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The Hearth-Stone:

THOUGHTS UPON HOME-LIFE IN
OUR CITIES.

BY
SAMUEL OSGOOD,
AUTHOR of “STUDIES IN CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY,” “GOD WITH MEN, OR FOOTPRINTS
OF PROVIDENTIAL LEADERS,” &C.

NEW-YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
200 BROADWAY.
LONDON: 10 LITTLE BRITAIN.
1854.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858 by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court for the Southern District of New-York.

PREFACE.

These thoughts are published for the same reason that led the author from time to time to put them upon paper,—a wish to meet a want in the sphere of the affections rather than to claim any honor in the kingdom of ideas. Wherever important questions have been at issue he has not avoided them, however conspicuous or controverted; but the volume aims to breathe a kindly spirit above the reach of sect and party. He is not ashamed to have his style show something of the habit of his profession, and to use, in part, ideas that he has expressed in the lyceum and the pulpit in a different form.

It will be seen that the several subjects connect themselves more or less closely with a year’s life in the household, and that the light which cheers the whole twelvemonth is kindled on the hearth-stone at Christmas and New Year.

The state of things in our American cities is now so peculiar, so marked by privilege and peril, that no earnest plea for home affections and virtues can be wholly thrown away. To dedicate books to conspicuous names is a custom now almost obsolete, and if the Author were to venture upon any dedication of this little volume it would read somewhat thus:—

TO THOSE WHO HAVE EVER LOVED HOME,
AND WHO WISH TO LOVE IT ALWAYS.

New-York, Oct. 22, 1853.

CONTENTS.

Home Views of American Life.

HOME VIEWS OF AMERICAN LIFE.

What day of all the year gives an American a happier sense of his civil and domestic blessings, than the old feast of the ingathering—the time-hallowed Thanksgiving? Once more it has come round; and our pen is disposed to catch a little of its genial temper before the hearth-stone.

This is peculiarly the home festival of our people, and throughout all the States of our republic it is affectionately cherished. As such, resting upon a good old precedent, it appeals to a permanent want, and gains interest with years. The character of the day has somewhat changed, and the domestic element in its uses preponderates far over the ecclesiastical. Yet much of the old feeling remains, and thousands gather in the churches, all the better prepared by the hour of worship, for the hours of fireside enjoyment. Large scope is usually given the preacher at this time, and many a timid man ventures upon bold themes, quite free to take the political, or social, or philanthropic, or ecclesiastical view of the country or the world, as he may choose. The preacher may not complain, then, of the essayist for taking something of the same liberty, and trenching a little upon the prerogative of the pulpit. It is surely not amiss to open this series of discursive papers with some thoughts upon our home blessings, upon God’s hand in giving them, and our work in spreading them.

Our home blessings! Take first the most obvious view of them. Consider the plenty that abounds. I speak not of the few affluent, but of the great majority who enjoy the common lot. What abundance in their homes! Look at the household of any unpretending citizen, and say what realm of earth, what domain of nature, does not send its treasures thither? The orchards, the fields, the pastures, the hills, the rivers, the mines, the oceans, bring their tribute to the fireside. From the shores of the Mediterranean come the olive, the grape, the orange, the fig, the date. The farther Indies send their fragrant herbs and sweet spices. The repast of a frugal family is rarely set forth without offerings from all quarters of the globe. The cottager’s lamp, that burns by night, is fed with oil from the Arctic zone. The light of day shines through clear crystal, that shows the perfection of the arts, and the cheapness of their most beautiful products. In humble abodes the wonders of manufacture appear. Rich cotton stuffs tell of the affluence of the Southern soil and the skill of the Northern artisan. Luxuries, of old the prerogative of princes, are now familiar things. The silks of France and Italy are worn by the wife and daughters of the farmer and the mechanic. I will not try to describe the mansions of the wealthy, although these, when graced by refinement, and exalted by piety and charity, may give impressive views of the ample bounty of Providence. It is better to contemplate the plenty within reach of the common lot. Among what people, in what age, has the common lot been so favored as with us? When in the earth’s history have so many persons had reason to be grateful at the feast of the ingathering as now? We boast not of great banquets, in which the luxury of the few is wrung from the misery of the many. We speak not of pearls dissolved in the wine cup, and the price of cities thus quaffed at a draught. Our country, prouder than the empire of a Caligula, or a Cleopatra, can point to the households of her people, and in the amount of their combined blessings pity the poverty of the builders of the Coliseum or the Pyramids. Other lands may have prouder palaces and more princely fortunes. None can show so many favored homes. Go to thy home, and tell how great things the Lord, the giver of the harvests, hath done for thee in its plenty.

Consider too its peace as well as its plenty. No wars disturb it, nor rumors of war. No civil strifes threaten its tranquillity. No tyrannical powers intrude upon its freedom. Every household is better guarded than any feudal castle. Equal laws make it more impregnable than walls or moats. Public opinion is a host of defence stronger than an army with banners. We do not indeed forget our own imperfections and failings. We do not forget that millions are in bondage in our land, and that if they have homes in favored cases, they have them by their owners’ mercy, not by their own legal right. Yet to-day the slave is somewhat a sharer in his master’s bounty, and this feast, that carries our thoughts back to the time of the great Hebrew Exodus, allows us to enjoy the liberty that God has bestowed upon us and these free States, and forbids us to despair of the redemption of any of the races yet held in bondage. It is something to boast of, that slavery is the exception now among civilized nations, instead of being, as of old, the universal law for the weaker from the stronger. For ourselves, we disclaim all share in its origin and continuance, deeming it to be a local misfortune to be deplored, not a national institution to be honored.

As a nation, we are lovers of equal law. The sober thought, nurtured by the best experience of the Atlantic States, finds its response in the new regions of the farthest West, and not even the mad thirst for gold has made the restless people on our Pacific coast forgetful of their birthright of liberty and law. A mighty habit of civil order has entered into our national life. The strongholds of order are in our homes. There each man finds the motive that leads him to resist alike the disorganizer and the invader. Thence we derive the assurance of the best of standing armies; for men that have households to defend, will be as little inclined to yield to hostile invasion as to destructive revolution. How peaceful our homes! As mighty is the power nurtured within them that makes them so.

Go home, and in addition to the blessings of plenty and of peace, consider the means of intellectual and spiritual culture there. The laboring man may own a better library than a prince or prelate of the olden time. For a pittance trifling even to him, he may have tidings daily from all quarters of his own country, and from foreign lands. His children bring with them more learning from the common school, than would have sufficed of old to constitute the wisdom of a sage. For a less sum than the tippler gives for the draught that fevers his blood and crazes his brain, the artisan may adorn his house with choice works of art, through the cheap and beautiful products of the engraver’s skill; and thus the beautiful from the hand of man and of God, may refine and cheer the common lot. Music, that voice of the beautiful arts, is becoming a familiar blessing, and a part of ordinary education. Groups of children by the fireside, and in the field and garden, sometimes at the corners of the streets or in their walk home from school, are heard singing their songs and hymns together, thus exchanging discord for peace, quarrels for harmony. Even the utilities that are becoming the custom of our time, have their refining and exalting influences. The light that streams up in our streets and houses, is the handmaid of a light brighter than its own. The pure water that gushes up in so many homes, has connections far more substantial than fanciful with the living water of the divine word. Facts enough show that human civilization needs, in the most literal sense, its water-baptism before its spirit-baptism can be realized.

The spirit is not lost sight of even in this utilitarian age. In religion the means of culture have their consummation. Within every home, in any degree worthy the name, Christianity proves its power, whether the gospel be nominally professed or not. The very unity of the family comes from Him, who has decreed the purity of the home by his fundamental law, and bound parents to each other and their offspring by a tie at once of principle and affection. Greater still the blessing where Christianity is fully known and practised in its truths and graces, where the pleasant fireside is a consecrated altar, and the earthly mansion opens ever into the heavenly.

Consider then the blessings of our homes—their plenty, their peace, their means of intellectual and spiritual culture.

Consider them well, and moreover, own God’s hand in them.

God is Creator and Lord of nature. From him comes the plenty of our homes. Man does not create, he finds the bounties of his lot. His utmost industry and skill but find the blessings stored up for him. We may look upon the kingdom of nature from many points of view. We may consider the organism of the heavens, the great periods of the earth’s apparent formation, the influence of climate and position upon the history of nations, and see God’s hand in natural laws. But what view of the universe is more sublime, and at the same time more touching, than that from the home? The heavens themselves help in keeping it upon its foundation by the force of the great law of attraction, whilst every element and domain of the earth conspires to give it blessing. Tenderly indeed does the Lord of this great Cosmos care for the dwellings of men. His love looks down from the stars of heaven that shine into the casement, and is reflected from the little flower that blooms in the garden, or cheers the sick man’s chamber. To God, Creator and Preserver, be our thanksgiving.

God is in history, and to his hand we trace the peace of our homes. Our familiar social blessings are not the exhalations of a day, but the growth of ages. No clearer or more striking view of the development of the Divine plans in the course of events can be given than the domestic view. All that God has done for man as an individual soul or as a social being, thus is made to appear. There is a providence in the development of liberty, and so too in the progress of law, and in the combination of them both in a true social order. What better symbol of their combination and proof of providential guidance than the peaceful home? How vast the providential agencies instrumental in framing that statute-book which, next to the Bible, is the safeguard of the dwelling, and which bands the whole nation together in defence of every citizen’s right,—the constitution of our country, to us the bequest of ages, guided by an arm mightier than man’s, and to issues beyond his dream. In two grand lines of influence it brings to every household the co-ordinate powers which, from quarters once antagonistic, unite in a true civilization. It guarantees to every family the liberty so dearly prized by the old parent races of the Germanic North, whilst it gathers them into a great nation under the guidance of that law which was the bequest of the Roman empire to the world. These and all the leading lines of history meet in the home, and in them we own God’s guiding hand. From the East with the Star of true empire, came the benign power that united these two mighty agencies of our civilization. Surely it was the religion of Jesus that wedded Roman law to Germanic liberty, and laid the foundations of constitutional freedom and domestic peace. Blessed indeed was that bridal, and the living Word that hallowed the union still dispenses the blessing, and calls the children of its lineage to a future brightening unto the perfect day.

The Constitution, and above it, the Bible! In this is the Word of God, and the way of life, present and eternal. It is the chief agency in intellectual and spiritual culture, giving the mind its true aim, the soul its rightful dignity, life its highest grace. Where the Bible is held in honor, the home has purity and elevation. Interesting indeed is the ecclesiastical view of Christianity. For its priests and temples we have no words of disparagement. Yet we most honor the church in honoring the home, for where the family is most blessed, there the church is most worthy. The history of the gospel neither ends nor begins with that of cathedrals and priesthoods. Since God laid the foundation of domestic purity on Sinai, since Jesus bore the grace of the gospel to the homes of Judah and Galilee, the brightest illustrations of the beauty and power of religion have been given in abodes far less stately than the temple, or the cloister, or the palace. The end is not yet, not yet developed are our grounds of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for the gospel in the blessings of our homes. God’s love in giving them, we own and adore.

Responsibility walks ever hand in hand with privilege, and human duty follows in the path of Divine goodness. No topic of graver import can be urged now, than that of the obligation of Christian people to diffuse domestic blessings. This topic carries us into the heart of the momentous social questions of our age. The Christian should have his answer ready, an answer too which considers all the needs of man’s being, and respects alike his physical and moral wants.

The most obvious, certainly the most obtrusive evil in the homes of the wretched, is poverty. The love of God, who has given for man’s use the earth and its fulness, the gospel of Him who fed the hungry and healed the sick, teach us to look with tender interest upon the poor, and try to redeem them from a lot as full of temptation as of suffering. Of public and private almsgiving, I will not speak now, important in their places as these are. There is a need far greater than these can alleviate, and I cannot dwell upon them here, pertinent as it would be to urge the worth of those benevolent schemes that aim to provide comfortable homes for the poor, and commodious baths and wash-houses in their neighborhoods. These charities appeal to enlightened self-interest, as well as humanity, and, if we will not ask in kindness who is my neighbor, we shall ask in fear, either of pestilent disease or aggressive violence. The springs of human energy are to be moved as never before, and the wretched are to be made to help themselves as never before; or our civilization, certainly European civilization, will stand on the brink of an abyss fearful as at the dissolution of the old Roman Empire. Poverty has, in some cases, made an alliance that gives omens of a conspiracy worse than Catiline’s, and, with cunning quickened by want, sharpens its knife upon the stone which has fallen to its lot instead of bread,—bent upon living by destruction, if it is not taught to live by producing. It is an indisputable fact that in many countries the majority are so ignorant and inefficient, that the whole annual product of the land is not sufficient to provide for their decent wants. The theorists of France, who have been losing their wits in the airy heights of pantheistic socialism, hoping to find a way to plenty, other than the old way of labor and frugality, may well remember the answer of the admirable political economist, Chevalier, and look for plenty rather in making property more desirable than less so, and giving the whole people the desire and the opportunity of profitable labor. The material product of France at the highest estimate, he declares, does not exceed ten thousand millions of francs, and thus at this estimate, an equal division would give each person 78 centimes, or about 14½ cents per day, for food, lodging, clothing, education, enjoyment. Thus, he adds, even upon the supposition of an absolute distribution of products, France is not in a condition to give the majority of her children a tolerable subsistence. Of course millions of citizens now come far short of this miserable pittance. What is the inference? Certainly the productive industry of the nation must be increased, that there may be plenty in the home. Let more wealth be produced, and each man be put in a position to get a due share of it, and the misery is alleviated, and plenty in the household stops the spirit of reckless revolution, and gives the spirit of peace, and motive and time for the higher aims of life.

