These bear witness to the fact that even when men were most insistent upon father-rights they were moulded by intimate companionship with women in the home to some appreciation of the value of feminine personality.
While, therefore, the moral discipline which came to the mother in the old order of the family, led her to understand the value of personality, and the need of ever-increasing effort to make the individual lives within the family circle comfortable, happy and good, the moral discipline of the patriarchal father led toward an increasing conquest of nature, of other men, and of all the social forces, in the interest of his own family group.

This led at last to his impersonation of many ideals in the "eternal womanly that leads us on." =The Higher Ideal of Fatherhood.=--Throughout this many-sided discipline of marriage and parenthood there has been growing an ideal of fatherhood so noble and so tender that it has easily become the central thought in many religions.
The "Heaven-father" is an old picture.

The Father in Heaven persists in the effort to bring the Supreme near to the human heart.

A law of obedience unquestioned, a rule of conduct making an actual Way of Life, a power unlimited and yet a loving-kindness that marks the sparrow's fall and has regard for the prodigal as for the upright son--surely there must have been uncounted fathers of goodness and wisdom passing praise to have made the name the easiest one by which to call the Divine! Meanwhile, the average life has been working, often unconsciously, toward a condition in which the patriarchal father is out of drawing with his own industry, his own political system, and his own theology.
To-day we give the wives and potential wives contract-power, private ownership of property, opportunity for economic independence, vocational training, entrance to all higher educational institutions, adult responsibility under the law, and the franchise on equal terms with men.
In the light of these accomplished facts vain is the effort of such writers as Devoe, in his _Studies in Family Life_, to show that "the Christian family" still makes women "subject" and holds "all goods in common" in the husband's name.
=Incomplete Adjustment and Equality of Rights in the Family.=--There is, however, great confusion of mind as to the extent of change in the father-office which the new independence of wives and mothers should effect.

Take, for example, the matter of the financial responsibility of the husband and father.