And there are Jews who forget that the world reverences and honors the Jewish home even as it reveres the Bible of the Jew! A wise friend has written: "Whenever and wherever I have been asked by non-Jews what I consider the greatest and most permanent contribution of the Jew to civilization, I have always answered: the Jewish home. Ancient Greece knew of no real home as we understand it. Israel did." But it is not enough to laud the Jewish home of old. If Jews are to rest satisfied with praises of the Jewish home that was instead of seeking to beautify and ennoble the Jewish home that is, then, remembering the word of Juvenal, virtue is the sole and only nobility, may it truly be said of the Jew in the language of the rabbis: "As the dust differs from the gold, so our generation differs from the generations of the fathers."
And yet there is no Jewish question here, though there be a Jewish aspect of the wider problem we are considering. Jewish parents have in the past for reasons given or hinted at been almost Chinese in their adoration of a child. And when the day of parenthood dawns, these may be as unwisely adoring and hopelessly indulgent touching their children as were their parents. It may be that in the past Jewish parents have given more to their children than have non-Jewish. Let less be given parentally and more be asked,—Jewish parent and Jewish child need this counsel most.
CHAPTER XV
THE SOVEREIGN GRACES OF THE HOME
The home lies somewhere between the outer and the inner life of man and its life touches and is touched by both. It is one of the highways through which one passes from the inner to the outer life, the place, to change the figure, where the inner life is touched by the outer world and by it tested and searched and challenged. The place of the home in relation to the inner life is shown forth by the truth that nothing which the world can give balances the hurts and wounds one may suffer within the home. Yet such is the magic and mystery of the home that it can heal every wound, which the world without inflicts. It is in the home that the peace of the inner life most clearly reveals itself, that one's soul finds itself most nearly invulnerable to the wounds of the world without. Shakespeare is true to the facts, if facts they may be called, in his tremendous picture of the storm on the heath, which in its terror is less terrible than the storm in the home-life of the banished and broken Lear.
The relations of the home constitute a test which nearly every one of us must meet and unhappiest is he who is outside of their range. No school, no testing-place like that of the home! And it is well to bear in mind that no man greatly succeeds in life, who fails in his own home, not merely because the rewards of the world cannot compensate for the failure of home-life, but because no successes without save from utterly tragic failure him who has failed within the home!
Home may be heavenly in its harmonies or hellish in its discords. To maintain that the difference is the result of love or lovelessness in the home does not tell the whole story. Whether home is to be heaven or hell, wracked by discord or attuned to harmony, depends upon them that make it, all of them, yea, upon the all of all that make a home. One alone may mar a home, any one of its members, husband or wife, parent or child, brother or sister, though all together are needed to minister to its perfection.
And how are the harmonies to be achieved and the discords to be avoided? And the answer is,—through courtesy, consideration, comradeship,—all in turn, alike in the major and minor issues of life, going back to self-rule not self-will. Courtesy and consideration together constitute the chivalry of the home, courtesy its outer token, consideration its inner prompting. The chivalry of the home is a reminder, occasionally required by both parents and children, that courtesy is not a grace if reserved for and bestowed solely upon strangers. The man or child, who is a churl at home and limits his courtesy extra-murally, is not only a pitiable boor but a contemptible hypocrite.