What shall increase the national wealth and distribute it with due justice in the homes of the people? Communism? Not so; for destroying the very idea of property is not the way to increase the aggregate of property. Who will work, if his gains are not secured to him and his children? Who will plant the grain or the vine, if the field or the vineyard is to be an open pasture, which any idler may waste? The way to enlarge and distribute wealth is rather to strengthen the foundations of property, and give all motive to earn their share of it by labor, temperance, and economy.

Here we believe that every nation is bound to apply the force of law to reach the root of the difficulty. I am not proposing to discuss the various projects set on foot to insure the more equable distribution of property—such as the homestead laws of some of our own States, or the measures in train to redeem the peasants of Ireland from their slavish penury. Very certain it is, that we need to watch jealously the distribution of the public lands, to keep them from the grasp of avarice and intrigue, and to hold out the utmost inducements to actual settlers to till and own the soil. It is interesting to find that upon this one point, the most sanguine of the Land Reformers have much countenance from the most judicious conservatives, and the wary sagacity of Webster himself saw no peril in securing a part of the national domain to every persevering cultivator. It is also interesting to observe that, whilst the ultraist advocates of a protective tariff have signally lowered their tone, some of the most earnest advocates of free trade, as the only philosophical theory, are favoring such judicious protective duties as shall tend to bring the producer and consumer near together, check the wastefulness of needless transportation, and thus prepare the way for the final triumph of free trade by the action of associative industry. All such expedients however good in themselves, are of no avail apart from a broad and energetic policy that meets the difficulty in the face. We mean the education of the entire people in schools open to all the children of the nation. Thus we reach the home—thus we open the eyes and quicken the energies of the people—thus we enlarge the products of intelligent labor, and guard against the worst evils of human inequality. Thus we open the way for a better social science and organization, and favor the associated enterprise, which is the best safeguard against communism. The educated, industrious population will take their own lot into their own hands, and by practising a truer philosophy of accommodation, they will apply in their home economy something of that wise policy which has been left too exclusively to the use of the favored few. The architecture of the house, and the arrangements of the neighborhood, will show the influence. Whilst gardens, filled with rare exotics, and stately mansions adorned with the graces of art, may still be the prerogative of affluence; we shall see the comfortable and tasteful houses of the unpretending classes ranged about pleasant and salubrious squares, with all the appliances of health and order, usually deemed beyond their means. For my own part, I know no more cheering aspect of our country and our age, than that which is furnished by some of those villages, which have been built up in the vicinity of our great cities by associations of mechanics, securing to each man an independent home. The fact that a set of men, educated in our free schools, and with no means but the fruit of their own honest toil, provide such homes for themselves, must give a benevolent observer more genuine satisfaction, and more encouraging hope, than any of the proudest triumphs of capital, whether a palace in the city or a palace upon the water. It is not out of place here to say, that the highest honor will belong to him among our architects, who most skilfully plans a model house for the many of us who have moderate or slender means—a house that shall for the least outlay best secure the retirement, the refinement, and the health that make a true home. Honor to the science that has busied itself with this problem, and to the capital which has tried to carry the solution into practice thus far!

A true system of popular education in connection with our laws regarding inheritance, is raising up a generation which will not long be ignorant of the power of intelligence, industry, and friendly accommodation, in developing a social policy beyond the reach of the fanatical theorists of the old world, who have impoverished the nations in their promise of plenty, and shed blood in rivers in the name of fraternity. The great mass of the people, it is to be hoped, will continue to have that home feeling, which is as mighty in conservation as in defence. We shall remain as we are in the best sense of the term—the most conservative nation on the face of the earth. That race of Ishmaelites, the homeless, the desperate, the Bedouins of civilization, whose hand is against every man’s, whose delight is in commotion, whose life is in destruction, whose hope is in the despair of others, will disappear, kept down in their true place, or what is better, transformed into intelligent, industrious citizens, lovers of the state, the church, and the home.

Thus do we commend the worth of industry and the education upon which it rests, in diffusing the household blessings that we enjoy. But we build upon a sandy foundation without a positive religious basis. Upon that the household rests for its primary dependence, and they that sustain and practise Christian principles are benefactors alike of the dwelling and the church. Not merely among the wretched and ignorant does the gospel utter its rebukes, and urge its duties in reference to this point. It is in quarters far different that the great wrong has been done, and a great work is demanded. Errors of principle as errors of life, have power from the station that renders them conspicuous, or the refinement that clothes them with grace. Of errors of life in those who give to dissipation the prestige of eloquence, and throw the grace of splendor around vices that strike at the foundations of domestic purity, I will not now undertake to treat. A passing word, however, upon certain modes of thinking and talking, which sow the seeds of those vices in quarters the most opposite. The pantheistic theories that confound all moral distinctions by confounding the distinction between God and nature, and make of passion a devotion, by calling all enthusiasm inspiration, have had their origin chiefly among secluded dreamers, bent, perhaps, upon amusing leisure by reckless speculation. Idly as the summer winds that float the thistle-down on their breath, have they vented their speculations, until amazed that their own fields and their neighbor’s have been sown with tares by these gossamer voyagers. Wherever pantheism goes, there license follows in its train. More perilous than atheism, because more alluring, it defies passion, and in the name of inspiration degrades man to the brute. It blasts life with its torrid fires, as atheism freezes by its polar cold. In the extremes of society—the affluent and the wretched—this tendency is found, alike in its speculative and practical form, in its denial of personal responsibility, its enthroning of indulgence in the place of discipline. Many a stately home is desolate, many an humble dwelling miserable, because the God of the gospel is denied, and that uncompromising law which secures the home its purity, peace and power, has been broken.

Chief among the blessings of the household, then, we name the gospel. It gives the crown to industry and education. Crowning industry and education thus alike by our personal bearing, our public policy, we give as we have received, and acknowledge our duty, as we own God’s love in our domestic blessings.

Bring near to ourselves now, in its personal and cheering aspect, the topic before us. To God, the Lord of nature, Ruler of events, Father of our spirits, be all the glory. Be his love the spring of our humanity. In the bounty of our hand, in the bounty of an example personal and domestic, which in itself is a benefaction, in an enlarged public, nay Christian spirit, let us freely give as we have received; that plenty, peace, piety, may cheer the dwellings of men and regenerate the world. This day be our thanksgiving at once a prayer of faith and a vow of humanity. It is the old home festival of our fathers that we are to keep. Whose heart does not yearn with sacred remembrances and affections to-day? The emigrant, the traveller, the sailor, all turn their thoughts homeward as the day approaches, and lament that their steps cannot follow their desires. Under sunny skies, amid the balmy gales and luscious fruits of the tropics, the wanderer yearns to cross the familiar threshold, and our bleak North in her wintry robe is dearer than Italy or the Indies. Many an exile has feelings that speak in such simple words as these:

“My father’s bones, New England,
Sleep in thy hallowed ground,
My living kin, New England,
In thy precious paths are found;
And though my body dwelleth here,
And my weary feet here roam,
My spirit and my hopes are still
In thee, my own loved home.”

Yet distance does not rob even the exile of all the blessings, and he knows that he is not forgotten. Families separated throughout the year, now gather together. Sons and daughters return to the parental fireside and are children again. The patriarchal times, surely among all of the Pilgrim race, and not among them alone, come back. The father stands as head and minister of the family. Many a happy band of children rise up and call the mother blessed. The absent are not forgotten—the departed are tenderly remembered—seats vacant at the table have occupants in the hearts of the survivors.

It is well—it is well—this home-festival of the ingathering. God gives the abounding harvest, and our fellow-men are to us the stewards of his bounty. Devoutly to Him, kindly to them, let the hours pass. Health to the absent, a tear for the departed—a smile for the present—good will to all on earth—glory to God in the highest.

Let the young rejoice, and the old be young again. Let memory solemnize us by her images of scenes and days gone by, whilst hope cheers us by auspicious promises of the future on earth, and of the heavenly mansions, the soul’s eternal home.

Thanksgiving Day.

The Ideal of Womanhood.

THE IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD.

It is the Eve of Christmas, and above the cheerful family circle that gathers about the hearth, the faces of the holy family look benignly down, and Mary’s own smile seems to brighten the genial light. All surely must call that mother blessed, who celebrate the birth of the Holy Child. The Angel of the annunciation seems always to be speaking anew in the anthem of the Nativity as if the voice which told Mary of her high destiny celebrated also its fulfilment, and the “Hail Mary” were but the prelude of the “Glory to God in the Highest.”

Our thought this evening turns upon the Mother of Christ, as illustrating the ideal of woman and the sources of her power. In the manger at Bethlehem, the mother and child were together—together during the years of preparation for the public ministry—together at the cross. We honor both in honoring either. Especially in calling Mary blessed, do we honor Christ, for we remember not merely what she was to him, but what he has been to her and her sex and her race.

Let us look at the subject from our own point of view, nor try to put on the mask of affected sentiment or to stand on the stilts of borrowed dogmas. There is much beauty and power in the Catholic notions of the Blessed Virgin, but they are not our convictions. The sweetest hymns in the Breviary are in her praise, and her heavenly face has been the chief charm of Catholic art, else altogether too grim with spectral monks and ghostly confessors. This one fact it is most interesting to remark, that as Christianity was divested of its genial and humane graces, and our Saviour himself was removed from the personal sympathies of men by a faith too forgetful of his humanity in vindicating his divinity, the affections of Christians sought in the Blessed Mother the solace denied them by prevalent views of the Divine Son. As the monkish spirit grew darker, the face of Mary beamed more brightly. The age that embodied its terrors in the “Dies Iræ,” breathed its tenderness in the “Stabat Mater,” the exquisite hymn whose authorship, strange to say, has been with show of reason ascribed to the most thorough-going of the Popes, Innocent the Third, the man who dared to put England under an interdict. It is not for such reasons that we are moved to speak of Mary now. We are not oppressed by a religion that so crushes the natural affections and rebukes the domestic feelings, that we need to look for solace to one taken arbitrarily from her place among women and invoked as Queen of Heaven, above all saints and angels, next to God. Looking upon our homes, so pleasant and so genial with woman’s graces and children’s gladness, we prefer to say the “Hail Mary” as the gospel gives it, and not as the priest has understood it. We can say, “Blessed art thou among women”—among them, not above them—among them to illustrate their mission from God, their work on earth—their part in heaven.

Think of Mary first as illustrating true womanhood in its mission from God. Fathers and sons, as well as mothers and daughters, think. In our notions of education, society, reform, we are all afloat unless we start with right ideas; and whence are they but from the Eternal Mind. We know God as he reveals himself, and creation in its highest aspects reveals the thought of God. The Divine Being is Self-Existent, Almighty, All-wise, Ever-blessed, dwelling in light and love unspeakable. But the moment that we pass from the contemplation of his attributes to the survey of his works, we see every where partial manifestations of his fulness. Only as we bring together the various elements and beings of nature, do we comprehend the universe as expressing the mind of God. Throughout the whole we observe a law of duality, a harmony of contrasts, the two parallel footprints in the majestic march of Him who is the infinite Wisdom and Love. We see this form of development from the lowest to the highest plane of nature—in the affinities of the gases—in the strange and mighty forces of electricity and magnetism—in the rays of light—in the kingdom of plants—in the animated kingdom. In the human race it has its fullest expression. There the Most High has left most clearly the image of himself, and recorded the might and the loveliness of his own attributes. To the one sex he has given, in largest measure, strength,—to the other, beauty; to the one, aggressive force—to the other, winning affections—to the one, the palm in the empire of thought—to the other, the palm in the empire of feeling. We need not pursue the parallel, nor rebuke the folly of those who would make the line of separation too sharp, and deny heart to man or wisdom to woman, forgetting that in man thought should be pervaded with feeling, and in woman feeling should be guided by thought. It is enough to look to Mary as she stood in the hour of her joy, and listen to what she said, who has been called beyond any other of her sex, to be their benefactor and interpreter:—

My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit doth rejoice in God, my Saviour,
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden;
For behold! from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.

Various ages may have various degrees of culture, and in knowledge and accomplishment the daughters of Christendom may now far surpass those taught in the simpler homes of Israel. Yet where among those favored with education or gifted with genius, shall we find a better interpreter of womanhood in its mission from God, than that trusting Hebrew in her filial faith and unwavering devotion. Of her, the Aspasias proud of the society of sages and orators, might learn that there is a faith passing knowledge, and a purity more refining than any literary taste; from her the Cornelias might learn of a kingdom greater than that to which they vowed their sons; from her the Sapphos might hear of a vision beyond that of any impassioned fancy; and the Cleopatras of a gem brighter than any in their crown. Her soul attuned to devotion by the Psalms of her great ancestor, David, and inflamed with hope by the visions of prophets, and schooled to patient charity by the choicest examples of the mothers in Israel, she stands at the centre of Providential history, receiving from the former ages their mantle of honor, and transmitting it to the new ages enriched with a divine grace, destined to brighten with time.

Of Mary’s life and work, few particulars are given—but those few are expressive of her whole character. She who kept her faithful watch on the night of the nativity, never belied the promise of that time. With mingled solicitude and reverence, tenderness and fortitude, she guarded her child, marked the gradual rising of the consciousness of Divinity within him, and waited between hope and fear for the development of his mysterious life.

