or to nour­ish the spirit. Van­ity and fash­ion can­not min­is­ter to home build­ing and child cul­ture; pride and ri­valry are pow­er­less to en­hance the sur­vival qual­i­ties of suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tions.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution

84:8.6Let man en­joy him­self; let the hu­man race find plea­sure in a thou­sand and one ways; let evo­lu­tion­ary man­kind ex­plore all forms of le­git­i­mate self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion, the fruits of the long up­ward bi­o­logic strug­gle. Man has well earned some of his pres­ent-day joys and plea­sures. But look you well to the goal of des­tiny! Plea­sures are in­deed sui­ci­dal if they suc­ceed in de­stroy­ing prop­erty, which has be­come the in­sti­tu­tion of self-main­te­nance; and self-grat­i­fi­ca­tions have in­deed cost a fa­tal price if they bring about the col­lapse of mar­riage, the deca­dence of fam­ily life, and the de­struc­tion of the home—man’s su­preme evo­lu­tion­ary ac­quire­ment and civ­i­liza­tion’s only hope of sur­vival.

• religion and children are great unifiers of family life

99:4.2So­cial lead­er­ship is trans­formed by spir­i­tual in­sight; re­li­gion pre­vents all col­lec­tive move­ments from los­ing sight of their true ob­jec­tives. To­gether with chil­dren, re­li­gion is the great uni­fier of fam­ily life, pro­vided it is a liv­ing and grow­ing faith. Fam­ily life can­not be had with­out chil­dren; it can be lived with­out re­li­gion, but such a hand­i­cap enor­mously mul­ti­plies the dif­fi­cul­ties of this in­ti­mate hu­man as­so­ci­a­tion. Dur­ing the early decades of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, fam­ily life, next to per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence, suf­fers most from the deca­dence con­se­quent upon the tran­si­tion from old re­li­gious loy­al­ties to the emerg­ing new mean­ings and val­ues.

• value of the home › civilization’s most useful and sublime institution

114:6.139. The home ser­a­phim. Uran­tia now en­joys the ser­vices of the fifth group of an­gelic min­is­ters ded­i­cated to the preser­va­tion and ad­vance­ment of the home, the ba­sic in­sti­tu­tion of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion.

• leaving h. for sake of kingdom

163:3.4And then said Pe­ter, “But, Mas­ter, we have left ev­ery­thing to fol­low you, what then shall we have?” And Je­sus spoke to all of the twelve: “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, there is no man who has left wealth, home, wife, breth­ren, par­ents, or chil­dren for my sake and for the sake of the king­dom of heaven who shall not re­ceive man­i­fold more in this world, per­haps with some per­se­cu­tions, and in the world to come eter­nal life. But many who are first shall be last, while the last shall of­ten be first. The Fa­ther deals with his crea­tures in ac­cor­dance with their needs and in obe­di­ence to his just laws of mer­ci­ful and lov­ing con­sid­er­a­tion for the wel­fare of a uni­verse.

• evangelists to abide in same h. in a city

163:4.65. If the first house to be se­lected for a head­quar­ters proves to be a wor­thy home, abide there through­out the so­journ in that city.

• evangelists to abide in same h. in a city

163:4.145. Kind­ness and cour­tesy. The Mas­ter had in­structed them to avoid un­nec­es­sary waste of time in so­cial cer­e­monies, but he en­joined cour­tesy to­ward all with whom they should come in con­tact. They were to show ev­ery kind­ness to those who might en­ter­tain them in their homes. They were strictly warned against leav­ing a mod­est home to be en­ter­tained in a more com­fort­able or in­flu­en­tial one.

• value of the home › find highest joy in establishing

167:5.7Af­ter Je­sus had talked about mar­riage and di­vorce, later on that evening his apos­tles pri­vately asked many ad­di­tional ques­tions, and his an­swers to these in­quiries re­lieved their minds of many mis­con­cep­tions. At the con­clu­sion of this con­fer­ence Je­sus said: “Mar­riage is hon­or­able and is to be de­sired by all men. The fact that the Son of Man pur­sues his earth mis­sion alone is in no way a re­flec­tion on the de­sir­abil­ity of mar­riage. That I should so work is the Fa­ther’s will, but this same Fa­ther has di­rected the cre­ation of male and fe­male, and it is the di­vine will that men and women should find their high­est ser­vice and con­se­quent joy in the es­tab­lish­ment of homes for the re­cep­tion and train­ing of chil­dren, in the cre­ation of whom these par­ents be­come co­part­ners with the Mak­ers of heaven and earth. And for this cause shall a man leave his fa­ther and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be­come as one.”

