The Monitor-register., 1897-02-12

OF the home circle!
Yea, life is stormy sea. With shiv-
cred masts and torn sails and hulk
aleak, we put into the harbor of home.
Blessed harbor, there we go for repairs
in the drydock of quiet life. The can
die in the window is to the toiling man
the lighthouse guiding him into port.
Children go forth to meet their fathers
as pilots at the Narrows take the hand
of ships. The doorsill of the home is
the wharf where heavy life is unladen.
A Refuge, a Safeguard and a School.
There is the place where we may talk
of what we have done without being
charged with self adulation. There is
the place where we may lounge without
/ being thought ungraceful. There is the
place where we may express affection
without being thought silly. There is
| the place where we may forget our an
noyances and exasperations and trou-
| bles. Forlorn earth pilgrim, no home?
| Then die That is better. The grave is
brighter and grander and more glorious
than this world with no tent from
marchings, with no harbor from the
storm, with no place to rest from this
scene of greed and gouge and loss and
gain. God pity the man or woman who
has no home!
Further, I remark that home is po
litical safeguard. The safety of the state
must be built on the safety of the home,
The Christian hearthstone is the only
cornerstone for republic. The virtues
cultured in the family circle are an alb
so1ute necessity for the state. If there
be not enough moral principle to make
the family adhere, there will not be
, enough political principle to make the
state adhere. "No home" means the
Cloths and Vandals, means the nomads
of Asia, means the Numidians of At
RIGA, changing from place to place ac-
cording as the pasture happens to
change. Confounded be all those Babels
of iniquity which would oyertower and
destroy the homel The same storm
that upsets the ship in which the fami-
ly sails will sink the frigate of the con-
stitution. Jails and penitentiaries and
armies and navies are not our best de-
fense. The door of the home is the best
fortress. Household utensils are the best
artillery, and the chimneys of our
dwelling houses are the grandest monu-
ments of safety and triumph. No home,
no republic.
Further, I remark that home is
school. Old ground must be turned up
with subsoil plow, and it must be har-
rowed and reharrowed, and all the in
fluences thrown over their heart and
life will come up in after life luxuriant-
ly. Every time you have given q smile
of appreciation all the good cheer of
your life will come up again in the
genia1ity of your children. And every
ebullition of anger and every uncontrol-
liable display of indignation will be fuel
to their disposition 20 or 80 or 40 years
from now-fuel for bad fire quarter
of century from this. You praise the
intelligence of your child too much
sometimes when you think he is not
aware of it, and you will see the result
of it before 10 years of age in his an
noying affectations You praise his
beauty, supposing he is not large enough
to understand what you say, and you
will find him standing ON high chair
before fattering mirror. Words and
deeds and example are the seed of char
acter, and children are very apt to be
the second edition of their parents.
Abraham begat Isaac, SO virtue is apt to
go down in the ancestral line, but Herod
begat Archelaus, so iniquity is trans
mitted. What vast responsibility comes
te,i in of @l15e
Oh, make your home the brightest
place on earth if you would charm
your children to the high path of virtue
and rectitude and religion! Do not al
ways turn the blinds the wrong way.
Let the light which puts gold on the
gentian and spots the pansy pour into
your dwellings. Do not expect the little
feet to keep step to a dead march. Do
not cover up your walls with such pic
lures as Vests "Death on Pale
Horse" or Tintoretto's Massacre of
the Innocents. Rather cover them, if
you have pictures, with 'The Hawking
Party, " and "The Mill by the Mountain
Stream,' and 1.-THE Children Amid
Flowers and ''The Harvest Scene. )"
and "The Saturday Night Marketing" !"
Home Duties.
Get you no hint of cheerfulness from
grasshopper's leap and lambs frisk and
quall's whistle and gaTTulous streamlet,
which, from the rock at the mountain
top clear down to the meadow ferns un-
der the shadow of the steep, comes look
ing for the steepest place to leap off at
and talking just to hear itself talk? If
all the skies hurtled with tempest, and
, everlasting storm wandered over the
sea, and every mountain stream went
ravlng mad, frothing at the mouth with
mad foam, and there were nothing but
s1mooms blowing among the hills, and
| there were neither lark's carol nor
humm1ng birds trill nor waterfalls
dash, but only BEARS bark and panther's s
scream and VOLTS howl, then you might
well gather into your homes only the
shadows. But when God has strewn the
earth and the heavens with beauty and
with gladness let us take into our
home circles all innocent hilarity, all
brightness and all good cheer. A dark
home makes bad boys and bad girls, in
preparation for bad men and bad women.
Above all, my friends, take into your
homes Christian principle. Can it be
that in any of the comfortable homes of
my congregation the voice of prayer is
never lifted? What! No supplication at
night for protection? Whatl No thanks
giving in the morning for care? How,
my brother, my sister, will you answer
God in the day of judgment with refer
ence to your children? It is plain
question, and therefore I ask it. In the
tenth chapter of jeremiah God says he
will pour out his fury upon the families
that call not upon his name. Oh, parents,
when you are dead and gone ard the
moss is covering the inscription of the
tombstone, will your children look back
and think of father and mother at fami-
ly prayer? Will they take the old fami-
ly Bible and open it and see the mark
of tears of contrition and tears of con-
soling promise, wept by eyes long be-
fore gone out into darkness?
Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian
principle in the hearts Of your children,
and you do not warn them against evil,
and you do not invite them to holiness
and to God, and they wander off into
dissipation and into infdelity, and at
last make shipwreck of their immortal
souls, on their deathbed and in the day
Of Judgment they will curse youl Seat
ed by the register Or the stove, what if
on the wall should come out the history
Of your children? What history-the
mortal and immortal life of your loved
ones! Every parent is writing the his
+o,x- Of bic child Jo 10 xvritiDo iE oo,,,