One of the most gifted women of our age, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, thus portrays Mary’s feelings as she looked upon her child sleeping:

“Sleep, sleep, mine Holy One.
* * * *
I am not proud—meek angels, put ye on
New meeknesses to hear such utterance rest
On mortal lips, ‘I am not proud’—not proud!
Albeit in my flesh God sent His Son,
Albeit over Him my head is bowed,
As others bow before Him, still mine heart,
Bows lower then their knees! O centuries
That roll, in vision, your futurities
My grave athwart!
Whose murmurs seem to reach me while I keep
Watch o’er this sleep!
Say of me as the Heavenly said, ‘Thou art
The blessedest of women!’ blessedest,
Not holiest, not noblest—no high name,
Whose height misplaced may pierce me like a shame,
When I sit meek in heaven!—
For me—for me—
I often wandered forth, more child than maiden,
Among the lonely hills of Galilee,
Whose summits looked heaven-laden!
Listening to silentness, that seemed to be
God’s voice, so soft, yet strong—so fain to press
Upon my heart, as Heaven did on the height,—
And waken up its shadows by a light,
And show its vileness by a holiness!
Then I knelt down, as silent as the night,
Too self-renounced for fears;
Raising my small face to the boundless blue,
Whose stars did mix and tremble in my tears!
God heard them falling often—with his dew.”

Think of the lot of Christ, and remember how closely another heart beat in unison with his heart—how nearly parallel her life ran with his life. Pass from the manger to the Cross, and those two scenes are enough to suggest the outlines of her experience during that eventful interval. Listen to the words—“Woman, behold thy son”—and to the disciple, “behold thy mother.” Think of what followed—the joy at Christ’s rising to dwell in visible presence with his own, and after his ascension to dwell with them in his witnessing Spirit. Among those who remembered the promise: “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world,” there was one who added a mother’s love to a disciple’s faith, as in the coming of the Comforter to her soul, she received her new birth into the kingdom of God, through him who had his birth on earth from her. Confided as she had been to the disciple whom Jesus so loved, a guest in his household, the constant companion of the growing circle of believers, how could she be without great influence on their faith and fellowship? When she passed away, a new light rose for them in the heavens. Their religion was not a code of moral precepts, or a set of theological propositions, but a gospel of speaking facts and living words. Their religion was Christ and all that is Christlike. Their heaven was no ethereal abstraction, no pantheistic merging of spirits in infinity; but the home of true souls—the mansions of the Father opened by Christ to all the faithful, and surely unto her who guarded his infant weakness and wept over his dying agonies. On earth and in heaven the blessed mother stood to them for the ideal of true womanhood, and early Christian antiquity is full of traces of the tender and beautiful affection felt for her, before superstition seized upon the lovely sentiment and hardened it into a priestly dogma. Yet under the dogma, the true feeling has never been wholly lost sight of, and with many who are called idolatrous, the homage to St. Mary is but an exalted form of reverence to a moral loveliness, now in heaven. Our own Germanic ancestors shared more deeply in the sentiment probably than any other people, as they came from their cold homes in northern Europe—received the gospel of Christ from the missionaries of the church, and rejoiced to find their national feeling of chivalrous respect for woman confirmed and spiritualized by the honors paid to her, whom angels hailed as full of grace, and whose name all Christendom spoke with blessing. This high sentiment, somewhat sobered by our Protestant faith and our household utilities, has come to us with our religion and our homes.

It is becoming a somewhat practical, and in both hemispheres, an agitating question, how far the accepted Christian idea of true womanhood should be enlarged or amended to meet the demands of our own age. The voice of Mary Wolstoncroft, claiming masculine freedom for sex, has found a thousand echoes, and assemblies of women, no strangers to Christian culture, clamor for a new day of social and political emancipation. Their demands are not to be treated with ridicule, for under all their extravagance lurk truths of momentous import. Who can think of the thousands and hundreds of thousands of the sex, whose utmost labors hardly keep off cold and starvation—of the wretched notions of education and life, which so enfeeble the poor and corrupt the affluent—of the false social system which is so ready to smile upon the destroyer of innocence, and curse the victim of his arts; who can think of the scenes in the hovels of innocent poverty, the dens of loathsome vice, and the gilded saloons of painted misery, upon which the shadows of this blessed eve are now falling, and not be willing to pardon some thing to the spirit of mercy, even if its tones seem to us too shrill for gentle lips? Who is not willing to remember, moreover, that if they assert a folly, who claim for woman the political offices that must rob the home of her fidelity; they assert, and actually are diffusing a more dangerous error, who in more silken speech brand the household virtues as servile drudgery, and whose lives are a continued and studious round of elegant and jewelled vagrancy from the sacred uses and blessed companionships of their own fireside; nay, whose eyes seem only to open when the lights of the theatre and ball-room blaze, and whose pulses really beat only in exciting assemblies under the delirium of the wine-cup and the voluptuous dance. From both errors the true idea of womanhood may save our time, and, nevertheless, confer upon us the substantial good, which is so dimly seen by the rival schools of culture—the fashionable and the masculine. Well taught and trained, our daughters may have all true graces without Parisian levity, and all intellectual discipline without Amazonian boldness.

No greater mistake can be made than that which would take woman from her sphere of dignity and power, and make her the rival of man in pursuits which require his ruder nature and sterner will. Mary, the wife of Godwin, with her obtrusive band of far more extravagant followers, opens no path of honor and power compared with that pointed out by Mary of Nazareth, the light of her home, the guardian of her Holy Child; encouraging the disciples by a voice, the mightier on account of its not being heard in the streets, and to them and to all after them, a name for spiritual loveliness, and all gentle and confiding graces, among the souls exalted to heaven. Using present agencies, and following the guidance of the gospel, the mothers and sisters in our Israel, may deal more wisely and strongly with the social problems of our time, and do their part for the kingdom of God—than by crowding to the ballot-box, screaming in the caucus, or snatching at the staff of office. So deeply is this the conviction of the most judicious of the sex, that many words on the subject would be superfluous. Nor would we add any to the many words that have been shed upon the question of the equality of the sexes. As well let the rays of the solar light dispute for precedence, and the red ray, so blazing, presume to deny the equal worth of the violet ray, which, science teaches us, has power to make iron magnetic, and which more than its more bold companion on the other side of the prism, makes the impression on the silvered plate—itself the most magical pencil in the skilful hand of that unrivalled painter, the sun. God has united both rays in the sweet light of true humanity, and what He has joined together, let not man try to put asunder.

The greater danger is in a servile acquiescence in prevalent worldliness and mediocrity—a disposition to repeat the common pleas of precedent, and to live solely in the externals of society. In our own beloved country, where liberty, without example, is extended to woman, and a courtesy, without limit, is shown her, they who hold in their keeping the future of their sex should not be content to follow the rule of court journals, or bow to the dicta of Parisian modists, who are fond of ruling over morals, as over costume. Our liberty should give them a stronger and more rational intellectual discipline than in the lands more enslaved by precedent. Our courtesy, that national chivalry, which insists on deference as much towards the rustic maiden as the city belle, will be sadly abused if made the occasion of an obtrusive arrogance, which claims precedence as a right, and elbows its way through crowds of men who are more ready to yield by grace than by command.

Our country has from the first cherished a noble idea of womanhood, and under its influence the strength of its sons, and the refinement of its daughters have been nurtured. Kindly omens abounded in the first days of its history. Our continent itself is one of the omens. That you may not call me too fanciful or sentimental, let me quote from an eloquent writer on the philosophy of geography, as he compares the Old and New Worlds. “The number of the continents in the Old World,” which is double that of the New World, their grouping in a more compact and solid mass—make it already and pre-eminently the continental world. It is a mighty oak, with a stout and sturdy trunk, whilst America is the slender and flexible palm-tree, so dear to this continent. The Old World, if it is allowable to employ here comparisons of this nature, calls to mind the square, solid figure of man; America the lithe shape and delicate form of woman.

So America stood like a fair bride in her ocean home, adorned for her husband, that mighty race from the East, that came in the path of the sunshine, as if following the lord of day, who is as a bridegroom coming out of his chamber. Our heroes bore with them a Christian ideal of womanhood, and by it were gentle as they were strong. It came with Columbus in the cherished image of that noble queen, who gave gold and hope to an enterprise elsewhere rejected with derision; and the thought of Isabella mingled with that of the Blessed Mother, as he planted the cross on the western shores. It came with the cavaliers who gave Virginia its name and honor, and whose foremost and noblest chief found a counterpart of his own ideal in the Indian girl, who saved his life by risking her own, giving Christian mercy, to receive in return the Christian’s faith and home; owning, by the baptismal vow, the Great Spirit whom she had seen in cloud and heard in the wind, thenceforth, as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It came with the Huguenots of Carolina, the Catholics of Maryland, the Friends of Pennsylvania, the Hollanders of Manhattan, and not last nor least, with the Pilgrims of that Mayflower, whose seeds struck deep into the New England soil, and whose scions have borne beauty and fragrance to the hills and valleys, the farms and cities of our motherland, making the wilderness blossom as the rose, when the sweet Marys gave grace to Puritan homes.

Herein lies a great element of power and of hope for our country. Our soil is rich, our lakes and rivers are vast, our strength is great, our courage good, our schools are many, our wealth is unexampled. But these are not all—nor are these the elements that are to tame our barbaric borders, and lead to harmony our chaotic and scattered members. The church and home must go together, and unite our nation under the empire of Christ, as under the empire of civil law. The church and home are advancing together from the Atlantic to the Pacific shore. The farmer of Oregon, the miner of California, are not to be beyond the pale of Christian civilization. Even they shall hear the chimes that tell of the nativity of the Saviour—they shall find in their homes, rude cabins though they may be, pleasant faces, whose womanly grace and childish confidence shall reveal a light kindled of old by the Blessed Mother, and nurtured for ever by her Holy Child.

Here patriotism and Christianity blend in one. Anathema upon the false speculations and foul vices that assault the family institution. Blessed be the gospel of Him who asserts the uncompromising law of domestic purity, and opens most tenderly the Divine benignity, when most urging the Divine commandment.

There is a branch of this subject which I cannot treat—one, perhaps, that dwells too much in the region of higher sentiment to be the theme of popular discussion, and which no writer can easily handle, without seeming to be borrowing from the ancient theology its comments on the Song of Songs, or delving in the dark but rich mines of Swedenborg’s Arcana. Yet it would be no far-fetched topic, whilst speaking of her who has been called the Queen of Heaven, and regarded by the Fenelons and Catharines of faith, as the type of celestial loveliness, to treat of the ideal of womanhood in the spiritual world. Surely the higher a true culture rises, the more clearly each great family of souls becomes more true to its own genius, and the higher companionship known on earth, in the most refined society, and the worthiest families, illustrates the permanence of those traits that give man and woman their intellectual and moral characteristics. The earthly loves, which Christ came to consecrate, bear the germs of immortal uses, and are like Mary’s own emblem the rose, which, though born in the earth, lifts its bloom and wafts its fragrance to the heavens. I know no more elevated illustration of this view than that given by the Milton of Italy, the solemn Dante, who, in his vision of Heaven, wanders through the celestial courts with the spirit that had been the charm of his earthly life, and who, often as he stood confounded before some new mystery, found his perplexities solved by the readier intuition of his sainted companion. The higher companionship in literature, art, society, religion, which we enjoy in this world, and which is so incomplete when men or women are alone, gives some idea of the state of souls on high, where they that shine most, and they that love most, cherubim and seraphim, blend their holy ministries and bow together before the Eternal Presence.

A homelier view of the subject must end our meditation—a view, however, that opens into the heavenly world. The homelier the better—the nearer to our hearts. Let us call Mary blessed to-day for ourselves, and for our own families and friends. Bless her, now that we are thinking of all good mothers, whether the queen true to her children on her island-throne, or the faithful mother in the farmer’s cottage;—so many on the earth—so many who have gone from the world, and whose remembered faces now bring heaven near. Bless her now, that we are thinking of the happy children gathered together in the name of her Holy Child—as we think of the hosts of little children whom He has called and is calling to Himself. It is a time to be sober, and a time to be merry. In our soberness and our mirth, alike let us remember God’s love for us in Jesus Christ our Lord.

God’s blessing, readers, upon you all—mothers, fathers, children, brothers, sisters, friends—meeting or to meet in the sanctuary, or in your homes! His love bring all together at last around the tree of life, whose fruit is peace eternal!

Christmas Eve.

The Hope of Childhood.

THE HOPE OF CHILDHOOD.

The account of the Flight to Egypt, so illustrated by the old masters, brings three images before us, all in themselves interesting, and expressive of lasting realities. Central, is the figure of a young child, speaking at once of childhood and the God who blesses it. On either side what contrast in the associated forms! On one hand stands Mary, watching with unwearied vigils over her precious charge. In the distance, in his stately palace, the dark form of the tyrant king rises before us; his hands stained with the blood of a noble wife and three sons, his conscience torn by remorse, his wrath the more inflamed from the consciousness of deserving vengeance, his despotic will brooking no thought of rivalry, and dooming to death the infant innocents of a whole town to make sure of destroying the predicted Messiah.

Here is an emblem of what is over in the world. Here is childhood, its guardian angel, and its evil genius. May not the scene suggest some thoughts upon Christianity as the guardian of childhood against the spirit of the world, which is its foe?

The mother and child fled to Egypt, there to languish or be forgotten? Herod sat in his palace hall, there to rule and prosper? No. Ere the year closed, he died; before death came, already a mass of putrefaction. He died, signing with his fainting hands his will and the death-warrant of his oldest son; thus dispensing death and empire in his last act. He died, and the magnificence of his funeral mocked the wretchedness of his decease. The body was borne aloft on a bier, which was adorned with gems; the winding-sheet was of purple; his whole army, native and foreign, marched in war array to his grave. As the gorgeous procession by slow stages passed to the stately mausoleum, twenty-five miles distant at the Herodium, word went to the fugitives in Egypt, that the tyrant was dead. Who at that time, in the excitement of the funeral, or the festivities of the succession—who cared for the obscure family, that stole on its way quietly to Nazareth? The mother and child lived! They founded a kingdom that dies never.

