"To lend the low-born noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule and evil; Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them cedars, And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame, Tendeth to its deeper scorn, as if it were to call the mole a mammoth."

When we thus give our children names associated with battle-fields, empty titles, brilliant honors, and lucrative offices,—positions in life which they can never expect to reach, and which, if they did, would not do honor to the child of a Christian family, we do them great injury; we fasten in them feelings the most disastrous, and draw out propensities unbecoming the child devoted to the Lord, breeding in his soul a peevish repining at his station. Alas! that Christian homes should ever become so servile in their devotions to the rotten sentiments and flimsy interests of misguided and perverted fashion! Her smile in your home is that of a harlot; her touch is the withering blight of corruption; her dominion is the desolation of family hopes and the extermination of those sacred prerogatives with which the Lord has invested the Christian fireside. The ball will take the place of prayer; novels will take the place of the bible; favorites will take the place of husbands and wives; and the children will regard their parents only as their masters.

Christian parents should, therefore, give suitable names to their children, that is, such names as will correspond with their state, character and relations to God,—names which do not suggest the idea of war, rapine, humbug, romance, and sensuality, but which are associated with the Christian life and calling, and which serve as a true index to the spirit and character of the parental fireside. Reason, as well as faith, will dictate such a choice; for

"There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; names should note particulars Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant acceptation."

Our name is the first and the last possession at our disposal. It determines from the days of childhood our inclinations. It employs our attention through life, and even transports us beyond the grave. Hence we should give appropriate names to our children,—such as will interest them, and neither be a reproach, on the one hand, nor reach to unattainable and unworthy heights, on the other; for the mind of your child will take a bias, from its name, to good or to evil.

Why not adopt scriptural names for them? Are they not as beautiful as other names? They are. And is not their influence as salutary? It is. And are they not more suitable for the Christian home than any other? They are. Where is there a more lovely name than Mary,—lovely in its utterance, and thrice lovely in the glowing memories which cluster around it, and in the hallowed home-associations it awakens in the Christian heart, drawing us at once to the feet of Jesus, where a Mary sat in confiding pupilage, and sealed her instructions and gratitude with the tear-drop that glowed like early dew upon her dimpled cheek? Would Christian parents desire to give their children more beautiful names,—beautiful in the light of history and of heaven,—than that of Benjamin, "son of the right hand;" of David, "dear, beloved;" of Dionysius, "divinely touched;" of Eleazar, "help of God;" of Eli, "my offering;" of Enoch, "dedicated;" of Jacob, "my present;" of Lemuel, "God is with them;" of Nathan, "given, gift;" of Nathaniel, "gift of God;" of Samuel, "asked of God and sent of God," &c.?

Besides, there are names of distinguished Christians, such as Wilberforce, Howard, Page, Martyn, Paul, Peter, John, Fenelon, Clement, Baxter, &c.,—bright as dew-drops on the page of history, and as beautiful in their enunciation as any chosen from the world of heartless fashion,—as beautiful in sound, and infinitely more so in associations which bind them to deeds of humanity and Christian love. The utterance of such names would be more becoming the Christian home; because they aid in developing the purest, holiest and loftiest idea of its nature and calling. Such names will bind your little ones to pure and holy persons and deeds, and will suit the book of life in which you hope to have them enrolled.

"Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not found, God will give thee His new name, and write it on thy heart; A name, better than of sons, a name dearer than of daughters, A name of union, peace and praise, as numbered in thy God."



CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AS A NURSERY.

"The Ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind, And formed of God without a parent's mind, Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust, Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust; And, while on public nurseries they rely, Not knowing, and too oft not caring why, Irrational in what they thus prefer No few, that would seem wise, resemble her."

To nurse means to educate or draw out and direct what exists in a state of mere involution. It means to protect, to foster, to supply with appropriate food, to cause to grow or promote growth, to manage with a view to increase. Thus Greece was the nurse of the liberal arts; Rome was the nurse of law. In horticulture, a shrub or tree is the nurse or protector of a young and tender plant. We are said to nurse our national resources. Isaiah, in speaking of the coming Messiah and the glory of his church, says, "Thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side." "Kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers."

The place or apartment appropriated to such nursing is called a nursery. Thus a plantation of young trees is called a nursery. Shakspeare calls Padua the nursery of arts. We call a very bad place the nursery of thieves and rogues. Dram-shops are the nurseries of intemperance. Commerce is called the nursery of seamen. Universities are the nurseries of the arts and sciences. The church on earth is called the nursery of the church in heaven. Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth, because in the former its members are nursed and propagated for the purpose of being transplanted into the latter.

In the same sense and for the same reason, the Christian home is the nursery of the young,—of human nature in its normal state. And as home is the nursery of the state as well as of the church on earth and in heaven, we must see that it is a physical, intellectual and religious nursery. We shall briefly consider it in these aspects. Indeed the Christian home cannot be considered in a more interesting and responsible light. The little child, dedicated to God in holy baptism, is entirely helpless and dependent upon the ministrations of the nursery. There is the department of its first impressions, of its first directions, of its first intellectual and moral formation, of the first evolution of physical and moral life. There the child exists as but the germ of what is to be. It grows up under the fostering care and plastic power of the parents. God's commission to them in the nursery is, to bring up these germs of life, in His nurture admonition.

"Take the germ, and make it A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews Of knowledge, and the light of virtue, wake it In richest fragrance and in purest hues."

The nursery is the department of home in which the mother fulfils her peculiar mission. This is her special sphere. None can effectually take her place there. She is the center of attraction, the guardian of the infant's destiny; and none like she, can overrule the unfolding life and character of the child. God has fitted her for the work of the nursery. Here she reigns supreme, the arbitress of the everlasting weal or woe of untutored infancy. On her the fairest hopes of educated man depend, and in the exercise of her power there, she sways a nation's destiny, gives to the infant body and soul their beauty, their bias and their direction. She there possesses the immense force of first impressions. The soul of her child lies unveiled before her, and she makes the stamp of her own spirit and personality upon its pliable nature. She there engrafts it, as it were, into her own being, and from the combined elements of her own character, builds up and establishes the character of her offspring. Hers will, therefore, be the glory or the shame.

"Then take the heart thy charms have won, And nurse it for the skies."

The nursery is that department of home in which the formation of our character is begun. Infancy demands the nursery. It is not full-formed and equipped for the battle of life. It lies in the cradle in a state of mere involution, and in the hands of its parents is altogether passive, and susceptible of impressions as wax before the sun. The germ of the man is there; but it has yet to be developed. Its indwelling life must be nurtured with tender and assiduous care. It demands an influence suited to the expansion of its nature into bloom and maturity. It demands physical development, mental evolution, moral training, and spiritual elevation. In order to these it must live amidst the sweet and plastic socialities of maternal relationship. It must come under the fostering influence of a mother's heart, and be reared up by the tender touches of a mother's hand. This idea is embodied in home as a nursery. This is fourfold in its conception and relation to the child.

The nursery is physical. This involves the means of keeping the child in health, and the appliances of a vigorous physical development. The Christian mother, to this end, should make herself acquainted with the physiology of the infant body. Many well-meaning mothers, from sheer ignorance, destroy the health of their children; and it is on this account perhaps that four-tenths of them die under five years of age. They should also consider the bearing of the body upon the mind and morals of their children. How often do ignorant and indolent parents, by giving their children over to the care of sickly and immoral nurses, ruin forever the health and souls of their offspring. Much, then, depends upon the physical nurture of your child. If you would not injure its mind and soul, you must nurse its body with tender care and wisdom. A vital bond unites them; they reciprocally influence each other, and hence what affects the one must have a corresponding influence upon the other. Neglect the body of your child; destroy its health either by extreme and fastidious care, or by a brutal neglect, and you at the same time do lasting injury to its mind and morals; for the body as the vehicle of mind and spirit, is used for spiritual ends, and should, therefore, be nurtured with direct reference to these.

Your child, in the nursery, is like the tender plant. The storm of passion and the chill of indifference and the oppression of parental tyranny should not be heard and felt there; for where the storm rages and coldness freezes and the hand of cruelty oppresses, we can have no beautiful and vigorous development of physical or moral powers. There will be a stinted and one-sided growth. At best it will be dwarfish, and tend to counteract the spontaneous outflow of mental and moral life. The tender plant, when, cramped and clogged by existing impediments, cannot spring up into beauteous maturity. Neither can your child, when crammed with sweetmeats, and oppressed and screwed into monstrous contortions by the cruel inquisition of fashion and fashionable garments.

