Preface

In the following pages Father Feeney has treated with great simplicity and force the vital principle of personal and public welfare. Even in the natural order the life and discipline of Home are the first conditions of human happiness. The authority of parents, the obedience of children, and the mutual love of brethren, are the three great primary laws not only of domestic order and goodness, but of the peace and stability of human society. All these laws of the natural order are elevated and sanctified in Christian homes and in the Christian Commonwealth. Father Feeney has, of course, confined himself, not indeed without some mention of social happiness, to Christian homes, and to the duties of husband and wife, father and mother, sons and daughters,—and with the minute knowledge which the Pastoral life alone can give, he has drawn up a succession of instructive chapters on parental love, the education of children, the formation of character, the mutual duties of parents to children, and of children to parents, and on the multitude of dangers which surround the open and unprotected homes of our people.

This excellent book will be of great use to all readers, but above all to priests, who as Pastors are engaged in the cure of souls. I earnestly hope that it may be widely diffused, and I pray that the blessing of God may rest upon it.

Archbishop’s House, Westminster.