Richly that Christ-child repaid his mother’s watching, alike to her and to her sex. The religion of Christ has been the strength and comfort of parents, and the hope of their children. Its power in the nurture of the young mind has been illustrated in every age, and connects itself now momentously with the most important topics of our time. What topic more congenial with this Christmas season, so consecrated to associations with childhood and youth, leading us back to the cradle of the infant Redeemer, and opening a festival in which young hearts all over the world rejoice? The child ever needs protection; Herod ever in some form rages; Christianity like a mighty maternal heart needs ever to keep its watch.

Look upon the past history of Christendom from this point of view, and how novel and interesting is the result! We have been taught to associate the progress of Christianity with the account of theological controversies, bitter disputes, bloody persecutions, proud hierarchies; and thus we too often read the annals of the Church with shame or contempt. But take a fairer and more intimate view: think of Christianity in connection with childhood and youth, trace its influence upon the home, the school, the Church, in this aspect. Do this, and we shall find ourselves moved by the annals of every age to tenderness and gratitude; for in every age Christianity has been the guardian of childhood against the spirit of the world, its foe. When the Saviour took young children in his arms and blessed them, he performed an act which has not been without significance in all subsequent time.

In the primitive time the Christian confessors showed how fondly they had been taught to regard their offspring, to care for their souls in life and in death, to commend them with deathless love to Him who had opened the gates of everlasting life. In the Roman catacombs, far beneath the city, the places of early Christian worship and burial, the inscriptions on the tombstones well express the parental feelings of that time. An uncommonly large portion of the epitaphs given in the description belong to children, and they express the tenderest affection. “Virginius remained but a short time with us.” “Sweet Faustina, may you live in God.” “Laurence to his sweetest son, Severus, borne away by angels on the seventh Ides of January.” How different the spirit breathed in such inscriptions from that inspired by the idolatry, that formed a god of the war-spirit that makes childhood desolate and orphaned, or bows down before Moloch and casts children into the fire at his feet!

Turn even to those ages that are called by eminence dark—the time of monkish austerity and priestly sway. There is much in their annals to move indignation and sometimes horror. But interpret them fairly, and we find much to move our admiration and love. Consider that embodiment of the middle ages, the Gothic cathedral, wonderful alike for the vastness of its proportions and the delicacy of its details. There may be austerity in the priests that attend its altars, fanaticism in the monks who chant its litanies, cruelty in the mailed men who kneel at its chancel. But how tender is the expression of the whole in reference to childhood! The Holy Mother and her Divine child beam upon the worshipper from illuminated missals and painted windows. Conspicuous at the vestibule or by the altar, stands the baptismal font. Thither the child of the poorest peasant is brought, and by the baptismal water the child is recognized as belonging to the kingdom not of this world, a lamb of the good Shepherd. Not for the few rich, noble or mighty, but even for him, the least of the earth, this temple was erected, and by that rite the church, imperial in its stately palace, promises to watch over the child, care for his soul in sorrow, sickness and death. What would childhood have been in the dark ages without the Church? What other power could have stood between innocence and its tempter and destroyer? Who would have withstood Herod, if the mother heart of Christianity had withheld its guardianship?

The Protestant Reformation consider, and through all its conflicts and persecutions, what tenderness is shown on both sides towards childhood! To secure the young heart to Christ and the Church, the rival parties labored with indefatigable zeal. In the zeal and policy of Loyola we may see how tenderly the old Church sought to keep or regain her hold upon the young by measures suited to the time. Would we know Luther’s mind, look upon him as he sits with lute in hand at his fireside, enjoying the gladness of his children at the Christmas tree;—look at him, as with pen in hand and the veins of his forehead dilated with the excitement, he writes the immortal appeal to the powers of Germany in behalf of free schools, which has joined his name with Milton’s as champion of popular education. Think too of the Pilgrim Fathers, so tender and thoughtful in their stern self-denial, in their wilderness home erecting church and school-house side by side, both sacred to God and his people.

But it is time to look round upon the world as it now is. The most important question is: What is to be done for the young? This question comprises every other, for the generation that is growing up will soon have the destinies of the race in its charge. Surely Christianity needs to be watchful, for Herod is still abroad. His spirit is still the spirit of the world—of the world’s passions and its policy—breathing now in the oppression that neglects or overburdens the young, and now in the capricious indulgence that betrays with a kiss and kills in the name of love.

The world’s passions conspire against childhood and youth. The lust and intemperance, which degrade the parent, press heavily upon the child, and because of them, thousands of young hearts find themselves in a world that for them has few smiles. All the temptations that inflame the senses, prompt to vice, and kindle hatred, conspire against the young, alike by corrupting those who should be their protectors, and sowing prematurely the seeds of wickedness in youth itself. Every haunt of dissipation, every resort of revelry, whether the drunkard’s den or the fashionist’s brilliant saloon of corruption, is a conspiracy against youth, and coins its gold from the life-blood of young hearts. The massacre of the Innocents still goes on. The spirit of Herod yet lives, and acts in a manner more insidious than an open death-warrant. It lives in the passions of a world ready to sacrifice all to its lusts.

And the world’s policy is not kind to childhood. What murderers are those its chief idols, Mars and Mammon! How cruel the game of war and the lust of gold! Who rules over the strife that robs children of parents who go to die in foreign lands? What genius, Herod or Christ, presides over the scene, when death-dealing batteries are planted before peopled cities, and the blood and brains of women and children are dashed out at every volley? Ye Christian chivalry, ye battle-loving parents, answer that question as for yourselves and your children!

The lust of gold, that moves the world’s habitual policy, is less savage but not much more merciful. The spirit of trade demands gain, and claims childhood too much as an instrument of gain. In the Old World, what myriads whom school or church never blesses or knows, are, almost from infancy, trained to the mine or loom, shut out from free air and play, cramped in body, as in mind. The conscience of Christians is waking up to the subject, I know, still what a world of wretchedness remains unalleviated! No poem in the language contains more terrific truth, than that noted ode, called “The Cry of the Children,” blending, as it does, the tragic depth of Æschylus with the tender pathos of Cowper.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man’s grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheek of infancy—
“Your old earth,” they say, “is very dreary;”
“Our young feet,” they say, “are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek!”
Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,—
And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old!

Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight’s hour of harm,—
“Our Father,” looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words, except “Our Father,”
And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand which is strong.
“Our Father!” If He heard us, He would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
“Come and rest with me, my child!”
And well may the children weep before you;
They are weary, ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun:
They know the grief of men, but not the wisdom;
Are bitter with despairing, but not calm—
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom—
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,—
Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly
No dear remembrance keep;
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:
Let them weep! let them weep!
They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For you think you see their angels in their places,
With eyes meant for Deity.

An ode such as this was not without effect upon the heart of England; nor is the humanity which it imbodies rare in our land. The spirit of trade among us is not wilfully cruel, but it is too devoted to gain—negligent of the claims of youth, when not unkind. Neglected ones in our own streets have too frequent cause to reproach us—neglected ones who are strangers to the blessings of our civilization, and who learn our laws first from their penalties, and become acquainted with the lessons of the prison, not of church or school. They, alas, who might be an honor to their sex, are made to recruit the ranks of shame, and what is the spirit of Herod compared with the world’s heart to fallen woman, alike in the wickedness that tempts and the scorn that awaits the fall.

And not solely among the neglected of the earth does the spirit of the world lie in wait for childhood and youth. We might speak of the indulgence that pampers and vainly ruins the soul—of the kindness that kills those whom it aims to bless—of the neglect of health, natural and spiritual laws, which luxury introduces into modes of home education—of the want of a firm discipline that is kindest when firmest—of a practical infidelity that robs childhood of its sacred birthright, by robbing it of trust in God and the eternal life. Herod rages truly in the passions and the policy of the world.

But not unchecked! Christianity with its great maternal heart is true to her watch, and calling helpers to her side. Let us acknowledge it. The great work of Christians now, is with the young. The work is two-fold, one of growth and of conquest, one that would rear up the offspring of faith within the divine kingdom, and one which would visit the neglected and reclaim them from the enemies’ power.

The work must begin, indeed, in the hearts of the mature, fostered there by communion with God and Christ, fostered by sacred thought and earnest resolution. Beginning there, it is to be carried out into the great spheres of life, in which childhood receives its direction. Vain for us to attempt to imbue the young mind with truths, which we receive only in name—vain the attempt to feed yearning souls with empty words, or breathe into them a higher life, with appeals so faithless and loveless as to bear falsity in their very tone, and fall dead upon the ear. As the bee watched by Solomon alighted upon the living rose, and shunned the pretended one, so childhood knows well the tone of sincerity, and craves reality for its mental food. Let it find the reality.

Let it find it in the home. Home, blessed word always, thrice blessed, this day, that speaks to us of Jesus, who has secured to the household so much of its purity and affection, and that brings to mind the loved ones beneath our own roofs, who have hardly slept the night from anxious waiting for the morning dawn. Home—what an engine of power, alike to harm and to bless! Let it be Christian in form and in spirit. There let God be acknowledged in praise and prayer. There let the eternal world be unveiled, and every blessing bring it near in gratitude, and every trial draw down its consolation. There let the young breathe in the spirit of the gospel. There let Mary keep her watch of love, and Herod waits in vain to destroy.

Let the world’s bad spirit be withstood, too, in the schools. The cry is now rising in every part of Christendom—from the backwoodsmen of the Rocky Mountains to the cities of the Old World, of late, stirred by a mighty want—Education, Universal Education! In no section, certainly, of our land, is this spirit comparatively more earnest than with us—for, beyond question, this State has been recently passing through an intellectual revival altogether unexampled in the annals of our Free Schools. Christians should rejoice in the movement, and should rescue popular education from the blighting touch of avarice and superstition. Let it go on in its work of growth and conquest—nurturing the children of the privileged, reclaiming the offspring of the neglected, carrying out a mode of education based upon the laws of God and the soul of man, mindful of every faculty, grace, affection, that God has hallowed and human wisdom unfolds. Let nothing that has been done lead us to be unmindful of what is to be done, alike in the extension and elevation of the schools. We wonder at the system of training pursued of old, which led youth to regard the school as a prison. Higher yet the idea must rise, as better views are entertained of the capacities of the child, and the intellectual helps and moral associations that bring them out. We need the idea of the Christ-child in the school. Let that haunt the minds of parents and teachers, and that sacred ideal of childhood will not be without loving disciples, whose voices shall make the songs of the schoolroom as sacred and acceptable as temple chants or choral litanies. A better spirit, and one that demands the co-operation of all Christian people, has shown itself in our city of late, in the new efforts to seek out neglected children, and open to them the blessings of education, and industry and religion. The establishment of the Mission at the Five Points, of the Children’s Aid Society, of the Asylum for Friendless Boys, have made an era in the Christian annals of New-York, which all right-minded persons should bless, alike in their word and their work. Add to these efforts for the poor and neglected, the new institutions, such as the Free College and the Cooper Institute, which offer such unwonted privileges to worthy boys of the humblest means, and we have no reason to despair of the future of this great city, or to distrust the school as a noble ally of the church.

The Christian church! Here the spirit of the guardian mother ought eminently to prevail. The church should be the mother of the young. Oh, how cold and dreary is the idea, deemed by many the essential of Protestant truth, the idea that the young, or at least, little children, can have no vital connection with the Church; but must wait for some preternatural visitation in maturer years to call them to the arms of the great spiritual mother, and make them feel themselves hers. How unsatisfactory the doctrine, that children are to grow up, as if outside of the church, with the prospect of one day being taken in. Be ours the cheering view, sanctioned, surely, by the analogies of revelation, the faith of centuries, and by the love of parents, that the child should be regarded as by birth and baptism admitted into the Christian kingdom, and to be nurtured from the very first in the principles and affections congenial with the government of God. Let this idea be accepted, and power and blessing would come in its train. Higher consecration would crown the home, better wisdom would guide the strength of father, and holier love fill the soul of mother, from their communion with the kingdom that claims parent and child for its own. The Christ-child should be remembered in the Christian Church. When remembered truly, he will save childhood from Herod’s hands.

This season is a time of anticipation and hope. It needs no very vivid imagination to bring before us the myriads of homes over Christendom, that ring with young mirth, and look cheerfully upon the opening age. Yet the grave question cannot but press itself upon us, What is in store for the generation, that is soon to stand in our places, and bear the burdens of life in our stead? Interesting, engrossing indeed are the fields of science, art, enterprise, enjoyment, now dawning upon us and promising a bright meridian to the new generation. Yet fearfully many dark spots in the horizon rise in the distance, and portend ill to many whose experience of the world is yet to come. The great want is of an earnest purpose, looking to an eternal aim, and enforced by a true plan of social life. The young host is ready, but needs better guidance. Muratori, the Italian historian, tells us, that in the twelfth century, in the contagion of the crusades, children caught the spirit, and an army of 30,000 was gathered from village and city, and marshalled by a child, started for the Holy Land and the Tomb of Christ. They marched on till they came to Marseilles, and the great sea stopped their fond dream. They wandered about distracted, and thousands miserably perished. Perhaps too romantic story for sober truth! But what a parallel to it in our age! A mighty host of youths starts on its way to a land of imagined holiness and peace. Vague aspirations, selfish passions, spiritual yearnings for the good and true, move their hearts. A child will lead them; the child who is to be the strong man of the age, and who is not yet known. Sadly, sadly, will they be disappointed, unless the leader is himself divinely led, and the heart of the Christ-child lives in him, and thus in the hearts of this generation, the Messiah is born anew.