In this way the misdirected love and cruel pride of mothers often destroy the health and beauty of their children. They cause a sickly and dwarfish growth by too much confinement and mental taxation, by a too rigid choice of diet, by daily, uncalled for decoctions of medicine, and by fitting the body in a dress as the Chinese do their children's feet in shoes; in a word, by making the entire nursery life too artificial, and substituting the laws of art for those of nature. The result must be a delicate, artificial constitution, too fragile for the trials and duties of life. The body of your child has not the blooming, blushing form of nature, but the cold marble cast of a statue; and it imprints itself upon the disposition, the spirit, the mental faculties. It shows itself in peevishness, in imbecility, in such a passive, slavish subjection to the rules and interests of mere artificial life, as to admit no hope almost of spiritual progression.

The nursery is also intellectual. The mind of your child is unfolding as well as its body; and hence the former, as well as the latter, demands the nursery. How much of the mental vigor and attainments of children depend upon the prudent management of the nursery. Hence parents should

"Exert a prudent care To feed our infant minds with proper fare; And wisely store the nursery by degrees With wholesome learning, yet acquired with ease. And thus well-tutored only while we share A mother's lectures and a nurse's care."

Parents may abuse the minds of their children in the nursery, either by total neglect, or by immature education, by too early training and too close confinement to books at a very early age, thus taxing the mind beyond its capacities. This is often the case when children betray great precocity of intellect; and the pride of the parent seeks to gratify itself through the supposed gift of the child. In this way parents often reduce their children to hopeless mental imbecility.

Again, parents often injure the minds of their children by their misguided efforts to train the mind. Even in training them to speak, how imprudent they are in calling words and giving ideas in mutilated language. It is just as easy to teach children to speak correctly, and to call all things by their proper names, as to abuse their vernacular tongue. Such mutilations are impediments to the growth of the intellect. The child must afterwards be taught to undo what it was taught to do and say in the nursery. But as this subject will be fully considered in the chapter on Home Education, we shall refrain from further comment here.

The nursery is moral and spiritual. The first moral and religious training of the child belongs to the nursery, and is the work of the mother. Upon her personal exhibition of truth, justice, virtue, &c., depends the same moral elements in the character of her child. In the nursery we receive our first lessons in virtue or in vice, in honesty or dishonesty, in truth or in falsehood, in purity or in corruption. The full-grown man is the matured child morally as well as physically and intellectually. The same may be said of the spiritual formation and growth of the child. Spiritual culture belongs eminently to the nursery. There the pious parent should begin the work of her child's salvation.

From what we have now seen of the nursery, we may infer its very common abuse by Christian parents in various ways. They abuse it either by forsaking its duties, or giving it over to nurses. The whole subject warns parents against giving over their children to dissolute nurses. What a blushing shame and disgrace to the very name of Christian mother, it is for her to throw the whole care and responsibility of the nursery upon hired and irreligious servants. And why is this so often done? To relieve the mother from the trouble of her children, and afford her time and opportunity to mingle unfettered in the giddy whirl of fashionable dissipation. In circles of opulent society it would now be considered a drudgery and a disgrace for mothers to attend upon the duties of this responsible department of home. But the nurse cannot be a substitute for the mother.

"Then why resign into a stranger's hand A task so much within your own command, That God and Nature, and your interest too Seem with one voice to delegate to you?"

The same may be said of boarding schools, to which many parents send their children to rid themselves of the trouble of training them up. They are sent there at the very age in which they mostly need the fostering care of a parent. There they soon become alienated from home, and lose the benefit of its influence; and there too they often contract habits and are filled with sentiments the most degenerating and corrupt. They grow up and enter society without any conscious relation to home, and as a consequence, regard society as a mere heartless conventionalism. To this part of the subject we shall, in another chapter, devote special attention. It demands the prayerful consideration of Christian parents.

"Why hire a lodging in a house unknown, For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own? This second weaning, needless as it is, How does it lacerate both your heart and his!"



CHAPTER XIV.

HOME-SYMPATHY.

"Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight! Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right! Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed! Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed! Thou hasty conscience! reason's blushing morn! Instinctive kindness, ere reflection's born! Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs The swift redress of unexamined wrongs! Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried, But always apt to choose the suffering side!"

Where shall we find a more exquisite picture of home-sympathy than this, from the pen of that truly pious woman, Hannah More! We consider the home-sympathy as an argument against the neglect and abuse of the nursery. It is the instinctive impulse of the parent's heart to be faithful to the trust of home. What mother, prompted by such sympathy, can be recreant to the duties of her household? Can she, keenly sensible to the danger of her children, anxious for their welfare, prompt to do them justice, eager to procure them interests and joys, yearning to alleviate their misfortunes, push them from her arms, and give them over to the care of unfeeling and immoral nurses? If among all the members of the Christian home

"There is a holy tenderness, A nameless sympathy, a fountain love,— Branched infinite from parents to children, From husband to wife, from child to child, That binds, supports, and sweetens human life,"

then the law of sympathy is the standard of faithfulness to the loved ones of home, and its violation is an abuse of the affections and faith of the heart. We shall now consider the natural and spiritual sympathy of home.

What are the natural elements of home-sympathy? The original meaning of sympathy is "harmony of the affections." As such it is an instinctive element of human nature. "Sympathy," says Adams in his Elements of Christian Science, "is a natural harmony by which, upon matters especially that concern the affections, one human being shall, under certain conditions, feel, feel in despite of all concealment of language, the real state of the other." It is, in a word, that law of our nature which makes the feeling of one become affected in the same way as are the feelings of another, so that, in obedience to this law, "we rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep." In order to this the motive need not be the same in those in whom the feeling is the same; for that feeling engenders a feeling of its own kind in the other, independent of similar motive. Home-sympathy is that primary power of the heart by which all the affections of one member are extended to all the other members. It awakens in each for all the others, those delicate sensibilities which impel to the most self-denying and benevolent acts. The parent who sympathizes with the child, will extend to it all the aids within a parent's ability.

Its nature is to yield more of itself to weeping than to rejoicing, to misery than to joy. The parent will exert more power and do more for the wretched child than for those of his children who are not in the same condition. He will leave the latter in their security, and seek the one lost sheep of his little flock. Thus it exerts a sheltering influence against the dangers and miseries of human life. It is the law of home-preservation, written upon the heart, obeyed by the affections, and impelling each member to yield a voluntary devotion to the welfare of all the others. It is this which makes it one of the most lovely attributes of home. It is one of the golden chains that link its members together in close unity, making one heart of the many that are thus fused together, and blending into beautiful unison their specific feelings, and hopes and interests.

It is, therefore, the law of oneness in the family, weaving together, like warp and woof, the existence of the members, and locking each heart into one great home-heart, "like the keys of an organ vast," so that if one heart be out of tune, the home-heart feels the painful jar, and gives forth discordant sounds. By it we are not only bound to our kindred, but to our friends, our nation, our race. It impels us to all our acts of benevolence even to an enemy. Earth would be a dreary scene, and society would be a curse, if it did not reign in human nature.

Sympathy was a rich and interesting theme with the ancients. It entered into all their philosophy and religion, and gave rise to numerous fables. They believed that sympathy was a miraculous principle, and that it reigned in irrational and inanimate things. Thus they thought that "two harps being tuned alike, and one being played, the chords of the other would follow the tune with a faint, sympathetic music." It was also believed that precious stones sympathized with certain persons, that the stars sympathized with men, that the efficacy of ointment depended upon sympathy, that "wounds could be healed at a distance by an ointment whose force depended upon sympathy, the ointment being smeared upon the weapon, not upon the wound."

Upon this belief many erroneous, superstitious and dangerous systems of philosophy and religion were established. The natural philosophy of Baptista Porta, or Albertus Magnus, was founded upon the principle of sympathy. Plato applied this principle to marriage, and maintained that "marriage was the union of two souls that once, in their preexistent state, were one, and that sympathy urges them to union again, and sends them unconsciously seeking it over the world." In the middle ages it was maintained that two friends could be so moved with mutual sympathy as to have, under certain conditions, a true and perfect knowledge of one another's state, even when at a great distance apart. To the revival of this erroneous view of the law of sympathy may be ascribed the theories of Mesmerism and spiritual rappings at the present day.

Home-sympathy, viewed as a feeling and a faculty, is twofold in its nature, viz., passive and active. As passive, it is the mere sense of harmony of feeling among all the members, producing the idea and feeling of the oneness of home. It makes a unity of affection, so that the temper, hopes and interests of each member have a living echo and response in all the others. It gives to home its unitive heart, preserves its vital coherence, fuses all the hearts together, makes each a thread in the web of home-being, where each finds its true measure, is inspired with the home-feeling when all is right, and oppressed with home-sickness when separated from it.

But home-sympathy is also active. As such it is "the active power that one person has naturally of entering into the feelings of another, and being himself affected as that other is." Each member of home has the power in his feelings of making the feelings of all the other members his own, though he may not have the causes of the feelings of the one with whom he sympathizes. Thus one friend may feel the grief of another, actually and really, though he may not suffer the loss of that friend. He can make the emotion which that loss caused, his own. We may weep with the mother who pours her floods of anguish upon the grave of her child, though we may not have sustained the same loss. The husband weeps with his wife, though he may not be able to feel the pangs which penetrate her heart. The child can enter into the feelings of the parent, and be affected to tears or to joy by them.

