DR. VINCENT: The subject for conference this evening at this hour
is “Defects in Our American Homes.” This is not a lecture; it is a
conversation. You are to give your thoughts, I am to record them, and
we shall then discuss them.
Every organization has a spirit in it, and out of the spirit come
influence and action. Out of wrong ideas come mistakes. Out of
impotency—where one has an ideal, and not moral force enough to carry
it out—comes failure. In the Syrian homes there are defects that belong
to their civilization, their doctrines, their modes of life, their
limitations. In Italian homes there are defects; so in German and in
English homes. The defects of the Italian home differ from those of the
English. There are defects in our American homes. What are they? There
are defects which characterize us as well as other nations, in this
nineteenth century; and defects which are the products or the results
of our peculiar doctrines of society and of government. As we go about
in our neighborhoods; as we travel to and fro in the land, read the
papers and listen to lectures and sermons on the subject, we find
peculiar evils that exist to-day in American families. It is to look at
the dark side of the American home that we are met to-night. I want you
to think and I want you to speak. If any of you has a thought to give,
and don’t like to speak it out, write it and I shall be glad to read it
for the instruction of all. We take the American home, and I ask you
for a list of the defects which belong to the average American home.
First—What?
[The various defects mentioned by different speakers are given without
the names of the speakers; the comments usually are by Dr. Vincent.]
Selfishness.
REV. B. ADAMS: I should group the defects of the homes, as I know them,
in the region where I live, under the following letters: I, irreligion;
second I, indulgence; third I, ignorance; P, pride; C, covetousness;
four L’s, laziness, lying, levity and lust.