Every true purpose, all genuine faith speeds the day of his new coming, and hastens the downfall of Herod and his host.

Friends, Readers, let your hearts apply the lesson of this day, and let your hearts be cheered and solemnized by its associations. Think of your homes and the loved ones there. Think too of the loved ones departed, and deem them not lost, but gone before! Love your children, and love them the more by looking on them in the gospel light, by loving them as in God and Christ!

Think too of our own early days. How vividly they at times come back, so that we almost forget maturity and its cares, and are children once more. Let them come back now, and with them all their tender associations—with them thoughts of early home; brothers, sisters, father, and more than all of her, who stood to us in Mary’s place, and blessed us with a Christian Mother’s love!

But can the association rest there? No! Upward to Him, so holy in childhood, so glorious in maturity—to Him, Friend and Saviour, Messiah, from whom our best blessings flow, let our gratitude rise, and to God, through Him, let our devotion be exalted! We have no hymn to the Virgin Mother, no Ora pro Nobis for the beatified Madonna. Simple faith is better than romantic tradition. To us heaven is fairer for possessing that Mother and that Child.

Christmas Day.

New Things.

NEW THINGS.

Measured by any human standard, how daring was the vision of the Christian seer! From Patmos, his watchtower of rock in the Ægean Sea, midway between the hemispheres of ancient civilization, he surveyed the ruling powers of the world, declared their doom, and the rise of a new kingdom, even the City of God. The predominant forces of the existing age took visible shape before his inspired imagination. Jewish bigotry, Pagan idolatry, Roman despotism, led on by the master spirit of evil, stood before him, as so many fearful monsters. Equally vivid were the forms of divine agency by which they were to be subdued. From Him who sat upon the throne revealed in heaven, came the decree, “Behold, I make all things new.” Our pen need not lose its cheerfulness in writing of this opening year, with such imagery in view.

How much of that vision has been proved true? Enough surely to save it from the charge of presumption, enough to ascribe its daring rather to a devotion mindful of divine guidance than to a wilfulness impatient of delay. The former things have passed away. The old temple is remembered only for the sake of its spiritual archetype. The despot’s purple has faded before the bloodstained robes of the martyrs. The idols to which men bowed on both the Ægean shores, the European and the Asiatic, have fallen. Even the crescent, that has for a time displaced the cross, and which now in the city of Constantinople gleams from the dome of St. Sophia, forms no exception to the statement, for it marks no idolatrous shrine, but like the orb which it represents is but a partial reflection of the great source of light, before which it must one day grow pale.

Gradually, but none the less mightily, the new power went on its way, and ere long from beyond the Mediterranean on the Carthaginian shore, there came a great response to the exile of the Ægean. When Augustine wrote his “City of God,” the philosopher of history confirmed the vision of the seer, as he celebrated the triumphs of that word which planted the cross above the throne of the Cæsars. Tempting indeed is the historical survey this presented, but we must not yield to the enticement. We must quit this grand prospect of the nations, and speak of the Gospel, as sent chief of all for the renewal of the soul and the redemption of the home. World-regenerating power as it is, its first prerogative is its life-renewing office.

This principle we are prepared to lay down at the outset, that in the order of Providence Jesus Christ is the spiritual head of the human race, and that men and nations find redemption and true life from God through Him. What was said of old, needs to be said now “Behold I make all things new”—now in the ears alike of those who have never heard Christian truth, and of those who have lulled themselves to slumber beneath its familiar sound. Nay, the most sincere Christians need constant renewing in the light of first principles and by the spirit of true life. Their piety is apt to harden into formalism—their charity to narrow into some kind of clanship—their industry to sink into a low worldly prudence apart from all divine aims.

It is not easy for any of us to begin the New-Year without a pleasant sense of freshness or renovation, as if some former burdens had passed away and many things had become new. This is well, and needs only to be made better. As we renew our friendships, we should not fail to renew our relation with the Great Friend, and invoke his blessing upon the opening months.

We need first of all to review our principles. These we regard as constituting the essentials of our faith. However right they may have been, we are very apt to lose sight of them, or gradually, perhaps almost unconsciously, allow others to creep into their place. The word of Christ to us now is as of old, “Believe.” What do we believe? What to us is the greatest reality? Many things are true—what to us is the truth? Many words are important—what to us is the word? Answer not in the language of decent custom or technical phrase, but from the heart. We have all said at some time more or less definitely, “We believe in God, the Creator of the world, in Jesus Christ his Son and express image, in the Holy Spirit, the witness within the soul.” When we believe thus truly, then we have the true principles of living. We own the Divine government, acknowledge its representative, honor its form of life. But our belief becomes an empty word, unless with enlarged knowledge and experience, it is constantly renewed; and as we pass into new fields of thought, action, observation, we subdue this added territory to the rightful sovereignty, and interpret all things in the light of Divine truth. Have we done this—are we doing it? Or have we left our faith behind us, and in our world of business or pleasure, do we find ourselves either utterly without God, or with Him only in the most vague and distant idea? True faith is not overcome by the world, but overcomes the world.

We learn a great many things as our years pass, and there is a knowledge—do we not know it? that increaseth sorrow. Such is all the knowledge that shuts out the light of God; and leads man away from a filial faith in the Eternal Parent and the heavenly home. Such stores indeed increase our nominal domain, but only as he would enlarge his estate who were to conquer Sahara and pitch his tent among desert sands where no living water is.

Faith—the faith that God is Father of men—that he is in Christ, and through Him will visit us in the soul and the life, makes all things new—constantly leads us into new experience of Divine truth, and makes old things appear in a new light. This is no narrow creed for the recluse or the mystic. It is for men of all tempers and conditions. Nay, they need it most, whose pursuits are most likely to chain them down to the earth. For them indeed occasional leisure and recreation has no small solace. But, the best solace for world-weariness is the rest of the soul in God; the mind’s trust in the greatest of realities, the Being of beings. All pleasure that deadens this trust but adds to the weariness which it would charm away and is the serpent’s whisper, that promises the peace which comes only from the heavenly dove. Above all our prudence, all our labors and expedients, we are compelled to look for the true light. Revive, increase our faith, and straightway all things are new. God reveals new features of his Providence, and things familiar have a new expression, and speak no longer only of the earth.

Who can recur thus to first principles and find from them better light and peace, without carrying the renewing influence into the sphere of the affections? Here the Divine Word has a voice for us—a voice too much neglected because identified either with a perplexing theological system or a shallow sentimentalism. God is love, and he that loveth not knoweth not God. This truth came from Him who made the soul, and knows well its wants. Bring it near to us and feel its renovating power. There seems always indeed to be a peculiar peril in moralizing upon the affections, and they are very apt to be chilled by the precepts that most insist upon their vitality and warmth. But the Christian Gospel is little disposed to waive its imperious claims from fear of the metaphysician or the sentimentalist. It says Love God and the brethren, and bids us make this truth practical. As the years pass, instead of having less affection, we ought to have more. A true life always has more, as it enlarges its experience and its faculty—not indeed more of that superficial sensibility which is the burden of so many moon-struck rhymesters and the great staple of the common romancers, but more of that divine charity, that vital good-will, which holds filial communion with the Father, and, striving to be perfect even as he is perfect, carries the light and warmth of its presence into every sphere of life. In fact, the highest human wisdom is affectionate as it is mature. The novice in thought may be sharp and crabbed, but the sage is tolerant and kind. He who sees the truth in its reality, sees that it is the form which contains and expresses goodness. If there be a kind of intellectual power that is bitter and malicious, it is sure to be only some shape of low cunning or some perversion of the better reason—some perversion that shows Lucifer’s fall, if it shine with something of his light. The Master and they who learned of him were full of love as of wisdom. Such is the plan of God’s moral government based upon the nature of his own being.

The Father calls us to be followers of him as dear children, and in the sober thought of mature years to cherish more than the impulsive affection of childhood. He demands that our whole life-plan should be guided, nay, pervaded with good-will. If there be less sensitiveness upon the surface of the character, there should be a deeper sentiment within. He is ready to help us win the grace, which he commends. Through devout thought, whether of meditation or prayer—through every act which brings us near to himself, whether of self-denying humanity or of common neighborly kindness, he is ready to impart to the soul something of the fulness of his Spirit, and renew our being in its central spring.

We need this influence in our near affinities and remoter relations. The ice gathers about us, and should be melted away. The most intimate ties become dull and indifferent through custom, and the nearest friends, because of their nearness, lose interest as if estranged. In the same Divine fountain we refresh every home feeling and social sympathy. Realizing anew our relation to God, we are ready to see more of his goodness in all things around, and regard every aspect of humanity, as a call upon us to appreciate his love for us by our own for his creatures. The point of view is at once changed, and we look upon our fellow-beings no longer in the spirit of harsh critics, exacting all things and owing nothing, but as ourselves dependants upon Divine favor, and owing mercy even as we have received. Every human tie is in peril, when this sentiment is forgotten. When its force is felt, every sphere of life has a blessing. Home wears a new smile, and its mutual deference repeats the great law of Heaven. Strifes among kindred and acquaintances cease. The sternest censor of the follies and vices of mankind mingles mercy with his judgment, and considers with thoughtful compassion the infirmities at which the cynic scoffs. Because he opens his heart, he does not shut his eyes, but with judgment keen, yet tender and forbearing, in a spirit wise and benign, nay, Christlike, he looks upon the strange drama of human life, and whilst he cannot wholly solve its problem, sees enough of God in the universe and among men to submit the ultimate solution to the Divine Power, and finds a very sure way of helping on the Divine plans by a life of justice, energy and good-will. Who of us does not need more of this spirit, more sense of God’s love to us, as the great source of kind affection to one another?

For want of it, and of the filial faith in which it has its root, we wither up, and our best strength is lost. Nay, our very work languishes—our labor, whatever it may be, loses its zest. There is no man of generous mind, who has not at some time accepted his life-work in a spirit truly religious, feeling that its burdens are to be borne in a Christian temper, and its duties done with reference to exalted aims. But how often the better purpose languishes, and we pursue our toil away from the fountains of true life, separating the spheres which God has joined together, robbing our daily life of the freshness and power, which our youthful zeal possessed without care, and which need only to be truly cared for to be preserved, nay, to grow in vigor. It is not always so with us, but too often; and there are none who do not need renovation in respect to their life-plan and work. Some things we should do, that we have not done—some things, that we have done, should have been left undone. There is much efficacy in a sober and honest review of our personal career, of what we have achieved, suffered, gained, lost, and of what has been our use alike of our successes and disappointments. God has given to us something of his own power of judgment, and we are the better either by the rebuke or the encouragement of the “Ill-done” or the “Well-done,” pronounced by ourselves upon ourselves. More power still comes from bringing all the higher resources of our being upon our labor, refusing to become the serfs of a slavish routine of task-work, and keeping our hours and weeks fresh alike by the faculties that we exert, and the aims to which we look. Happy, indeed, the man, whatever be the sphere of his action, whose being is renewed rather than exhausted by his toil. Only a filial faith and love can insure this blessing. A cheerful temper is much, but not all; and no merely animal spirits can suffice to renovate the mind under so many vicissitudes and disappointments as most lives present. A man’s spirit is the chief fact in determining his spirits, and the spirit can be kept fresh and strong only by communion with the God who gave it. They who take the work of life as given by God in kindness, and as to be done faithfully and cheerfully, filially, keep and enlarge their power. Whatever their sphere, they wait upon the Lord, and they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength—they shall mount up with wings as eagles—they shall run and not be weary—they shall walk and not faint.

Thus following the leadings of Divine Providence, we find the true fountain of life. All things are ever new, and in our faint human experience we are able to know something of the bliss of that Infinite and Omniscient, to whom all things are known—to whom there is no past or future, yet whose is the fulness of an ever-renewing life, the great I Am, from everlasting to everlasting. Existence becomes more serene, yet more earnest; less impassioned, not less affectionate; less impulsive, but far more interesting. There are two kinds of renewal, distant as are earth and heaven. The one comes from the novelty of a constant variety, the other from the freshness of an ever truer life. Just across the sea the exile of Patmos could have found an excellent example to place in contrast with the spirit of renewal which he urged. The Athenian—and he is in this respect more favored with followers than in his Attic refinement—spent his time in seeking for some new thing. Common life was stupid, its business was contemptible and fit only for slaves. Different the spirit, as the lot of this novelty hunter from that of the Christian with his ever renewed mind. The one finds what is new by skimming over surfaces, the other by drawing from inexhaustible depths. The one scatters his forces as he seeks to refresh them, the other concentrates his powers in the very process of renovation. The one yields to a passion for mental dissipation that burns and wastes like a fever, the other follows a law of life, whose pulses beat in ever serener health—nay, beat in ever-renewing vigor, and sound no funeral marches to the grave. In short, the one indulges in a mental distraction that has in itself the principle of exhaustion; the other is nurtured by the Divine aliment which gives a life that is eternal.