And thus the home-sympathy demands that all the emotions of home, whether joyful or painful, must affect all,—must vibrate from heart to heart. It involves the power of home-transference, by which, each member conveys to his own affections, all within home. It is thus the law of adaptation and assimilation, for the home-affections. In obedience to this law the hearts and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love.

It is, therefore, only when the home-sympathy, as a feeling and a faculty, is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but home-sentimentalism,—a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance, parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife may lament the impenitence of her husband; but if they go no further, their sympathy is really false, because it does not share in and feel the state of others, nor seek to alleviate their impending miseries. The home-sympathy is not simply the look of the priest and Levite upon the half-dead traveler, but also the help of the good Samaritan. Its language is not only, "Be ye clothed and fed," but also, "I will clothe and feed thee." The mere indulgence in the feeling of sympathy is but to harden the heart in the end. Such were the sympathies of Rosseau,—mere heart-stimuli, without legitimate deeds and objective force, existing only as a love-sick sentiment. And this was both the theme of his eloquence and the cause of his misery. Such, too, were the sympathies of Robespierre,—a mere ebullition of disembodied sentiment, borne up like a floating bubble upon muddy waters, and exploding upon the slightest depression.

But, on the other hand, when home-sympathy is issued in faithful action as its emotions prompt, it becomes an efficient agent in the happiness and peace of the family. It not only gives eloquence to the tongue, tears to the eye, but faithfulness to the life. It serves as a key-note to the mind and heart, framing the home-energy, revealing to us our real state, and prompting, by the instinct of love, the means for our highest welfare.

"How glows the joyous parent to descry, A guileless bosom true to sympathy! A long lost friend, or hapless child restored, Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board; Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow, And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe!"

Sympathy is excited and measured by the power of natural affection. In proportion to the strength of the latter will be the attractive power of the former. That soothing voice which calms the wailing-infant; that fond bosom from which the child draws its subsistence, and on which it pillows its weary head; that smile which throws a sunshine around its existence, and all those acts of kindness administered by the hand of love, draw the child instinctively to the parent's heart, and blend in sweetest union its very being with theirs.

The principle of home-sympathy reigns in some degree in every household whose members have not sunk below the level of the brute. Its nature demands that it be mutual. It should glow with peculiar warmth in the wife, the mother, and the sister; because it is a more prominent instinct of woman. It is an intuition of the mother's heart.

"When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!"

Who but she can smooth the pillow and soothe the anguish of the child of affliction? There is a tenderness in her nature, a softness in her touch, a lightness in her step, a soothing expression in her face, a tender beam in her eye, which man can never have, and which eminently fits her for the lead in home-sympathy. The want of it is a libel upon her sex. It is her prerogative,—the magic power she wields in the formation and reformation of character.

But her sympathy should find response in the bosom of her husband, the father, the brother; for, if true, it must he mutual. Their joys and their sorrows must be common. Thus heart must answer to heart, and face. "The cruelty of that man," says J.A. James, "wants a name, and I know of none sufficiently emphatic, who denies his sympathy to a suffering woman, whose only sin is a broken constitution, and whose calamity is the result of her marriage." Without such mutual sympathy, the members of the family would be cold and repulsive, and society would be deprived of its most lovely attributes; its members would lose the connecting link which brings them together, and its entire fabric would fall to pieces and degenerate into barbaric individualism.

"Had earth no sympathy, no tears would flow, In heart-felt sorrow, for another's woe; The joyous spirit then would weary roam, A stranger to the dear delights of home."

We shall now consider briefly the religious elements of home-sympathy. These involve harmony of the spiritual affections, and a transfer to all the members, of the religious experience and enjoyment of each. As natural sympathy arises out of and is measured by natural affection, so spiritual sympathy is the product of faith and love. Hence the latter is purer, more refined and efficient than the former. If the members of the family are the children of God, they will live together in the unity of the Spirit as well as of natural affection. The sympathy of the pious portion will be interposed in behalf of the salvation of the impenitent members. There will be an identity of soul-interest. The pious mother will make the everlasting interests of her husband and child, her own; and will labor with the same assiduity to promote them as she does to promote her own salvation. She will thus enter into the spiritual emotions of her kindred, and bear them vicariously, making thus her religious sympathies the law of preservation to all the members of her household.

The living stream of this sympathy is given by Christ in His address to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem: "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children!" The following is also its living utterance: "My son, if thy heart be wise, my heart shall rejoice, even mine." We have also a beautiful exhibition of it in the touching history of Ruth, in the life of Joseph, and in the mother of Samuel. Peter describes it when he says, "Be all of one mind, having compassion one of another; love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous." Esther expresses it in the exclamation, "How can I endure to see the destruction of my kindred!" Paul gives utterance to it when he says, "I would be accursed for my brethren and kindred's sake." Jesus exemplifies it in His intercourse with the family of Lazarus; He shows its emotion and its active charities when He stands on the grave of that friend, and weeps, and calls him from the dead. His sympathy for a lost world is the true pattern of home-sympathy. It was disinterested, superior to all selfishness, self-denying, active, and prompting Him to do and suffer all that He did. It was not measured by the merits of the object after which it yearned. He sympathized with all,

"For each He had a brother's interest in His heart."

And its softening influence fell, like morning dew, upon the heart of adamant, melting it into contrition and love.

"In every pang that rends the heart, The Man of sorrows had a part; He sympathizes in our grief, And to the sufferer sends relief."

See Him bend over the bed of Jairus's daughter; see Him opening the eyes of the blind, healing the paralytic, comforting and feeding the poor widow, and cheering the bereaved and troubled heart. Wherever He went He was "a brother born for them in adversity." See Him on the cross, when weltering in blood and struggling with the pangs of a cruel death, He casts His languid eye upon His aged mother who is there weeping her pungent woes, and makes provision for her comfort. His sympathy now for all is the same.

"None ever came unblest away; Then, though all earthly ties be riven, Smile, for thou hast a Friend in heaven!"

It is this sympathy which makes Him a member of every Christian home. And when the sympathy of its members is the reproduction of His, they will, like Mary, sit in loving pupilage at His feet, each becoming the agent of blessings for all the rest. The wife will seek the salvation of her husband; the mother will labor with unwearied diligence for the redemption of her child.

Thus when home-sympathy is purified and developed by Christian faith and love, it opens up the most elevated of all home-feeling and solicitude, and becomes the most effectual safeguard against impending ruin. No family can be true to its privileges and mission without it. It allures to the cross, leads all the members in the path of the sympathizing one, and prompts them to say, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

What would the Christian home be, therefore, without such sympathy? Powerless, amoral desolation! We read in God's Word, of men losing natural affection, and of mothers forgetting their sucking children. But these were worse than brutes. What shall we then say of Christian parents being devoid of spiritual sympathy,—shedding no tear of anguish over their moral ruin, nor showing the least concern about their salvation? Such parents do not rejoice even over the return of their children to God. They are a disgrace to the Christian name, and bring infamy upon the Christian home.

Some parents do not proceed quite so far. They indulge in the feeling of sympathy for their children; but alas! that feeling is never expressed in efforts to save them. It is all expended in vain and fruitless lamentations, and is, therefore, at best but a morbid sentimentalism,—but a cloak behind which are lurking parental hard-heartedness and religious apathy; proving plainly the great truth advanced by Adams, in his Elements of Christian Science, "that an indulgence in the feelings of sympathy without carrying them out to the relief of actual distress, produces hardness of heart to such a degree that the most pitiless and cruel, the most licentious and unnatural, and ungrateful conduct shall be joined with the most overflowing and deeply thrilling sentiment."

Let those parents who are ever lamenting the wickedness of their children, but do nothing to make them better, ponder well this sentiment, and see it in the grin, of their own hypocrisy, and the desolation of their injured home and children. Let the other members, as well as the parents, take the timely warning. Let the pious wife here see the character of her sympathy for her impenitent husband. And let each see that their pious sympathy "always issue forth in actions." Let that sympathy give not only eloquence to the tongue, tears to your eye, and sighs to your heart, but also faithfulness to your life and holy calling. As the cry of hunger from your children, and their shivering cold in winter, prompt you to provide for their natural wants, so let their moral wants impel you to fidelity to their souls. All will be vain without this. The stern demands of a father's authority, and the formal teachings of a mother's lip, will fall like the frost of a winter's morning, upon their tender hearts,—only to sear and to harden and to freeze up the heart against God. For

"He will not let love's work impart Full solace, lest it steal the heart."

But when pure and holy sympathy goes out, in its softening influence after the young;—

"Then, feeling is diffused in every part, Thrills in each nerve, and lives in all the heart."

