THOUGHT FROM HISTORY
Woodrow Wilson served as 28th President of the United States from 1913 to 1921. Wilson wrote and spoke about faith and religion more extensively than most of America's presidents. The following quotation comes from a 1904 speech, delivered while Wilson was president of Princeton University:
"Religion is communicable, I verily believe, aside from the sacred operations of the Holy Spirit, only by example. . . . no amount of didactic teaching in a home whose life is not Christian will ever get into the consciousness and life of the children. If you wish your children to be Christians, you must really take the trouble to be Christians yourselves. Those are the only terms upon which the home will work the gracious miracle."
And you cannot shift this thing by sending your children to Sunday-school. You may remedy many things, but you cannot shift this responsibility. If the children do not get this into their blood atmospherically, they are not going to get it into their blood at all until, it may be, they come to a period of life where the influences of Christian lives outside of the home may profoundly affect them and govern their consciences. We must realize that the first and most intimate and most important organization for the indoctrinating of the next generation is the home, is the family. This is the key to the whole situation. This is the reason that you must get hold of the whole family when you get hold of the children in your Sunday-school work; that your work will not be half done when you merely get the children there, and it may be, their mothers. You must include the fathers, and get your grip upon the home organization in such wise that the children will have the atmospheric pressure of Christianity the week through."
(This speech was published in a 1905 publication, "The Young People and the Church," and was included in "The Papers of Woodrow Wilson". This excerpt was taken from "The Faith of America's Presidents" by homeschool graduate Daniel Mount.)
