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THE K I NG ' S BUS I NES S aspiration of the mother? Can the real kind of men and "women be de veloped in homes where the wife has wrong conceptions of motherhood, and of the holy joy of moulding and fashioning the heart life of boys and girls? Would it not be well to dig into the history of some of the men of renown and find what part their mothers played in their making, and thus obtain a real estimate of the difference between a mere club woman and a big-hearted, clear-visioned home-builder, from which would come c h ild re n to the manor born” ? And it might not be out of place to pray about it. —T. C. H. \ FROM Home to Hell A secular newspaper, reporting the Laymen’s Evangelical Conference held in New York City, quotes a message from the lips of a converted gambler, at one time the proprietor of thirty-six gambling houses in that city, to the effect that all the policemen in the world could not suppress gambling. He said: “The fault doesn’t lie with the underworld. The underworld is a result. The fault lies with the homes—with the home life of church members. There's where the recruits for the city’s hellholes are prepared. During the twenty years I was in the game I found that about all the men and women who filled my houses and bet themselves into ruin were the product of the homes where card playing was encouraged. It’s across the friendly poker table or in the bridge game that Satan puts his fiery brand on the young men and women of America. It’s in the so-called Christian homes that the gambling fever begins. The underworld isn’t trying to drag innocents down. It doesn’t have to. The homes are turning out more re- cuits than they can possibly handle. They can’t he chased hack with an axe. They’ve been given their education by their parents. They’ve got their worldly wisdom at the dances, card parties and other social diversions which feature modern social life. There is nothing in the underworld that can furnish them any surprises and they are more likely to start a redder one of their own.” Our own experience with men tallies with the testimony of this con verted gambler. The gambling game has its inception in the respectable homes of many of our church members. Of what avail that the preacher and evangelist cry out against the sin of the gambler and the harlot when the parents are sowing the seed in the home, cutting the cards and dallying with the dance, and setting the seal of their approval on these soul-destroy ing agencies in the presence of their children? Have you ever pictured the frenzy of the meeting in the lower regions of these parents and children, and the bitter, biting, sarcastic, stinging accusations of the children when they charge their parents with “ You brought me here!” Talk about hell and its eternal tortures from which there is no escape! Here is a suggestion worth while considering. What can be done? Well, if you are a preacher,- you can paint the pictures for your people, and do not fear to put all the coloring in. You can never make it too vivid. If you are a parent, you can make your home what God would have it to be—a refuge from ruin for your children. And both preacher and parent and every Christian can pray andi labor and turn the tide of the home life from hell to heaven. -T. C. H.
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