Such sympathy has a saving influence upon both the parent and the child. It softens and refines the former, while it forms and allures the latter. The child fondly leans upon the parents, looks up to them for support and enjoyment, and is led by them in whatever path they choose. By its influence the feeling of natural and spiritual helplessness becomes developed in the child; the sense of dependence on a superior is awakened; and with these, all those feelings of confidence and veneration, which lay the foundation of religious affections, are unfolded. The parent's influence, both as to kind and degree, depends, therefore, upon the character of home-sympathy. If it is but natural, the parental influence will not extend beyond the worldly gain and temporal welfare of the child. The parent will exert no power over the soul. But if it be spiritual, and extend beyond the mere instincts of natural affection, it will expand the mind, and develop all the melting charities of our nature. It will pass with a new transferring and transforming power, from husband to wife, from parent to child, from kindred to kindred. Wherever it finds its way; whatever fiber of the heart it may touch, it begets a new and holy affection, unites the energies, lightens the toils, soothes the sorrows, and exalts the hopes, of all the members. It reflects a softening luster from eye to eye, goes with electric flash from heart to heart, glows in its warmth throughout all its moral courses, accumulates the home-endearments, stimulates each member to religious exertions for all the rest, and lays the foundation in each heart for an unbroken home-communion of their sainted spirits in heaven! It cements them together in their tent-home, creating a sweet concord of hearts and hopes and joys; and then elevates them unitedly in fond anticipation of reunion in their eternal home. They blend their tears together over the grave of buried love, and enjoy the saintly sympathy of loved ones gone before them.

This is its most lovely feature. Tell me, is there not a bond of sympathy between Jesus and His people here,—between loved ones in heaven and their pious kindred on earth? Do not the tears of the Christian home reflect the tears of Jesus? These are to the heart like the dews of Hermon,—like the dews that descended upon the mountains of Zion.

"No radiant pearl which crested fortune wears, No gem that, sparkling, hangs from beauty's ears, Not the bright stars which night's blue arch adorn, Nor rising sun that gilds the vernal morn, Shine with such luster as the tear that breaks For others' woe, down virtue's lovely cheeks."

Is such, Christian brother, the sympathy of your home? It will be a safeguard against the follies and the false interests of life. It will restrict the fashionable taste and sentiments of the age. It will teach wisdom to the pious mother, and be a sure defense against the dangers and indiscretions of the nursery and fashionable boarding school. Under its influence, mothers will not trust the souls of their children to the guardianship of irreligious nurses, nor expose them to the perils of a corrupted and heartless fashion. They will deny themselves the ruinous pleasures of a gay and reckless association with the world; and with maternal solicitude, attend upon the opening of those buds of life which God has committed to them. The pious mother will wield her power over her children, by the force of this sympathy; for her's is the deepest, purest, and most saving of all home-sympathy:

"Earth may chill And sever other sympathies, and prove How weak all human bonds are—it may kill Friendship, and crush hearts with them—but the thrill Of the maternal breast must ever move In blest communion with her child, and fill Even heaven itself with prayers and hymns of love!"



CHAPTER XV.

FAMILY PRAYER.

"Hush! 'tis a holy hour,—the quiet room Seems like a temple, while yon soft lamp sheds A faint and starry radiance through the room And the sweet stillness, down on yon bright heads With all their clustering locks, untouched by care, And bowed, as flowers are bowed with night,—in prayer. Gaze on, 'tis lovely—childhood's lip and cheek Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought!"

Home-sympathy will prompt to family devotion. The latter is the fruit of the former. A prayerless home is destitute of religious sympathy. The family demands prayer. Its relation to God, its dependence and specific duties, involve devotion. Communion with God constitutes a part of the intercourse and society of home. The necessity of family prayer arises out of the home-constitution and mission. Family mercies and blessings; family dangers and weaknesses; family hopes and temptations,—all bespeak the importance of family worship. If you occupy the responsible station of a parent; if God has made you the head of a religious household, and you profess to stand and live on the Lord's side, then, tell me, have you not by implication vowed to maintain regular family worship? Besides, the benefits and privilege of prayer develop the obligation of the family to engage in it. Is not every privilege a duty? And if it is a duty for individuals and congregations to pray, is it not, for a similar reason, the duty of the family to establish her altar of devotion? As a family we daily need and receive mercies, daily sin, are tempted and in danger every day; why not then as a family daily pray?

But what is family prayer? It is not simply individual prayer, not the altar of the closet; but the home-altar, around which all the members gather morning and evening, as a family-unit, with one heart, one faith and one hope, to commune with God and supplicate his mercy. "In the devotion of this little assembly," says Dr. Dwight, "parents pray for their children, and children for their parents; the husband for the wife, and the wife for the husband; while brothers and sisters send up their requests to the throne of Infinite Mercy, to call down blessings on each other. Who that wears the name of a man can be indifferent here? Must not the venerable character of the parent, the peculiar tenderness of the conjugal union, the affectionate intimacy of the filial and fraternal relations; must not the nearest of relations long existing, the interchange of kindness long continued, and the oneness of interests long cemented,—all warm the heart, heighten the importance of every petition, and increase the fervor of every devotional effort?"

What scene can be more lovely on earth, more like the heavenly home, and more pleasing to God, than that of a pious family kneeling with one accord around the home-altar, and uniting their supplications to their Father in heaven! How sublime the act of those parents who thus pray for the blessing of God upon their household! How lovely the scene of a pious mother gathering her little ones around her at the bedside, and teaching them the privilege of prayer! And what a safeguard is this home-devotion, against all the machinations of Satan!

"Our hearths are altars all; The prayers of hungry souls and poor, Like armed angels at the door, Our unseen foes appal!"

It is this which makes home a type of heaven, the dwelling place of God. The family altar is heaven's threshold. And happy are those children who at that altar, have been consecrated by a father's blessing, baptized by a mother's tears, and borne up to heaven upon their joint petitions, as a voluntary thank-offering to God. The home that has honored God with an altar of devotion may well be called blessed.

"Child, amidst the flowers at play, While the red light fades away; Mother, with thine earnest eye Ever following silently; Father, by the breeze of eve Called thy warmest work to leave; Pray!—ere yet the dark hours be, Lift the heart and bend the knee."

The duty thus to establish family prayer is imperative. It is a duty because God commands it, and the mission of home cannot be fulfilled without it. It is a duty because a privilege and a blessing, and the condition of parental efficiency in all other duties;—because the moral and spiritual growth of the child depends upon it. It is one of the most effectual means of grace. All the instructions, all the discipline and example, of the parent will be in vain without it. Hence both natural affection and Christian faith should suggest its establishment. Parents are bound to do so by their covenant vows, by the obligations of baptism, by all the interests and hopes of their household. They have dedicated their children to God, and pledged themselves to educate them for Him, and to train them up in His ways. Tell me then, can you be faithful to these vows and obligations without family prayer? Can you fulfil your covenant engagements, hope to receive your reward, and see your children grow up in the nurture of the Lord's vineyard, without rearing up a family altar?

The promised blessings of family prayer show that every faithful Christian home must have its family altar. These are unspeakable. It is a sure defence against sin; it sanctifies the members, and throws a hallowed atmosphere around our household. The child will come under its restraining and saving influence. A mother's prayer will haunt the child, and draw it as if by magic power towards herself in heaven:

"He might forget her melting prayer, While pleasure's pulses madly fly, But in the still, unbroken air, Her gentle tones come stealing by,— And years of sin and manhood flee, And leave him at his mother's knee!"

It affords home security and happiness, removes family friction, and causes all the complicated wheels of the home-machinery to move on noiselessly and smoothly. It promotes union and harmony, expunges all selfishness, allays petulant feelings and turbulent passions, destroys peevishness of temper, and makes home-intercourse holy and delightful. It causes the members to reciprocate each other's affections, hushes the voice of recrimination, and exerts a softening and harmonizing influence over each heart. The dew of Hermon falls upon the home where prayer is wont to be made. Its members enjoy the good and the pleasantness of dwelling together in unity. It gives tone and intensity to their affections and sympathies: it throws a sunshine around their hopes and interests: it increases their happiness, and takes away the poignancy of their grief and sorrow. It availeth much, therefore, both for time and eternity. Its voice has sent many a poor prodigal home to his father's house. Its answer has often been, "This man was born there!" The child, kneeling beside the pious mother, and pouring forth its infant prayer to God, must attract the notice of the heavenly host, and receive into its soul the power of a new life.

"Who would not be an infant now, To breathe an infant's prayer? O manhood! could thy spirit kneel Beside that sunny child, As fondly pray, and purely feel, With soul as undefiled. That moment would encircle thee, With light and love divine; Thy gaze might dwell on Deity, And heaven itself be thine."