Are not our own experience and observation full of illustrations of the truth that has been presented. Are not history and biography constant witnesses of the ever-renovating power of a genuine faith, and love, and work, and also of the fate of worldly passion to exhaust its own springs of enjoyment. How signal an illustration we may take from the destiny of two men of the last century, who, more than any others, moved France and England—the nations to which they spoke. Mirabeau, a man of robust frame and singular native eloquence, was cut down in the very meridian of his day by a disease which was an expressive close and consequence of the fitful fever of his life of passion. His last words, in their gorgeous rhetoric, showed with what opiates he had drugged his soul: “Sprinkle me with perfumes, crown me with flowers, and thus let me sink into the eternal sleep.” Within that very month, a far different death-scene was presented across the British Channel. An old man of nearly four-score years and ten, rests peacefully upon his bed, surrounded by a company of friends, who feel quite as much joy as grief, as they look upon his face and hear his words. Although of frame naturally delicate, and of gifts by no means brilliant, he has moved the hearts of myriads by his appeals, and won a name better than that of founders of empires. The very week previous he had continued his round of labors, and his strength was not abated as he pleaded his Master’s cause. He sank to his rest in God with the words of the anthem,

“I’ll praise my Maker with my breath,”

on his lips, and the strain which was broken by the touch of death seemed to his companions to be finished by a voice from the spiritual world, saying:

“Praise shall employ my nobler powers;
My days of praise shall ne’er be past,
While life, and thought, and being last,
Or immortality endures.”

Mirabeau and Wesley! Thus different are the ends of wilful passion and unswerving fidelity. All lives, according as they are true or false, renew this contrast.

“Behold, I create all things new,” saith the Lord. For good or for ill, this decree must be applied to us. In some way we are all changing as the years pass. Our lives are wasting away, unless they are renovated by a truer spirit, and thus winning ever more than they lose. What do we most need that time may be ever newer and happier, and the hours move on neither with lagging weariness nor drunken haste, but in the Divine order marked out for them by their Lord?

Are there not some things to be put off, as well as some things to be put on? Answer honestly as we look the New Year in the face—answer as to a messenger from God. What weight are we carrying, that we need to lay aside? What evil habit is fixing itself upon us, shutting out the light of God, chilling the better affections, deadening the nobler powers, and threatening, perhaps, beneath its insidious smile to take from existence more of its beauty and joy and strength? Let each consider well his own besetting sin, and put it off. With the falling burden, scales fall from his eyes—he sees God anew. For him the former things have passed away—all things are become new. What makes our being fresher and happier than the conviction that the coming years are better than the past!

Off with the old burdens, and put on the new armor. There is something for each of us to do—something for each one of us specific and peculiar as our own individuality—something for all of us as universal as our common humanity. The specific thing and the universal good pursue as if for life itself. God bless us in the striving, and crown us in the work. Each year in its sober experience give us new hopes for ourselves and the future of our race.

New Year.

Solicitude of Parents

SOLICITUDE OF PARENTS.

Our thoughts turn now more particularly to the circle of home relations, and we propose to give some plain views of them with an especial eye to the temptations of city life. The duty of parents is the topic first in order.

Few if any words are given in the Scriptures to persuading parents to love their children, or to wish to provide for them. The affection is taken for granted, and they who have it not are set aside by themselves as monsters. If any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.

It is not upon the parental sentiment itself, but upon its due direction, that Christianity rests its emphasis; as well it may, for what sentiment has gone more astray from the true mark, and in mistaken kindness hurt those whom it would most bless. “What man,” asks our Saviour, “would give his son a stone instead of bread, or a serpent instead of a fish?” Not one, if he really knew it or saw it. Yet what is more frequent than such wrong indirectly done?

Take the first and most obvious form of parental solicitude, the form literally connected with the question just cited—we mean the physical maintenance of children. It would be wasting words in this or any respectable assembly, to try to prove that parents should provide food and clothing for their offspring. Yet here, and every where, in our mode of making this provision, many very grave questions may arise. Kind feeling is not enough. Without knowledge and forethought, we may hurt where we wish to help—we may kill where we wish to cure. At every step we need better counsel than any instinctive fondness, or childish caprice, or worldly fashion. The Creator has a lesson for us in the use of all his gifts, and if we do not heed it, what we give as bread may turn out a stone, and what seems to us a fish may sting like a serpent.

In providing food, clothing, air, exercise, for our children, we are to study those solemn and inexorable laws which God has enacted for the rule of the body. In this lower court of creation there is no pardoning power, and the wrong done to the constitution in childhood is a wrong for a lifetime. We apprehend that in no one point is our American society more in error and more at variance, not only with natural laws, but even with the best European standard, than in the physical education of children. They are fed often on the trash of the confectioner, instead of the simple aliments nearest the hints of nature, and by improper dress and hours they are forced into a precocious maturity of mind and body, equally hurtful to both.

Does any one doubt the importance or dignity of such caution? The doubt vanishes the moment we see the connection between physical education, and the whole tone of thought and feeling—nay, the entire aim of life. The tastes for food, and dress, and amusement, cherished in children of tender years, may be committing them to a judicious or a corrupt method of life—may be their initiation into a school of self-control and wisdom, or passion and extravagance. The drunkard, the sot, nay, the debauchee, may date their wretchedness from childhood. Many a family has been ruined by habits of extravagance that began in the finery and feasting of the nursery. They that dwell in cities should take close heed to the prevalent danger, and not think themselves safe merely because they do as other people do. Consider how common the error is to mistake precocity for promise—to disturb the sacred reserve of nature—to tear open the curtained bud of childhood, and boast of the forced growth so ruinous to the tender plant, and then let us learn anew to respect the bidding of the Creator and follow his appointed way. Here we should be willing to take a stand as nonconformists, and have it appear in the beginning, that we are not educating our children to be the apes of the world’s fashions, or slaves of its caprices, but to be rational and moral creatures, a blessing to their home and community, a light in the kingdom of God. Let them learn early to find happiness in common things—to enjoy simple pleasures—to love the glow of healthful action above the fever of artificial excitements, the constant bounties of nature beyond the costly gifts of luxury.

What we have said applies more directly to providing for children during their tender years. In rude communities here the care mostly stops, and the boy at least, as soon as he is strong enough to be master of his limbs, is left pretty much to take care of himself. But as society becomes more refined and luxurious, it is very obvious that the solicitude of parents looks more towards providing for the maturer years than for the minority of their children. It becomes, perhaps, the absorbing question, how shall we establish them properly in life—what effort or self-denial must we use to secure their future success?—a great question, and one which troubles many an earnest mind, and heaves society itself with misgivings.

It often presents itself in a very tangible form, and by some is confined to one point—to concern for property. I will not disparage the desire of parents to secure a comfortable living to their children. But it is safe to say that this desire is strong enough when compared with matters more essential even in their bearing on a comfortable living. Surely the chief assurance of a sufficient livelihood is a good practical education. A reasonable man will not think it important to leave more than a frugal competence to his children, yet he ought to think himself unkind, nay cruel, if he spare any labor or sacrifice needed to educate them to do their part effectively and happily in the world. A large inheritance is easily lost, and may be retained without adding any happiness or dignity to its owner or the community, but a good education stands by its possessor; the strength of his trials and the ornament of his joys.

We need to look well to this at a time when, under the very name of education, foul wrong is done to the active energies, and a systematic imbecility of mind and body has the stamp of elegance. That only is a good education which so stores the mind and brings out the powers as to fit one to take an honest place in life, and do well the work given us to do. Such a culture will have an eye upon the uncertainties of fortune, and prepare the pupil to provide for himself, and all who are reasonably dependent upon him. Such a culture it is the duty of every parent to give, and the right of every child to receive. It is clear, however, that it cannot be given without going in the face of many dainty prejudices, which are so ready to pamper unreasonable wants and slight the plain utilities. The Hebrew laws required, that children, even those of nobles should be taught some useful art, and the Saviour of men and the chief of his apostles were bred in accordance with this law. There is no security against shameful servitude short of this, that a youth shall have enough in himself, know enough, and can do enough, to take and keep an honorable place in the world. Too often this great truth is slighted, and men toil in such a way as to procure for their children a dainty training that enlarges the surface of their wants, whilst it lessens the domain of their energies, and so puts a mill-stone upon a son’s back, whilst thinking to give him bread.

Yet more sternly we must carry out the doctrine of the need of an education essentially self-relying. The father has and should have more tender solicitude for the daughter than the son, and there is no affection that the blessed God has breathed into the human heart more beautiful and holy than this, giving as it does such grace to the rudest and the most refined homes, teaching gentle speech to many a rough peasant, and imbuing the most cultivated man with a delicacy and tenderness beyond any of the charms of courts or chivalry. Yet this sentiment needs to be wise as well as kind; nay, wise in order to be kind; and a just father will strive to train his daughter to be equal to either fortune. However large or small his fortune, he will remember its uncertainties, and beware of sanctioning the too prevalent folly which regards woman as born to be petted and dependent, and brands a rational and self-relying education as masculine and ungraceful. If we have our eyes open, we must see the wretchedness of this system, and regard every daughter as cruelly treated who is not enabled without loss of self-respect, in case of need, to take a stand for herself, and prefer to an uncongenial marriage or a degrading dependence, reliance upon her own arts of accomplishment or utility. The same preparation that fits her to meet the time of trial, fits her to adorn prosperity, and to be that noble creature, the woman who guides an affluent household with energy and love, and who adds to the graces most prized in the social circle the grace that is born of God and radiates the light of Heaven.

Of course it is utterly idle to urge the need of such an education for sons and daughters, by limiting its uses solely to worldly advantage. We go up to the true basis of life for firm ground to build upon. Take that ground decidedly, and then we view all true culture as part of the training of souls under the Kingdom of God. We are not to live by bread alone, but by every Divine word, by all of God’s gifts to us. They are cruel parents who slight the moral and spiritual wants of their children and train them in worldly passions. This is, in the saddest sense, giving them a stone instead of the Bread of Life. So we all think and are ready to say. Take care lest our conduct belies our words. Whatever its position or professions may be, that is a wretched household, whose polity is not based upon a Divine standard—which does not acknowledge a rectitude above the world’s ways and breathe faith in God and things eternal. The very discipline of a true home will be modelled after the heavenly order, and will try to win the spirit of the benignant Father of all, who tempers firmness with kindness so wonderfully in the government of his creatures.

Firmness is not enough—kindness is not enough, but the two must go together. Firmness without kindness becomes the stony austerity that crushes the will into servile conformity instead of training it to filial obedience; kindness without firmness readily becomes a feeble expediency that changes with the hour in a facility serpentine in more senses than one. Firmness with kindness gives a discipline authoritative and flexible, applying just principles in a mild prudence suited to all times and needs. Of old perhaps the rigid temper most abounded, and austerity made parental rule a rod of iron; but now the other extreme most prevails, and a feeble indulgence allows self-will to be the law of childhood, and fosters in many a dwelling a juvenile jacobinism, which needs only time and chance to ripen into utter anarchy. This error does cruel wrong to parent and child—to the child by fostering an ungovernable temper, a perverse caprice that scoffs at all restraint and chafes even at the limitations which God has imposed; to the parent by bringing upon him the contempt of those who owe him respect, and by the painful conviction that the indulgence begun in apparent kindness has been as fatal as wilful severity. Away with the folly and the puny sentimentalism from which it springs! Let us look at the law of God founded in the written Word and in the very nature of things. The family is the safeguard of society—a government founded by Heaven itself. Parents are to rule, children are to obey. This principle, if carried out with energy and discretion, will adapt itself to the various ages and circumstances of life. The element of authority will be imbued with the attractive power of the truth and love upon which it rests, and as the child grows into youth or maturity, the authority that trained him, without losing its dignity, will appear less and less an arbitrary will—nay, authority itself will seem but the sterner aspect of persuasion.

For all this we need an unworldly faith and a spiritual mind. They that would nurture others in the true life must themselves be nurtured upon its true element. For themselves they must breathe the prayer for daily bread in a true sense of its meaning—a true sense of dependence on God for moral power as for bodily strength. Nothing short of a temper and purpose truly religious will make the household a school of faith and a home of wisdom and peace. We are apt to be too negligent, indeed, of modes of instruction and forms of worship. Too often a parent neglects to tell his children what is deepest in his own heart, and with many not wholly worldly persons, the years pass away without any regular habits of Christian teaching and worship in the family. The remedy cannot come from mere formalism, but it must spring from a truer heart—more of the right spirit showing itself in the right way—in all wisdom and prudence, charity and devotion.

Speaking thus, who of us does not see a startling thought staring us in the face—the thought that our own personal character is the measure of our influence, and that we cannot expect to teach or impress what we have not taken to our own hearts. We cannot cheat our children into the virtue which we affect, for they will find us out, and distinguish what we do and are, from what we say. Influence cannot rise above the level of character, nor the fountain above the fountain-head. What motive to a truer life—what warning against vice and godlessness—what encouragement in all good—that the chief patrimony of children is the character of their parents, and with this treasure small gifts are wealth, and without this treasure rich gifts are poor indeed. Unhappy is the man who leaves to his children the influence of a heart hard as stone and a worldliness wily as a serpent! Precious the influence—blessed the memory of a parent, whose life has made the ways of wisdom pleasant and peaceful, secured to his offspring a childhood pure and happy, given a sacred and cheerful remembrance to be the handmaid of an immortal hope.

The affections, it has been said, press downward more strongly than they rise upward, and parents love their children more than children can love them in return. If this were so, it would but the more illustrate the fact, that life is not utterly selfish, and men live not for themselves alone. It is true, that we do not live for ourselves alone. The merchant at his counting-houses has thoughts beyond his gold and merchandize—visions more fair and kindly than these; and the hard-handed workman who does his ruder labor, spares of his earnings for his children at school. But the love is not all on one side, although time may be needed to adjust the balance, and teach childhood to appreciate a true parental care. God holds the balance, and will make it true. In the motive and in the result, he secures the reward of fidelity. Time and eternity will show, that the love which he has inspired shall win harvests of blessings that cannot perish.

Reverence in Children.

REVERENCE IN CHILDREN.

