Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1897-02-08

everlasting storm wandered over the
sea, and every mountain stream went
raving mad, frothing at the mouth with
mad foam, and there were nothing but
simooms blowing among the hills, and
there were neither lark's carol nor
humming birds tril1 nor waterfalls
dash, but only bears bark and panther S
scream and wolf s howl, then you might
well gather into your homes only the
shadows. But when God has strewn the
earth and the heavens wtth 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? What 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 and the
moss is covering the inscription of the
tombstone, will your children look back
and think of father and mother at fami-
~ prayer? Will they take the old fami-
~ Bible and open it and see the mark
of tears of contrition and tears of con-
c01inrr Nv 10,
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 you'll Seat
ed by the register or the stove, what if
on the wall should come out the history
of your children? What a history-the
mortal and immortal life of your loved
ones! Every parent is writing the his
tory of his child. He is writing it, COM
posing it into song or tuning it into a
groan.
My mind runs back to one of the best
Of early homes. Prayer, like a roof
over it. Peace, like an atmosphere in
it. Parents. personifications of faith in
trial and comfort in darkness. The two
pillars of that earthly home long ago /.
crumbled to dust. But shall ever for
get that earthly home? Yes, when the
flower forgets the sun that warns it.
Yes, when the mariner fOrgets the star
that guided him. Yes, when love has
gone out on the hearts altar and memo
ry has emptied its urn into forsAtful-
ness. Then, home of my childhood, /
will forget thee-the family altar of a
fathers importantly and mothers
tenderness, the voices of affection, the
funerals of our dead. Father and moth
er, with interlocked arms like inter-
twining branches of trees, making per-
petual arbor of love and peace and kind T
ness, then | will forget thee; then, and I
only then. You know my brother, that
100 times you have been kept out of sin
by the memory of such a scene as have
been describing You have often had
raging temptations, but you know what /
has held you with supernatural grasp.
I tell you man who has had such
good home as that never gets over it,
and a man who has had bad early
home never gets over that
A Type of Heaven.
Again, remark that home is a type
of heaven. To bring us to that home
Christ left his home. Far up and far
back in the history of heaven there came
a period when it's most illustrious citi-
zen was about to absentshimself. He
was not going to sail from beach to
beach; we have often done that. He
was not going to put out from one hem
isphere to another hemisphere; many
of us have done that. But he was to
sail from world to world, the spaces I'M
explored and immensities untraveled.
No world had ever hailed heaven, and
heaven had never hailed any other
world. think that the windows and
the balconies were thronged and that
the pearly beach was crowded with
those who had come to see him sail out
of the harbor of light into the oceans
beyond. Out and out and out, and on
and on and on, and down and down and
down he sped until one night with
only one to greet him, he arrived. His
Decentralization SO unpretending, SO
quiet that it was not known ON earth
until the excitement in the cloud gave
intimation that something grand and
glorious had happened. Who comes
there? From what port did he sail?
Why was this the place Of his destina-
ton? I question the shepherds. I ques-
ton the camel drivers. question the
angels. I have found out. He was an
exile. But the world has had plenty of
exiles. Abraham, an exile from Ur of
the Chaldees; John, an exile from Ephe-
sus; Kosciusko, an exile from Poland;
Mazzini, an exile from Rome; Emmett,