And yet the neglect of family prayer is a very general defect of the Christian home. No home-duty has indeed been more grossly neglected and abused. Some attend to it only occasionally; some only in times of affliction and distress, as if then only they needed to pray to God; some only on the Sabbath, as if that were the only day to commune with Him. Some perform it only in a formal way, having the form without the spirit of prayer, as if God did not require the fervent, in order to the effectual, prayer that availeth much.

As a general thing, at the present day, not more than three or four families out of a whole congregation, have established the family altar. The parents may engage in closet prayer, but their children are strangers to the fact. Their devotions they seem zealous to conceal, as if they were ashamed of their piety. Can this be right? Is this the will of God? No! methinks if the parent is faithful to the duty of private prayer, he cannot omit the duty and privilege of family devotion. But why neglect family prayer? Are you ashamed of your children? Have you no time? Then you are unworthy of a family, and should not profess to act towards them as the steward of God. Think you that God will not answer and bless your prayers? What more could you do and hope for your children than to offer up supplications for them to God?

"What could a mother's prayer, In all the wildest ecstacy of hope, Ask for her darling like the bliss of heaven?"

Many seek by the most frivolous excuses, to justify their neglect of family prayer. Some will urge the press of other duties, alleging that other engagements prevent it. This is false. God lays upon you no engagement that is designed to supersede the necessity of prayer. Besides, you will find that you really waste more time than it would require for family devotion. And further, can you spend your time to better purpose than in family prayer? I think not. It is the best husbandry of time. Says Philip Henry to his children, "Prayer and provender hinder no man's journey." But another pleads incapacity. He has not the gift of speech, and cannot make an eloquent prayer. This is no excuse. Prayer is the gift of the Holy Spirit; and if you have the spirit of prayer, you will find words for its utterance. Besides, eloquence does not condition the efficacy of prayer. Where there is a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not.

"When we of helps or hopes are quite bereaven, Our humble prayers have entrance into heaven."

We have the capacity to ask for what we earnestly desire and feel the need of. The anger of God will kindle against you for this excuse, as it kindled against Moses for a similar one. When He called him to be his messenger to Israel, Moses said, as you do, "O my Lord, I am not eloquent,—I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue. And the Lord said unto him, who hath made man's mouth? or, who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? The anger of the Lord was kindled against him."

Let me, therefore, urge upon you, Christian parents, to make prayer a prominent element of your home. You should be a priest unto your family,—a leader in home-communion with God. Your children have a right to expect this from you. If you are a church member, how strange and startling must be the enunciation in heaven, that you are a prayerless Christian, and your home destitute of the altar! And do you think that, continuing thus, you will be admitted into that heavenly home where there is one unbroken voice of prayer and praise to God? Do you not tremble at the prospect of those tremendous denunciations which the Lord has uttered against those who neglect and abuse the privilege of prayer? "Pour out thy fury upon the families that have not called upon thy name." Oh then, make your home a house of prayer; lead your little flock in sweet communion with God. Establish in them the habit of devotion: Shape their consciences by prayer. In this way you shall secure for yourself and them the blessing of God: His smile shall ever rest upon your household: Salvation shall be the heritage of your children; they will grow up in the divine life; and will live amid the blessing's of prayer, and be faithful to its requisitions:

"Hold the little hands in prayer, teach the weak knees their kneeling; Let him see thee speaking to thy God; he will not forget it afterwards; When old and gray will he feelingly remember a mother's tender piety, And the touching recollection of her prayers shall arrest the strong man in his sin!"



CHAPTER XVI.

HOME-EDUCATION.

SECTION I.

THE CHARACTER OF HOME EDUCATION.

"Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come; Wherefore, though the voice of instruction waiteth for the ear of reason, Yet with his mother's milk the young child drinketh education."

We come now to consider one of the most important features of the Christian home, viz., as a school for the education of character. This is important because of its vital bearing upon the interests of home. The parent is not only king and priest, but prophet in the family. It is the first school. We there receive a training for good or for evil. There is not a word, nor an emotion, nor an act, nor even a look there, which does not teach the child something. Character is ever being framed and moulded there. Every habit there formed, and every action there performed, imply a principle which shall enter as an element into the future character of the child.

What is home-education? It is the physical, mental, moral, and religious development of the child. To educate means to draw out as well as to instil in. It means the evolution of our nature as well as the communication of facts and principles to us. The home training does not, therefore, consist of simple information, but is a nurture of body, mind and spirit. From this we may infer the frequent mistakes of parents, in substituting mere book-learning for a training up and nurture, dealing with their children as if they had no faculties, and making the entire education of their children mechanical and empirical. Home training involves the development of all their faculties as a unit and in their living relation, causing the body to move right, the mind to think right, the heart to feel right, and the soul to love right; changing your children from creatures of mere impulse, prejudice and passion, to thinking, loving and reasoning beings. To educate them is to bring out their hidden powers, to form their character, and prepare them for their station in life. Thus home-education means a drawing out and also a bringing up,—a training for man, and a bringing up for God; a training and nurture for the family, the state, and the church,—for time and for eternity. These must be done together; they involve but one process, and are conditioned by each other. We cannot separate a secular from a religious education, neither can we separate a training from a bringing up. While those faculties of the child which exist in a state of mere involution, are being developed, its nature must be supplied with appropriate food; and every element of its education must possess the plastic power of evolving and giving specific form to its future character and destiny. Thus the parent, in teaching, must have a forming influence over the child; and his instructions must correspond in character, kind and extent, with the nature, wants, and destiny of the child.

What are now the different kinds or parts of home-education?

It must be physical. The child has a physical nature, physical wants, and is related to the material world; and should, therefore, receive a physical education. The object of this is to ensure that sound, vigorous frame of body which is not only a great blessing in itself, but an essential concomitant of a sound state and vigorous development of mind. It refers to the proper management of the health of the child, its diet, habits of exercise and recreation. Parents should teach their children the nature of the body, its dangers, and bearing upon their future happiness. They should teach them to govern their appetite, and train them up to habits of exercise and early rising. This part of home-education begins in the nursery,—in the cradle, and is not complete till the body is brought to maturity in all its functions. Neglect of it will result in physical imbecility, and often in mental derangement. The object secured by it is, the preservation of the health and constitution of the child. In this we see its importance. What is your wealth, your station, your influence, if through your neglect of your children, they are deprived of health, and grow up with the seeds of immature death springing up in their system?

In the physical training of children due regard should be had to cleanliness, exercise, diet and dress. Without this all will be vain. Many parents keep them within doors, never let them enjoy the pure air, nor exercise the muscular system, keep their bodies cooped in clothing too small, and feasted upon a diet unwholesome; and as a consequence, they show a sickly growth, and become unfit either for the burdens or for the enjoyments of life.

The importance of exercise in the open air, and abstemiousness in diet, is proven from the health of those nations that train their children in all the exercise of riding, leaping, running and fencing, and subject them from infancy to the most frugal diet. Thus the perfect forms and vigorous health of the Greeks, the Romans and Persians were the fruit of national attention paid to physical education. Every home should have its suitable gymnasium. How many parents, by their violation of the laws of health, prostitute the strength of their children to profligacy and indolence.

Home-education must be intellectual. Much of human character and happiness depends upon the education of the mind, both as respects the development of its faculties and the application of legitimate truth. The mind is the man. It is not, as Locke declares, like a blank sheet of paper or a chest of drawers; but has an intuitional as well as a logical consciousness, innate ideas as well as capacities of receiving truth; while all its faculties involve a unity, and exist in the child in a state of involution; the abuse and neglect of one of which will have their bearing upon all the rest; and the mind without proper culture in its undeveloped state in the child, will show the symptoms of its abuse in the man. The character of the mind in the man will indicate the character of its education in the child. This education should begin properly with the first symptoms of consciousness. All the powers of the intellect should be unfolded. Parents should be the Principals in the mental training of their children. The manner and means of such training will be considered in another place. Our purpose here is simply to state this as a part of home-training. From the important part which the mind acts in the great drama of human life and destiny, we think that no intelligent parent would presume to repudiate its education.

Home-education must be moral. The family should develop the moral nature of the child. The will should be educated; the sense of right and wrong trained; the emotions cultivated; the passions and desires ruled; the conscience and faith developed. The necessity of this is seen in the fact that our nature is fallen and perverted. The means of educating the moral nature of the child, are natural and revealed. Both are of divine appointment. The former are those which lie within the circumference of our abilities, and will be of no avail without the latter, which are found in the scriptures and church. What are some of these means?

1. Parents should place their children in circumstances calculated to form a good moral character. They should surround them with a moral atmosphere, that they may, with their first breath, inhale a pure moral being, and escape the contamination of evil. This has been called "the education of circumstances." Much of character depends upon position and the circumstances in which we are placed. This is seen in the difference between those children who have enjoyed the true christian home, and those who have not. Hence the first thing parents should consider in the moral training of their children is, the home in which they are to be trained. This home should afford them circumstances the most favorable to their moral culture.