The Ten Commandments, the foundations of all law, both religious and civil, among civilized nations, are divided, all are aware, into two tables: the first treating of duties relating directly to God—the second treating of duties relating to man—the two covering the essential grounds of religion and morals. The command to honor father and mother begins the second table of the Law. Why should it not? for what so fitly stands at the head of the moral code, as the law that puts order into the household? The family is the form of government, first in time and first in importance. Home is older than church or court; a parent’s authority prior to that of priest or judge. With the family, social order began—without family union, social order must end.

There is something striking in the transition from the first to the second table—the transition from Jehovah’s assertion of his own sovereignty to his tender regard for the welfare of men. We seem to be looking down from the awful mountain with its barren crags into the peaceful valley with its pleasant homes and grassy lawns, rejoicing that the summits pealing with thunder send down refreshing breezes and fruitful showers into those plains below.

Looking up to God, who claims of us supreme homage as his due, and then in his own sovereign right urges upon us to fulfil our dues to each other, we speak now of the duties of children or the honor to be rendered by them to parents.

Do any ask what are the grounds of the Commandments? The grounds are obvious, and the law, which God enacts, instead of being an arbitrary decree, is in entire harmony with the nature of things. It would perhaps be needless to dwell on these grounds, were there not something in the temper of our times, that calls them in question—in fact, certain notions of intellectual liberty among theorists, that combine with the passions and caprices of youth to unsettle many a household, and threaten the peace of society itself. Against the sentimentalist, who makes light of all natural ties to glorify the individual’s own intuitions or affinities, and against the little rebel, who comes to the same conclusion by a much shorter process, we urge the Divine law, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”

Honor them, because God bids it, and bids it not merely in the written code, but by the whole order of his providence, by the very constitution of society. However we may dispute about the best form or true foundation of government—maintain monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, to be the best form—declare Divine law, social compact, or popular will, to be the true foundation, all must agree in the Divine origin of the family and the Divine right of parental government. The instincts of nature, the words of revelation, the dictates of experience and expediency, all agree in this, and all illustrate the mind of God, the Creator of the family. The mind of God himself speaks or should speak through the parent to the child, so, that filial obedience is fitly another name for piety; so, that prayer itself borrows its most hallowed word from the reverence nurtured at home.

Trace out the law of dependence, and see how fully it urges the commandment—the law of dependence that rests with parents so much of the welfare of the child. Not merely food, clothing, and home, but all the higher goods of life, experience, wisdom, virtue, are to be looked for thus. As a general rule, benignant Providence itself has its chosen almoner in father and mother, and the gifts are blessed as they are received in reverence. We may indeed suppose monstrous cases, in which unnatural parents exact such folly or wrong, that obedience ceases to be a virtue. Such cases are not frequent enough to alter the general law, and even in these, a true child, in refusing to conform to what is evil in the sight of God, will do it in such a way as still to keep the commandment, and treat tenderly even a perverse father, and expostulate with his tyranny in a temper fitted more to subdue than irritate its violence. Such monstrous cases need little notice in any Christian community, where parents are generally ready enough to do the best, and give the most in their power for their children. In fact, for them, the Decalogue has no law, as if nature needed no decree to enforce parental love, and the affections of themselves pressed heavily enough downwards. The great need was and is of enforcing the obligation, that looks upward from child to parent. Our modern culture, with all its scope and refinement, has no substitute for this obligation; nay, needs it more than ever to check the wilfulness and laxity so likely to come from precocious fancy and unbridled temper. Experience is constantly showing, that even the external promise connected with the commandment meets the wants of our own times also, and now, as of old, filial obedience secures an efficient life and peaceful civilization,—“that it may be well with thee, and that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God shall give.” How many bright and dark chapters of recent history show how close is the connection between stability of society and filial respect—between allegiance to every worthy institution and the discipline that learns to regard a superior authority at home. This outward sanction the Gospel accepts, and carries it into the spiritual kingdom. By many a precept the apostles enforce the command, and by word and example, by the beatitudes of the mount, and the obedience of the cross, our Saviour imparts new blessing and worth to its observance.

We have a foundation then to build upon, and filial respect rests upon the Word of God, the welfare of the home, the good of society, and the peace of the soul. Let the sentiment be worthy of the Divine foundation. If worthy it will appear first of all as a feeling of affectionate reverence. It will not be worship as with the Chinese absolutist, nor mere friendship, as in the code of many a radical. The parent is of the same nature with the child, and is not to be adored; he is superior in age, experience and authority, and should have more than the friendly courtesy of an equal. Superior in degree, though not in kind, he is to be regarded with affectionate respect and deference. Any subjection more or less than this comes of wrong, and leads to wrong. To exact utter servitude is tyranny—to lower reasonable authority into flattery, entreaty, or apology, is an imbecile indulgence which a child should be as unwilling to ask as a parent to give.

If any hearers are ready to quarrel with us for presuming to define the quality and conditions of one of the great social sentiments, and to say that all the affections are best let alone without any forcing process, we are not troubled for a reply. No modern folly has been more thoroughly put down by analysis and experience, than the sentimentalist’s notion, that the affections are wholly their own law, and are not to be trained under reason, conscience and religion. Even in those sentiments which have most of the spontaneous play of genius—those which rejoice in poetry, music, and all the beautiful arts, the perceptions must first be trained to the nicest sense of the truth of things, and the rigid discipline of every true artist shames the folly of the dreamers who would make it appear, that the great art of life, as a school of the affections, is to be left to itself. No—our principles have vast power over our feelings, and they who from the beginning are trained to accept the great loyalties of a divine kingdom, will be loyal in their affections as in their creed, and their affections will come forth and grow up as the vine does by help of the very trellis which overlooks it.

The filial sentiment thus accepted and nurtured will not be idle, but will show itself in the tone of manners, the rule of conduct, the law of life.

Manners are but lesser morals, and closely connected with the greater morals. Good manners begin at home, and if they do not begin there, the desire for them is apt to end in poor affectation. The soul of politeness is mutual deference, and where should this have its origin but in the respect most directly sanctioned by God? Too often the true filial honor is forgotten, and, perhaps, from thoughtlessness more than disrespect, children are sometimes seen usurping the prerogatives of age, speaking in tones of petulant authority, and crowding themselves into the places of elders. The best place for them is their own place. Their own dignity, as well as that of their parents, is best furthered by the deference, that gives the household its best order and makes it the school of the graces, that adorn society with its pleasing gradations, and cheer the way to its best virtues. Full enough is the temptation, especially in cities, to fall short of this true deference and to rob childhood and youth of their best character. Manners, instead of being nurtured on the Christian root, are left too much to the dancing-master, and there are hosts of boys and girls adept in postures and airs proper for the ballet, and strangers to the reverence and simplicity that most honor them in honoring their elders. Precocious passion for dress and society is the bane of the one, and ridiculous affectation of manhood, especially of its follies, is the shame of the other. The girl, instead of being calmly at rest in a child’s healthful slumber, is aping the belle in the ball-room; and the boy is walking the street with his cigar, perhaps boasting of his powers at the bottle, instead of being where he should be, in his bed, getting strength for true manliness, not fevering himself into a ludicrous manikin. “Learn to show piety at home,” is thus another form of the ancient law, “Honor thy father and thy mother.”

The sentiment so essential to good manners will show itself as a rule of conduct, and filial honor will take the form of obedience. During the years of dependence this obedience is to be entire, for the parent must think and act for the child. No matter what precocity of memory or imagination, what privileges of education or amount of attainments, may seem sometimes to reverse the order of precedence, the child is to follow the parent’s counsels, and in so doing will gain alike in wisdom and discipline, for the experience of age is wiser than the pert wit of youth, and submission to a superior will is essential to a true schooling for the vicissitudes of life. It is not well to overstrain prerogative, and to insist on obedience as a sacrifice, where it might be made an attraction, if the reasons of the case are fully set forth. Nor is it well to make obedience wholly dependent upon a statement of reasons, for many things must be done for reasons that youth cannot appreciate, and kindness is never so decided as when the impatient shortsightedness of childhood is overruled by the far-seeing wisdom of maturity. Reason there should be in every request; but if the request were allowed to wait until the reasons could be understood, parental care would cease with the first restraint, and childhood would be left to itself at the first task or pain. God himself is our helper here, for he, who calls us in so many things to walk by faith without sight, has fitted youth for the same discipline, and made mild authority in the end more attractive and efficient than premature argument or feeble flattery.

Obedience, thus considered, will not be servile but filial, and will find its own honor in doing honor to its guardians. It will lead children to ask constantly what they can do for the happiness of the family and the welfare of its members. This duty is too little thought of, especially where there is none of that pressure of want which compels children to help in the maintenance of the family. No matter how great the wealth of parents or the retinue of servants on the watch for every care, there is still place for the earnest co-operation of each member of the family, and no refinements of living have abolished the duty of mutual help, and the grace of mutual deference. In most families the services of the children are needed for many friendly offices of greater or less importance, and none will deny that the comfort of every household is closely connected with what the children do or fail to do for its welfare. So early does the work, the responsible work of life begin, and so early may its springs of beneficence be opened.

Let any true household illustrate what we mean. What beauty in the filial confidence that reveals its troubles and needs, and asks counsel of superior wisdom! What comfort in the countless little services that lighten a father or mother’s care, or soothe their troubles! What grace in the unbought courtesies that youth may throw around the home, the refined deference, the kind remembrances too often left to the parade of drawing-rooms, but the proper ornament of the family circle! What power over the pains of sickness, or the languor of convalescence, in the solicitude and consideration which children may show, and showing, may bring to the weary pillow a balm more healing than medical art! And if stinted means require frugal expenditures, or even the active labor of the young, what worth in the filial thoughtfulness that anticipates the necessary economy, instead of repining encourages frugality, and asks to be useful instead of insisting on being indulged.

And when fortune, station, or intellectual eminence reward youthful aspiration, the aspirant never wins more respect than when he makes his parents his confidants and companions. Here our common nature is not at fault, for whenever in any public exercise or examination a young person does remarkably well, we all think at once of the parents, and the pleasure of the assembly is not complete until the people have confirmed their own enjoyment by sympathy with the father and mother. There is great power in this fact, and what it implies—great power in the fact that children honor parents by being truly honorable, and repay best the sacrifices of so many anxious years by making their own lives a credit and comfort to father and mother. This benefit lasts as long as life itself, and the integrity and efficiency of mature years carries out to the limit of existence the affectionate reverence of childhood.

Here the whole world is one, and the human heart is the same in all ages, and history and experience meet. What state of society can be blind to the meaning of the imprecation which was pronounced at the entrance into the promised land, and joined in the same doom the idolator and him who should “set light by his father and mother?” What philosophy can gainsay the sage of the Book of Proverbs, whose sententious moralizing rises into prophetic grandeur as he speaks of the unnatural son: “The eye that mocketh at his father or refuseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.” Who needs any interpretation of the feelings of David, or Joseph, or Solomon, in their joy or trial? How heartrending was the grief of the Psalmist over his recreant son—“Would to God, I had died for thee, my son, my son!” What beauty, as well as simplicity in the inquiry of Joseph for his father, when the prime minister of Egypt dismissed his courtly train, and weeping aloud, could only ask “Doth my father yet live?” What grandeur far above its gold and gems surrounded the throne of Solomon, when he rose to meet his mother, and called her to a seat at his right hand. “And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother, for I will not say thee nay.” What pathos and sublimity in the Saviour of men, when, embracing home and heaven in his parting words on the Cross, he commended his spirit to the Eternal Father, and intrusted his mother to the beloved disciple’s care. We need no more than this to show how the gospel glorifies the law, and crowns its morality and piety alike in its perfect love—“Woman, behold thy son”—“Disciple, behold thy mother.”

Hear the amen that goes from Calvary to Sinai—and Honor thy father and thy mother!

Brothers and Sisters.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS.

When Cain asked “Am I my brother’s keeper?” it seemed a very strange question to come from a man who had just murdered his brother and held him so cruelly in his keeping. Fear led Cain to disguise his guilt by repudiating his obligation, through an interrogation more negative than a flat denial. What he said in guilty fear, many are now ready to say in pretended humanity, and it is one of the conceits of our time to make light of ties of kindred in the name of a world-wide philanthropy. A melo-dramatic patriotism not particularly famous for domestic attachment has been ready to swear brotherhood to the whole nation, perhaps the whole race, and many a scape-grace who has been a sad plague to his own kindred, has been heard shouting at the top of his voice the three noble watchwords of which fraternity is a climax. Philanthropists sometimes labor under a similar error, and people who have had no especial solicitude or felicity in helping their own families and neighbors, presume to despise such near at hand interests as trivial, and seek to reform the world in a wholesale way. Professed Christians are not wholly free from the error. Some certainly there are who are ready to brother and sister all Christendom with most profuse generosity of tongue, who show their little sense of the meaning of the term by pinching selfishness towards those of their own blood, that seems to say, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

It is well, that large views of social obligation are making headway, and that Christianity has so mightily rebuked the narrowness of exclusive cliques and clanships. But if humanity is to be true in its progress, it must be true in its source; and if a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love not merely God whom he hath not seen, but the brother whom he hath not seen? In fact what is regard for our brother but the first and most obvious application of the second of the two great commandments? Our brother is our next neighbor, and even our humanity must begin with him, that it may be really worth any thing. We turn now to the collateral relations of the household, or the duties of brothers and sisters. Sacred and suggestive subject, speaking to each of us in the tones of our own peculiar experience. Let it speak to the conscience as well as to the sensibilities and the memory.

Where shall we begin but at the beginning, that is with the will of God, which is the ground of every duty? The family, as we have seen and believe, is the first form of society, a government founded by the Creator. All that can be said in favor of its peace and order, goes to set forth its collateral as well as its ascending and descending ties—to urge the obligations of brothers and sisters as well as parents and children. Co-operation between the former is as essential to the home, as are protection and dependence between the latter.