• value of the home › whole afterlife happier because first 8 years spent in well-regulated h.

177:2.4“Your young friend Amos be­lieves this gospel of the king­dom just as much as you, but I can­not fully de­pend upon him; I am not cer­tain about what he will do in the years to come. His early home life was not such as would pro­duce a wholly de­pend­able per­son. Amos is too much like one of the apos­tles who failed to en­joy a nor­mal, lov­ing, and wise home train­ing. Your whole af­ter­life will be more happy and de­pend­able be­cause you spent your first eight years in a nor­mal and well-reg­u­lated home. You pos­sess a strong and well-knit char­ac­ter be­cause you grew up in a home where love pre­vailed and wis­dom reigned. Such a child­hood train­ing pro­duces a type of loy­alty which as­sures me that you will go through with the course you have be­gun.”

177:2.5For more than an hour Je­sus and John con­tin­ued this dis­cus­sion of home life. The Mas­ter went on to ex­plain to John how a child is wholly de­pen­dent on his par­ents and the as­so­ci­ated home life for all his early con­cepts of ev­ery­thing in­tel­lec­tual, so­cial, moral, and even spir­i­tual since the fam­ily rep­re­sents to the young child all that he can first know of ei­ther hu­man or di­vine re­la­tion­ships. The child must de­rive his first im­pres­sions of the uni­verse from the mother’s care; he is wholly de­pen­dent on the earthly fa­ther for his first ideas of the heav­enly Fa­ther. The child’s sub­se­quent life is made happy or un­happy, easy or dif­fi­cult, in ac­cor­dance with his early men­tal and emo­tional life, con­di­tioned by these so­cial and spir­i­tual re­la­tion­ships of the home. A hu­man be­ing’s en­tire af­ter­life is enor­mously in­flu­enced by what hap­pens dur­ing the first few years of ex­is­tence.

• acceptance of gospel immediately improves home life
• few modern homes as good as Jesus’, John Mark’s

177:2.6It is our sin­cere be­lief that the gospel of Je­sus’ teach­ing, founded as it is on the fa­ther-child re­la­tion­ship, can hardly en­joy a world-wide ac­cep­tance un­til such a time as the home life of the mod­ern civ­i­lized peo­ples em­braces more of love and more of wis­dom. Not­with­stand­ing that par­ents of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury pos­sess great knowl­edge and in­creased truth for im­prov­ing the home and en­nobling the home life, it re­mains a fact that very few mod­ern homes are such good places in which to nur­ture boys and girls as Je­sus’ home in Gal­i­lee and John Mark’s home in Judea, al­beit the ac­cep­tance of Je­sus’ gospel will re­sult in the im­me­di­ate im­prove­ment of home life. The love life of a wise home and the loyal de­vo­tion of true re­li­gion ex­ert a pro­found re­cip­ro­cal in­flu­ence upon each other. Such a home life en­hances re­li­gion, and gen­uine re­li­gion al­ways glo­ri­fies the home.

177:2.7It is true that many of the ob­jec­tion­able stunt­ing in­flu­ences and other cramp­ing fea­tures of these olden Jew­ish homes have been vir­tu­ally elim­i­nated from many of the bet­ter-reg­u­lated mod­ern homes. There is, in­deed, more spon­ta­neous free­dom and far more per­sonal lib­erty, but this lib­erty is not re­strained by love, mo­ti­vated by loy­alty, nor di­rected by the in­tel­li­gent dis­ci­pline of wis­dom. As long as we teach the child to pray, “Our Fa­ther who is in heaven,” a tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­ity rests upon all earthly fa­thers so to live and or­der their homes that the word fa­ther be­comes worthily en­shrined in the minds and hearts of all grow­ing chil­dren.