2. They should remove all temptation. Evil propensities are called forth by temptation; and a child loses the power to resist in proportion to the frequency of the temptation. Hence the exposure of our children to temptation but educates and strengthens their propensities to evil. On the other hand, if we remove temptation, these propensities will not be called into activity, and will lose their tenacity. Never allow your children to tamper with sin in any form; teach them how to resist temptation; inspire them with an abhorrence and a dread of all evil. In this way you prepare them for the reception and reproduction of moral truth.

3. Another means of moral education is example. This has been styled the "education of example." This has more power than precept. The efficiency of this means is based upon the natural disposition of the child to imitate. Children take their parents as the standard of all that is good, and will, therefore, follow them in evil as well as in good. Hence the parent's example should be a correct model of sound morality. The child will be the moral counterpart of the parent. You can see the parent's home in the child. He is the moral daguerreotype of his parent. This but shows the importance of good example in his moral training.

4. But one of the most effectual means is, by moral training, by which we mean, to draw out and properly direct the moral faculties, and to habituate them to the exercise of moral principle. Without this, all mechanical education will be fruitless. To call forth muscular power you must exercise the muscles. So you give the child moral stamina by developing its moral faculties, and establishing in them the habit of moral action. This training has its foundation in the law of habit. It is given, with its results, in the Word of God. "Train up a child," &c. Also in the old maxim, "Just as the twig is bent, the tree is inclined."

"Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, The scarred and crooked oak will tell of thee for centuries to come!"

The power and pleasure of doing a thing depends much upon habit. Our nature may become habituated to good or evil; we become passive in proportion to the habit. How important, then, that the moral powers of our children be trained up to principles and action until habits of good thought, feeling, and conduct, are established. Then they will not depart from them; and their moral life will be spontaneous and a source of enjoyment.

The feelings, appetites and instincts of children should be thus specially trained. According to Dr. Gall, there are two classes of feelings,—the selfish, yet necessary for the preservation of the individual; and the unselfish, or those which are directed to objects apart from self, yet liable to abuse and misdirection. Both of these demand a home-training. The parent should give to each its true direction, restrain and harmonize them in their relations and respective spheres of activity, and bring them under law, and place before each its legitimate object and end. Then, and then only, do they become laws of self-preservation. The natural appetites are subject to abuse, and when unrestrained, defeat the very ends of their existence. Thus the appetite for food may be over-indulged through mistaken parental kindness, until habits of sensualism are established, and the child becomes a glutton, and finds the grave of infamy.

How many children have been thus destroyed in soul and body by parental indulgence and neglect of their natural feelings and appetites. The feeling of cruelty, revenge, malice, falsehood, tale-bearing, dishonesty, vanity, &c., have, in the same way and by the same indulgence, been engendered in the children of Christian parents. The same, too, may be said of the unselfish feelings. These have been called the moral sentiments; and upon their proper training depends the formation of a positive moral character. The conscience comes under this head. The parent should train that important faculty of the child. It should be taught to act from the standpoint of conscience, and to form the habit of conscientiousness in word and deed. This includes the training of the motives also, and of all the cardinal moral virtues, such as justice, honor, chastity, veneration, kindness, &c. "Teach your children," says Goodrich in his Fireside Education, "never to wound a person's feelings because he is poor, because he is deformed, because he is unfortunate, because he holds an humble station in life, because he is poorly clad, because he is weak in body and mind, because he is awkward, or because the God of nature has bestowed upon him a darker skin than theirs."

This early education should commence as soon as the necessities of the child demand it. A child should be taught what is necessary for it to know and practice as soon as that necessity exists and the child is capable of learning. Scripture sanctions this. Our fathers did so. It was the injunction of Moses to the children of Israel: Deut. vi., 6-9. God commands you to break up the fallow ground and sow the good seed at the first dawn of the spring-life of your children, and then to pray for the "early and the latter rain,"

"Teaching, with pious care, the dawning light Of infant intellect to know the Lord."

Home-education should be religious. As the child has a religious nature, religious wants, and a religious end to accomplish, it should receive from its parents a religious training. Religion is educational. We are commanded to teach religion to our children. The admonition to "train up a child in the way he should go," and to "bring him up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," is a scripture sanction of religious education. Nature and the bible are the text-books for such a training. The child should be taught natural and revealed religion. Such education involves the development of the child's religious nature, and the diligent use of those means by which it may become an adopted child of God.

Education should be suited to the wants and the destination of the child. Religion is its first want,—the one thing needful, the chief concern; and should, therefore, be the first object of attention in home-training. The fear and love of God should be the first lesson taught. This is the beginning of wisdom. Teach your children to love Him above father and mother, sister and brother. The child is capable of such ideas of God. Children can possess the sentiment of God; and when this is instilled and developed as a rudiment of their character, they have a preparation for the grace of God. What is the mere secular, without such a religious education? It is education without its essence; for piety is the essence of all education. Irreligious training is destructive,—a curse rather than a blessing,—only a training up to crime and to ruin. "The mildew of a cultivated, but depraved mind, blights whatever it falls upon." "Religion," says Dr. Barrow, "is the only science, which is equally and indispensably necessary to men of every rank, every age, and every profession." "The end of learning," says Milton, "is to repair the ruins of our first parents, by requiring to know God aright, and out of that knowledge, to love Him, and to imitate Him."

We see, therefore, that religious training is the only true palladium of your children's happiness and destiny; and should be the great end of all home-teaching. Tinge all their thoughts and feelings with a sense of eternity. Train them up to build for another world. Stamp the impress of a future life upon their tender hearts. Beget in them longings after immortality. See that their designs extend beyond this world. As the Spartan mother gave character to her nation by the instructions she gave her child, so you give character to your religion, your church, your home, by the spiritual culture of your offspring. Let the jewels you give them be the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost,—the ornaments of a meek and quiet spirit.

"Take the germ, and make it A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews Of knowledge and the light of virtue, wake it In richest fragrance and in purest hues."

Childhood is the period in which the principles of Christianity can be the most effectually engrafted in our nature. Its pliability at that period insures its free assimilation to the spirit and truth of religion. "Would to God," says St. Pierre, "I had preserved the sentiment of the existence of the Supreme Being, and of His principal attributes, as pure as I had it in my earliest years!" It is the heart more than the head that religion demands; and you can fill the young heart with sentiments of God better than if you wait till it grows hard as adamant in sin. You can elevate the soul of your child to God, and teach it to raise its little hands and voice in prayer to the Most High. You can teach it this from the book of nature and of revelation,—from the daisies that spring up among the grass upon which it frolics, by the mellow fruits after which it longs, by the stars that shine in unclouded luster above it, and by the breezes which ruffle its silken curls, and bring perfume to its smiling face.

To the mother especially, is committed the religious education of the child at home. She is eminently adapted, if herself a Christian, for such a work. Her love, her piety, which breathes in every word, in every look, makes her instructions effectual and pleasing.

"'Tis pleasing to be schooled by female lips and eyes, They smile so when one's right, and when one's wrong, They smile still more; and then there Comes encouragement in the soft hand Over the brow, perhaps even a chaste kiss— I learned the little that I know by this."

They can better reach and train the heart. Religion is heart-wisdom. "My son, give me thy heart!" We may use the head as an avenue to the heart, yet nothing is done in the religion of our children until the heart be carried. It is only in that inner shrine that there can be deposited the wisdom that is from above, and only then will they be made wise unto salvation. And who is better able to storm and carry that inner citadel, and lead its subdued inmates to the Cross, than the pious, tender-hearted, soliciting mother!

Some parents object to the religious training of their children, "because," say they, "there is danger of having their minds biased by some particular creed; they should be left, therefore, to themselves till they are capable of making a choice, and then let them choose their creed." This is all a miserable subterfuge, and in direct opposition to the explicit command of God and the whole tenor of the gospel plan of salvation. It goes upon the assumption that religion is but an opinion—a subscription to a certain creed, learning certain doctrines—a mere thing for the head. Tell me, is it worse to bias their minds to a particular creed, than to let them grow up biased to the world, to the Devil and all his works? Is it all of home, religious culture to bias them to a particular creed? Besides, is it not the right, yea, the duty of parents to bias their children in favor of the religious creed of the parental home? It shows, therefore, that those parents who, for this reason, object to religious training, have but little love for, and confidence in, their own creed, or they would not shrink from biasing their children to it.

