Connecticut western news., 1882-09-20
HOME RETURNING.
The Rev. Dr. Collyer's Vacation Les
 sons-Bringing Back the Sun
 shine with Us.

shine with Us.
 The Rev. Robert Collyer Sunday morning preached 8 sermon appropriate to the close of the vacation season and the return of so many from sea side and mountain side to the cares and labors of everyday life. He chose his text from Isaiah, lx., 8-"Who are those that fly as 8 cloud, and as the doves to their windows ?" In the course of his remarks, after picturing the flight to the country and the enjoyment and rest of pastoral life, he said ;: - We have come home, and no more welcome words can dwell on our lips if it be true, nor can doubt it is true of the vast majority of those who gather into our Christian churches in this city. We are flying home, but has any hint come to us as we were able to look to our home from far away that is not quite what it should be? Then we must heed that hint. Are we getting on in years and growing little tired of the way we have welcomed the life all about us to our fireside, so that when old friends drop away we do not care to make or to welcome new ones? have seen men and women grow very misera- ble through that mistake. For true home has three doors one for our children and all their children and all our kith and kin and one for our friends and neighbors and one for the poor, who deserve our pity and charity and all these open, not into the house alone, but into the heart, and we pull in the latchstring or lock the door and lose the key at our peril. Or has it seemed, as we sat in quietness, that we have been too eager to welcome those who could give us an equal or better well come and to build up the social life, which is so good when it is true, at the expense of the deeper life, so that we have less time to live for those have named? There is danger in that direc- tion in city like ours, and we must heed the admonition.
 I went through ducal palace few years ago and heard very sad story from the friend who went with me. We were looking at wonderful staircase, and he told me how the heir-a small boy-when he was playing here one day tangled his foot in the rich fretwork and broke the tendons. His mother had so many social duties that she seldom saw her children and knew nothing of the hurt, and the child's nurse kept it from her. But such misery came and peril that she had to be told. A surgeon was sent for at last, but it was. too late. The child was maimed for life, the limb withered and it was thought the hurt would end in the boys death at last. God forbid, we say, that our children should ever be so neglected, nor will they be. And yet mothers do leave their children to wither away in splendid homes as well as in poor homes, and in New York as we'll as in London.
 We come home. Do we come to find peace-yea, and rest that we can find nowhere else-not even in the country |! Or had we grown fretful before we went away, and little hard to live with We might not be able to help it, but we may have thought of it with touch of dismay and said, "I will see to that when we begin again, for if it grows on me it would be compliment to call me 8 bear" Let us see to it that we hold the peace we have brought back with us, so that our children and their moth or shall not long for another vacation tc release them from the doom of our pres ence. Let the sunshine which floods the place as we draw up the blinds an6 open the windows to make all sweet be type of the indwelling spirit for this whole year, so that those who belong te us shall hide only noble and beautiful meanings in their words when they say
 s'There's no place like home," and flock to it as doves to their windows, because it is a shrine to them as we'll as home
 We have come home, we say, that the children may go to school again but has any gleam of new light come to us as we rested and thought of this touching their education? For, while we may trust and believe that only good can come to them in the1r learning, l dc not hesitate for moment to say tha
 there are children who will flock to theil schools as to prison and to their task as to sore bondage, and they canno
 tell you why; but the chances are tha
 the reasons are very simple if we woule only take pains to look for them. The. are not equal to the tasks that are lait j.. on them, and so they are slowly break ing down or burning up year by year and will die in the end from overworl [ though we may call it fever-or liv only half life, while the other half ha , gone into their learning. Or that whicl they have to learn in the machines W ) call schools may answer in no sense t r their nature or their liking, any nor ) than if you should try to turn duck ling into nightingale, or to train 3 lamb to bear heavy burdens. They re volt at their tasks, poor things, and W fret and scold, while all the time it 3 the revolt of nature and of Gods grac , hidden in their life.
 , SYMPATHY.- Folsom was readin s the morning paper at the breakfas < table, when he exclaimed in horri lie . tone of voice "What terrible mi = fortune p "What is 1t-somebody gt = married ?" his wife asked in an indiffe