To encourage Christian parents to give their children a good religious education, God has given them numerous examples, from both sacred and profane history, of conversion and eminent piety in the age of childhood, as the direct fruit of early parental instruction. Look, for instance, at the child Samuel worshiping the Lord. Look, too, at the case of Moses and of David, of Joseph and of John the Baptist. Dr. Doddridge, we are told, "was brought up in the early knowledge of religion by his pious parents." His mother "taught him the history of the Old and New Testaments before he could read, by the assistance of some Dutch tiles in the chimney of the room where they commonly sat; and her wise and pious reflections on the stories there represented were the means of making some good impressions on his heart, which never wore out." An eminently pious minister thus writes to his parents, confirming by his own blessed experience the early fruits of religious training: "I verily believe that had my religious training been confined to the gleanings of the Sabbath school, instead of the steady enforcement of the Mosaic arrangement at home by my parents, I might now be pursuing a far different course, and living for a far different end. Many, very many times, as early in childhood as I can recollect, has the Spirit of God convicted me of sin, as my father at home has taught me out of the scriptures, and I cannot easily forget that the same high-priest of the home-church once tore from me the hypocrite's hope. And that dear place had another to carry on the work; gentler but not weaker; and memory recalls a mother pressing her face close to mine as she often knelt with me before the mercy-seat. I will not cast reproach on any institution which has been productive of good to myself and to others, but with profound gratitude will say, home was the place of my spiritual nativity, and my parents were God's instruments in leading me to Christ!"

The eminent piety of Dr. Dwight stands on record as the fruit of a mother's faithful religious training; for "she taught him from the very dawn of reason to fear God and keep His commandments, and the impressions then made upon his mind in infancy, were never effaced." The mother of young Edwards is another example of early piety as the fruit of religious home-culture. The aged Polycarp, when under arrest during the persecution under Marcus Aurelius, in reply to the injunction of the pro-consul, "Swear, curse Christ, and I release thee!" exclaimed, "Six and eighty years have I served Him, and He has done me nothing but good; and how could I curse Him, my Lord and Saviour?" Thus showing himself to have been a Christian at the early age of four years! It was through the instructions of his grandmother Lois, and his mother Eunice, that young Timothy "knew from a child the holy scriptures, which made him wise unto salvation."

And what an effectual antidote are such instructions against vice and temptation! How many have by them been arrested from the devouring jaws of infidelity and ruin! Thus it was with John Randolph, who said that in the days of the French revolution, when infidel reason took the place of God and the bible, and infidelity prowled unmolested throughout France, he would have become an infidel himself, had it not been for the remembrance of his childhood days, when his pious mother taught him to kneel by her side, and to say, "Our Father, who art in heaven!" Thus, too, with the pious and learned J.Q. Adams, who daily repeated the little prayers his mother taught him when a child.

Thus, then, we see that parents are encouraged by the most brilliant examples of history, to teach their children religion at the home-fireside, "when thou liest down and risest up." Oh, let the gentle courtesies and sweet endearments of home engrave the Word and Spirit of God upon their tender hearts. Wait not until they are matured in rebellion, and sin lay beds of flinty rock over their hearts; but let them breathe from infancy the atmosphere of holiness, and drink from the living fountains of divine truth. See that your homes become their birth-place in the spiritual kingdom of Christ.

Such religious training will be the guardian of their future life, and will fortify them against impending evil. What made Daniel steadfast amidst all the efforts to heathenize him during his captivity in Babylon? His early religious culture. It was the means of his preservation. The truth had been deeply engraven upon his heart when young, and nothing could ever efface it. His early home-impressions glowed there with pristine freshness and power amid all the terrors which surrounded him in the den and before the throne of his implacable foe. These home instructions may be silenced for a time, but never destroyed. They may be overshadowed, but not annihilated. Says Dr. Cumming, "The words spoken by parents to their children in the privacy of home are like words spoken in a whispering-gallery, and will be clearly heard at the distance of years, and along the corridors of ages that are yet to come. They will prove like the lone star to the mariner upon a dark and stormy sea, associated with a mother's love, with a father's example, with the roof-tree beneath which they lived and loved, and will prove in after life to mould the man and enable him to adorn and improve the age in which he is placed."

Be faithful, therefore, in the spiritual culture of your children. Give them "line upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little." Lead them on by degrees to Christ until each indelible impression becomes an established habit. In the morning of their life sow the seed; and God will give the increase; and then in the day of judgment your children will rise up and call you blessed!

SECTION II.

NEGLECT AND ABUSE OF HOME-EDUCATION.

"Accomplishments have taken virtue's place, And wisdom falls before exterior grace; We slight the precious kernel of the stone, And toil to polish its rough coat alone. A just deportment, manners graced with ease, Elegant phases, and figure formed to please, Are qualities that seem to comprehend Whatever parents, guardians, schools intend; Hence all that interferes, and dares to clash With indolence and luxury, is trash!"

Home-education in all its parts is most sadly neglected and abused at the present day. Many parents think that the office of teacher is not included in the parental character and mission. The neglect of home-training seems to arise out of an existing-prejudice against it. Some think that education will unfit their children for industry,—will make them indolent and proud. They regard mental culture as an enemy to both industry and virtue. Strange delusion! The mind is given to use, not to abuse; and its abuse is no argument against its proper use. God has given the mind, and intends it to be developed and cultivated. If, therefore, its training has made it indolent and dissipated, it only proves its education to be spurious. You might, by a parity of reasoning, blindfold the eye that it might not he covetous, or tie up the hand lest it pick a man's pocket, or hobble the feet lest they run into evil ways, as to keep the mind in ignorance lest it become wicked.

Besides, we find more real indolence and wickedness among the ignorant than among the educated; for man will be educated in something. If you do not educate your child in the truths of nature and religion, be assured he will become trained in falsehood and in the ways of Satan. "Uneducated mind is uneducated vice." A proper education is a divine alchemy which turns all the baser parts of man's nature into gold. Without it all is discord and darkness within and without. Besides, ignorance leads to misery because it leads to wickedness. Dr. Johnson was once asked, "Who is the most miserable man?" He replied, "That man who cannot read on a rainy day!" It has well been said by Edmund Burke that "Education is the cheap defense of nations." Why? Because it prevents vice, poverty, misery, and relieves the state of the support of paupers and criminals. "A good education," says Miss Sedgwick, "is a young man's best capital." Says Governor Everett to parents, "Sow the seed of instruction in your son's and daughter's minds. It will flourish when that over-arching heaven shall pass away like a scroll, and the eternal sun which lightens it, shall set in blood." Says the Rev. Robert Hall, "I am persuaded that the extreme profligacy, improvidence, and misery, which are so prevalent among the laboring classes in many countries, are chiefly to be ascribed to the want of education."

What indeed can we look for but wretchedness and guilt from that child that has been left by its cruel parents to grow up "darkening in the deeper ignorance of mankind, with all its jealousies, and its narrow-mindedness, and its superstitions, and its penury of enjoyments, poor amid the intellectual and moral riches of the universe; blind in this splendid temple which God has lighted up, and famishing amid the profusions of Omnipotence?" And, parents, let me ask you, if you thus neglect the proper education of your children, and as a consequence, such pauperism of estate, of mind, and of morals, come upon them, will you not have to answer for all this to God?

"Oh, woe for those who trample on the mind, That fearful thing! They know not what they do, Nor what they deal with!"

Your children, thus neglected, will become victims to inordinate passion, without power to discern between reality and illusion, ignorant of what is true happiness, living for mere sense, with their moral nature enclosed in the iron mail of superstition, while the good seeds of truth sown upon their hearts "wither away, because they have no depth of earth."

Parents cannot, therefore, neglect the education of their children without incurring disgrace and guilt before God and man. They will meet a merited retribution both here and hereafter. The justice of this is forcibly illustrated in a law of the Icelanders, which makes the court inquire, when a child is accursed, whether the parents have given the offender a good education? And if not, the court inflicts the punishment on the parents. This but expresses the higher law of God which holds parents responsible for the training of their children. Listen to the threatening voice of God in history. Crates, an ancient philosopher, used to say that if he could reach the highest eminence in the city, he would make this proclamation: "What mean ye, fellow-citizens, to be so anxious after wealth, but so indifferent to your children's education? It is like being solicitous about the shoe, but neglecting entirely the foot that is to wear it!"

We would reiterate that proclamation in this age of superior intelligence. To the pious parent there is a pleasure in training the young and tender heart for God. What a beautiful tribute did Thompson yield to this pleasure in the following lines:

"Delightful task! to rear the tender thought, To teach the young idea how to shoot, To pour the fresh instruction o'er the mind, To breathe enlivening spirit, and to fix The generous purpose in the glowing breast!"

But home-education, at the present day, is as much abused as it is neglected. The criminality of the former is perhaps greater than that of the latter. This may have more reference to the female than to the male portion of the family. The abuse here consists of the want of a training up to wisdom. We see this in what is called the fashionable, instead of the Christian, education, received at some of our fashionable boarding schools. Here the child is sent with no home-training whatever, to be trained up a fashionable doll, fit to be played with and dandled upon the arms of a whining and heartless society, with no preparation for companionship in life, destitute of substantial character, with undoctrinated feelings of aversion to religion, fit only for a puppet show in some gay and thoughtless circle; kneeling before fashion as her God, and giving her hand in marriage only to a golden and a gilded calf.

According to this abuse of home-education, "a young maiden is kept in the nursery and the school room, like a ship on the stocks, while she is furbished with abundance of showy accomplishments, and is launched like the ship, looking taut and trim, but empty of everything that can make her useful." Thus one great abuse of home-education is to substitute the boarding school for home-culture,—to send our children to such school at an age when they should he trained by and live under the direct influence of the parent. This generally ends in initiated profligacy, and alienation from home, while at best but a dunce after his course of training is ended.

"Would you your son should be a sot and a dunce, Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once? Train him in public with a mob of boys, Childish in mischief only and in noise."

Too often is it the case that the artifices and refinements of our fashionable boarding-schools, have a most withering influence upon body, mind and soul, enfeebling and distorting the body, producing depraved stomachs, whimsical nerves, peevish tempers, indolent minds, and depraved morals. They become but wrecks of what they were when they first entered the school. This has been called "the stiff and starched system of muslin education," and is the nursery of pale, sickly, listless, peevish children.

But this is not the only abuse of home-education. Even when the training is begun at home, the very idea of education is often abused, because inefficient, destitute of true moral elements, and partial both as to the mode and as to the substance of it. The true resources of life are not developed; there is no instruction given in the principles and conditions of temporal and eternal well-being; there is no discipline of the mind, or body or morals. But the great idea and aim of education with many parents now, is to teach the child to read and write and cipher as a means of making money and getting along in this world,—not, of course, to prevent them from cheating others, but others from cheating them. All is prostituted to money and business. Character and happiness are left out of view. What have our schools now to do with the propensities, appetites, temperaments, habits and character of the pupils? And how are the parents who send their children to school to have them trained up with reference to these! All that is now looked at, is that learning which will fit the child for business. As a consequence most of our schools are a disgrace to the very name of education. More evil actually results from them than good. The mind and heart are injured,—the one but half trained; the other corrupted. Mental and moral training are divorced; hence one-sided, and the very end of education defeated. The child has no incentive to a virtuous and a noble life, and sinks down to the groveling drudgery of money-making. It is educated for nature, but not for God,—for this, but not for the next life.

If we would not abuse home-education we must not separate the moral from the mental,—the secular from the religious; for in doing so, we expose the child to rationalism and infidelity on the one hand, and to superstition and spiritualism on the other. This course is generally taken by parents when they educate their children for mere worldly utility and fashion, when they have not the welfare of the soul in view, and look only to the advantage of the body.

The duty then of Christian parents to give their children a true home-education may be seen from the consequences of its neglect and abuse on the one hand, and from its value and importance on the other. They should furnish them with all the necessary means, opportunities, and directions, of a Christian education. Give them proper books. "Without books," says the quaint Bartholin, "God is silent, justice dormant, science at a stand, philosophy lame, letters dumb, and all things involved in Cimmerian darkness." Bring them up to the habit of properly reading and studying these books. "A reading people will soon become a thinking people, and a thinking people must soon become a great people." Every book you furnish your child, and which it reads with reflection is "like a cast of the weaver's shuttle, adding another thread to the indestructible web of existence." It will be worth more to him than all your hoarded gold and silver. Make diligent use of those great auxiliaries to home-education, which the church has instituted, such as Sabbath schools, bible classes and catechisation.

Home-education does not imply a system of parental training isolated from the educational ministrations of the church; but is churchly in its spirit and in all its parts, and should in all respects be connected with the church. Home training is a duty you owe to the church. By virtue of your relation to her, she has the authority to demand of you such a training of your child; and by virtue of your relation to the child, he has a right to such an education, and can demand it from you. It stands on the basis of parental duty imposed on you by God Himself. It is a prime necessity. It is your children's birthright, which they themselves cannot sell with impunity, for the pottage of gold or silver or pleasure: neither can you neglect or abuse it without guilt before God.

It is, therefore, a duty which you cannot shake off, and which involves both for you and for your child, the most momentous consequences. Christian parents! be faithful to this duty. Magnify your office as a teacher; be faithful to your household as a school. Diligently serve your children as the pupils that God has put under your care. Educate them for Him. Teach them to "walk by faith, not by sight." Cultivate in them a sense of the unseen world,—the feeling of the actual influence of the Spirit of God, the guardianship of his holy angels, and of the communion of saints. Teach them how to live and how to die; and by the force of your own holy example allure them to the cross, and lead them onward and upward in the living way of eternal life. You are encouraged to do so by the assurance of God that "when they grow old they will not depart from it."



CHAPTER XVII.

FAMILY HABITS.

"Dost thou live, man, dost thou live, or only breathe and labor? Art thou free, or enslaved to a routine, the daily machinery of habit? For one man is quickened into life, where thousands exist as in a torpor, Feeding, toiling, sleeping, an insensate weary round; The plough, or the ledger, or the trade, with animal cares and indolence, Make the mass of vital years a heavy lump unleavened."

Much of the character, usefulness and happiness of home depend upon home habits. No one is without habits, good or bad. They have much to do with our welfare here and hereafter. Hence the importance of establishing proper habits.

Habit is a state of any thing, implying some continuance or permanence. It may be formed by nature or induced by extraneous circumstances. It is a settled disposition of the mind or body, involving an aptitude for the performance of certain actions, acquired by custom or frequent repetition. There are habits of the body, of the mind, of action; physical, mental, moral and religious habits. All these are included in the term home-habits.

Habit has been considered an "ultimate fact," that is, one of those qualities of life which are found to exist, and beyond which no investigation can be made. Habit may be referred to the law of action which pervades all vital being. Nature demands the repetition of vital action, and habit arises from this demand and from the manner in which it is supplied. It is the fruit of the operation of the law of repetition of action in all life. Hence it is, that habit becomes a part of our very existence, and that the well-being and happiness of our existence depend so much upon it.

The facility of action depends upon habit. In proportion as the actions of life become a habit, they will be easily performed, and performed with pleasure. The capacity to establish habits is the consequence of the power given us to promote our own welfare. This capacity is designed to bind us to that course of action which will accomplish the purposes of our existence. If rightly used, it is the guardian of our happiness; but if misused it will be our certain ruin. It will delight and fascinate until it subjugate our will, and lead us on, as in the case of the drunkard and the gambler, to infamy and to hell.

Home-habits are easily formed and established. Some kind, either good or bad, are being established every day. They are often secretly and unconsciously formed. All the principles and rules of conduct there introduced become at once the nuclei of future habits. Those increase in power and supremacy as they are formed. We see this in the use of tobacco and intoxicating drink. These are, at first, disagreeable, and the victim has the power of repelling and overcoming them; but soon the habit is formed, when their use becomes pleasant, and he is made a willing slave to them.

The same may he said of the habits of industry, of study, of frugality, yea, of all the moral and religious acts of the Christian. It is easy to form such habits in children. Evil habits are more easily established, because we are naturally inclined to all evil; and when once formed, no parental interposition can break them up. Hence the importance of an early training up to good. If parents but leave their children to their own ways, they will run into evil habits; for sin is an epidemic. Profanity and falsehood and all other outrages against God will soon become the controlling habits of their lives. But when taken early, parents have complete power over their offspring. It is, therefore, a gross abuse of the Christian home when parents become indifferent to the formation of habits. It is their duty to crush every evil habit in its incipient state.

The forming of a good habit may not at first be congenial with our feelings. It may be irksome. But if we persevere in it, that which at first was painful and difficult will soon be a source of enjoyment. Thus the habit of family prayer may at first be repulsive even to the Christian parent; a feeling of delicacy and the sense of unworthiness may, at the family altar, repress the feelings of enjoyment experienced in the closet; but soon the habit of this devotion will be formed, when it will be enjoyed as an essential part of home. To abandon it would be like breaking up the tenderest ties which bind the members together. The same may be said of the omission of a duty. How easily can the Christian form the habit of omitting family prayer or any other duty! Every such omission but forms and increases the habit, until it gains an ascendancy over our sense of duty, and at last exhibits its sovereign power in our total abandonment of the duty. Each omission has the power of reproducing itself in other and more frequent omissions. In this way Christian homes insensibly become unfaithful to their high vocation, and degenerate finally into complete apathy and estrangement from God. That indulgence which the misguided sympathy of too many parents prompts to, and which does away with all parental restraint, is the cause of children coming under the curse of evil habits. In this way parents often contribute to the temporal and eternal ruin of their offspring. This indulgence is no evidence of tender love, but of parental infatuation. It shows a blind and unholy love,—a love which owns no law, which is governed by no sense of duty, and which excludes all discipline; and hence unlike the love of God, who "chastiseth every one whom He loveth and receiveth."