But to come more closely to the point, is it not true that proper respect for parents urges the duty now under consideration and just filial love must needs be fraternal? Children cannot be true to their parents without being true to each other, and the welfare and charm of the household depends in no small degree upon the mutual help and moral harmony of its younger members. Children are not regarded as so many separate units, but as an organic whole, as members one of another; and when they are considerate and harmonious, they have new grace and worth in the parent’s eye, more so to his heart, than the features of the fairest landscape where the particulars combine in the whole, and light, shade, grove and river, hill and valley—fair in themselves, are fairer together, can possibly have to the eye of the lover of nature. What under the heavens is more pleasant and lovely than brethren who with all their differences of taste and temperament still agree in aim and spirit? It is indeed like the dew of Hermon, that threw its silver veil over mountain and valley, and refreshed and beautified each tree and flower with a baptism from heaven.

But this relation of fraternal love to filial is but one of its aspects. Brothers and sisters are related by what they owe directly to each other, as well as by what they owe to parents. The will of God, that bids them agree for their parents’ sake, bids them also agree for their own sake. Mutual educators of each other they must be, and by means far more powerful than school-books or lessons. They are constantly together, and this intercourse must be a selfish collision, if it be not a friendly reciprocity. In childhood, they must needs be frequent rivals for the favors and duties of the home, subjects of indulgences or sacrifices, that must awaken strife, unless they are shared in mutual deference. With childhood, however, the relation does not end, but may have in mature years its gravest importance, for in the order of nature parents are likely to be first taken from the world, and to all human view they may be beyond the reach of kindness or unkindness. But the relation of children to each other promises to last far longer, may create between the elder and younger a relation parental as well as filial, and for good or ill it must in some way continue as long as life itself. How essential, then, that a tie so enduring should be rightly regarded, and that in childhood, youth and maturity, it should keep its benignant hold over the family!

Nor does its importance end here. The method of God is, that the affections shall grow outward from within, and that being trained in kindness at home, men should be prepared to show good will to each other in all the concerns of life. As the patriarchal dispensation, in the grand course of ages, widened into the universality of the gospel, so in every true life, a just family culture is to expand into a generous humanity, that learns at home how to speak of a broader brotherhood, and a higher fatherhood. Whether God’s method is not wiser than man’s let experience show by contracting the windy declamation, that mistakes rhetorical generalities for comprehensive benevolence, and the judicious, unostentatious beneficence that carries out in all its relations the sober good will cherished in a wholesome household discipline, and so on a true pattern strives to build up the larger household of faith. The one begins at the root, and so branches out in blessing—the other would begin with the branches, which wither away when parted from the root.

So then in the will of God, revealed in the constitution of the family, the welfare of its members, the spirit of humanity, we find the foundation of the duties of brothers and sisters. The fraternal sentiment must be in accordance. In all our affections, there must needs be some lights and shades that depend upon the individual’s gifts and experience, for no man is a rule for all, and we must differ in our likings as in our looks. Yet all primal obligations have essential features in common; and the fraternal sentiment, although less instructive than the parental, and more complex than the filial, has quite as decidedly a character of its own. The phrenologist may not locate it in a special organ of the brain, and the metaphysician may not make of it an instinct by itself, but it has its root none the less in nature, and loses no interest from expanding so generously under true associations and culture. When true, the fraternal sentiment unites congeniality with consanguinity, and developes friendship from kindred blood, as the parted branches open into leaves, and blossoms, and fruits, kindred in their aims as their source. Its nature is better shown by tracing out its just influence than by attempting to arrest its flitting shades of hue, or to analyze its constituent elements. Here, too, is the practical bearing of the subject, a bearing which many slight far more from thoughtlessness than from indifference. In what light are brothers or sisters called to regard each other?

Their first obvious duty is that of due consideration for each other. They are to consider each other’s circumstances, needs, trials, dispositions, opportunities, and never allow selfishness or indifference to blind them to what belongs to them in common. Does this need to be said of persons who are so near, as of necessity to be always in each other’s thoughts? Ah, what is more frequent and obvious, than that familiarity tempts indifference, and that our very primal duties, like the stars which are their emblems, are easily forgotten because they may at any time be seen? The things most significant are likely to be near at hand, and religion, like philosophy, finds its chief triumphs in opening the meaning of what God has brought to our very door. A part of the power of absence from home lies in breaking the spell of familiarity, and leading the absent one to look impartially upon the familiar circle, and upon his own place and conduct there. Many a youth or maiden has returned from a journey or voyage wiser far in sense of home duties than proud of the accomplishments of travel. True consideration will not need absence to teach this lesson, but from its calm point of view the absent one will survey the common spheres of life, and try to live for others as under the eye of God.

In each family there will be decided need for mutual consideration, and there must be strife, unless there is mutual deference. All cannot have all the favors, and the division of them may embroil a household as bitterly as the division of an empire has embroiled rival heirs of thrones. Where means are limited, mutual sacrifices not always easy must be made, and few families pass many years without feeling the power of consideration, or of selfishness in meeting the privations that must go round their circle. When means are abundant, and every wish has ready wealth at its command, the form of forbearance may change, but its essential spirit is none the less needed. There will still be differences of talent, looks, manners, opportunities, health, experience, that require in the most prosperous household the same virtues, that give the humblest cottage its dignity and peace. In every family, there will be some call for peculiar consideration or regard to some member of it, according as sickness, infirmity, youth, age, deficient or extraordinary ability, may call upon the stronger to serve the weaker. What wretchedness when the call is slighted, even by one! Who can calculate the mischief wrought by a sensual or reckless brother, who makes every thing secondary to his own passions and pleasures, or by a frivolous and heartless sister, who makes a god of fashion and enslaves the whole house to her monstrous vanity! Who, too, can calculate the influence of a high-minded brother in guiding and cheering the younger members of the family, or of a devoted and judicious sister in soothing every impatient humor with a face in which shines, perhaps, the light of the sainted mother’s countenance? When all unite in some common solicitude, God gives their daily bread and cup a sacramental grace, and from some sufferer whom they watch over together, a mighty blessing, uniting, exalting them all, comes forth, and seems to say in the sacred name, “Ye have done it unto me.”

Consideration will lead to confidence, and will banish deceit, that viper of society, from the hearth-stone, which too often warms it into life. Let confidence begin early, move the lips first lisping for utterance, and continue in maturity, when the world’s folly that sometimes names itself experience shall try to teach disguise as prudence, and artifice as wisdom. Whatever we may think of the confessor, as an official person, confession is founded in the nature of things, and God bids us confess our faults one to another. Who ought to be confidential, if not those whose experience and destiny so unite their lives? I cannot even glance at the chief forms of this confidential relation. One aspect may be specified which is too often forgotten—that between brother and sister. If these were more candid advisers, each would be better for it—each imparting to each the counsel that each can give. With feminine insight and purity, what a kind and gentle, yet strict and earnest censor of youthful excess, the one may be. With manly judgment and honor, what a firm and scrupulous, yet tender and considerate adviser in reference to many follies and dangers may the other be. Giddy as young people often are in their pleasures and caprices, it has sometimes seemed to me, that if a plan of life were to be drawn up by the youth of a family for each other, few treatises of morals would surpass it in purity of spirit or rectitude of principle. Some follies would be sure to fall. Where would intemperance and its kindred vices be, if sisters were taken as counsellors? Where would indecent costumes, immodest dances, equivocal friendships be, if brothers were more frequent advisers? This negative influence is not a tithe of the worth of the relation, which God in his infinite tenderness and wisdom has decreed—a relation so able to enrich ties of nature by every grace of mind and heart, and from likeness and unlikeness of constitution to develope one of the finest harmonies of our being. Its beauty cheers many a dark age of ancient rudeness, and adorns many of the brightest chapters of our modern culture. Would we know what brother and sister have been to each other, listen to the triumphal song of Miriam, as she braced anew the great heart of the law-giver with timbrel and psalm; or look to the grave of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha stood with Him who was the Resurrection and the Life. Do we ask more modern instances, stand under the open heavens and remember how Caroline Herschel shared the vigils of their illustrious explorer—open the pages of Neander, and think of her whose devotedness made a pleasant home of his otherwise solitary study, and encouraged him in his noble work of tracing out the progress of the divine life throughout all the mazes of theological controversy, and making church history a book of the heart, instead of the disputatious understanding. Do we need more—only conjecture the number of cases nearer at hand in which youth have been counselled and helped on through years of preparation to their calling or profession by a sacrifice that looked not to the world for motive, and asked not of the world reward for its success.

I need only name the crowning duty of brothers and sisters—the duty of being mutual helpers, for this is implied in what we have said of consideration and confidence. They whom God has so united should stand by each other in every worthy way—not selfishly exacting favors, but earnest to do good. Too often the contrary has indeed been the case, and history in most conspicuous passages, from the death of Abel and the exposure of Joseph to the wars of the Plantagenets and the feuds of the Bourbons, shows that strifes are bitterest when nearest home, and “a brother offended is indeed harder to be won than a strong city, and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.” Less conspicuous, because less monstrous, are the opposite cases, and Christianity itself leads the noble list of fraternal worthies, by presenting in its first disciples so many who carried ties of blood into bonds of faith, and strove together to the last for the kingdom that would make all brothers in God. The various forms of fraternal aid need not be specified, nor the cases described in which the death of parents or peculiar circumstances enhance the obligation, and the responsibility of parents devolves upon the elder children. Whatever the age, the welfare of children is closely connected with their mutual conduct, and its power reaches not merely to the division of time and cares, but to the highest interests of mind and heart. Firm principle, spiritual faith, devoted purposes, act and react collaterally with great power, and in the social as in the natural world, it is the side light and warmth that most applies the cheering rays from above. Happy the home where true peace dwells between kindred, and all various gifts are held in unity of spirit! While the circle remains unbroken, it is strong against the world. When broken it is still not desolate, and the orphan is not without a helper. There is love enough on earth to join with the love that has gone heavenward to make life cheerful, and keep hope firm.

Let all apply these thoughts. Children, apply them, and be kind in all you do and say. Youth, apply them, and be thoughtful where you are often tempted to be reckless. Elders, apply them, and never allow care or worldliness to chill the better affections of early days. Deep in the heart let the old home live, and its pleasant memories, brightened by kindly offices, open ever into immortal hopes. Old things must pass away, but from the Christian they can only pass away by being all made new—new in a spirit, that remembers best when progressing most, and crowns all friendships with charity divine.

Marriage.

MARRIAGE.

It is a remarkable fact, that He who came to be the Saviour from sin, whose name is coupled with the sorrow that he would alleviate, began his public ministry at a marriage, and gave the first proof of his powers amidst its festivities. Yet why wonder at it—for where should the Gospel begin its work if not with the union that founds the family and should secure every social and moral good? How, moreover, could the genius of Christianity better show itself than by such a practical rebuke of the asceticism that scorned the social affections, and would make of life a ghostly austerity, just as if man were heavenly by being unearthly? It needs no great ingenuity to imagine our Lord’s feelings, as with his kindly and majestic thought he looked upon that scene, and gave his blessing to the youth and maiden who were probably of his own kin. He saw all the serious and trying aspects of human life even in its best estate, yet none the less gave them joy upon their union.

It is well that he was at that feast. The ages since have remembered his presence, and his sacred name, heard still at the marriage, deepens its memory, and consecrates its joy. The two ideas thus connected in fact are connected in principle, and the moralist need not in any enlightened community fear to speak of the Christian view of marriage, or care at all either for the giggling levity that sees nothing solemn in the subject, or for the sanctimonious gravity, that considers religion profaned by being made practical. There are some difficulties in the way of a frank treatment of the subject; I know our customs do not favor the homely simplicity of the language of the Bible in the discussion of marriage, and he must be very adventurous who undertakes to use the plain speech of the old divines, whether in the quaint aphorisms of Thomas Fuller or the jewelled periods of Jeremy Taylor. Yet it is not well to be very fastidious or mystify any subject by ingenious circumlocution, and we propose to say some plain words on the relation of husbands and wives in continuation of these thoughts upon home duties.

Not much need be said upon the foundation of this relation. It rests clearly upon the will of God, the best good of the parties, and the welfare of society.

As the Creator and Preserver of mankind, as the Lord of Nature and the Father of Spirits, God has made us social beings, and decreed that the most important association should be a lasting one. The natural law, which in lower creatures establishes a transient union, enacts the permanence of the higher relation, and when profoundly studied agrees with the precepts of Revelation and the results of the best experience.

God’s will is clearly shown in the effect of marriage upon the moral condition of the parties themselves. It is generally essential to their true life—to the proper development of their affections and faculties. Under good Providence, it is the school of the heart, the motive to the most laudable exertion and sacrifice. There are persons indeed whose peculiar duties may exempt them from its cares,—scholars, devotees, philanthropists, who may give their whole heart to their chosen speciality, and make of science, religion or humanity their family and home. Yet these are not the general rule, and even these generally prove that the peculiar power acquired by concentrating their whole mind upon a single pursuit gives them force at the expense of breadth of culture, and may be morbid because preternatural. The monk and nun, in the convent or out of it, have done noble things, and every faithful memory must bless them for it—but not the noblest things. They have shown much mercy, yet quite as much spiritual pride. If they have fed the poor, they have framed the Mass Book and the Confessional. If they have cared for the orphan, they have also invented infant damnation and the Inquisition, insisting on hell hereafter for all not baptized by their priesthood, and devising a hell here below for all heretics against their creed. Unmarried people ruled Christendom for a thousand years, and that they did not rule in wisdom, the Bible, history, and our best modern culture all declare. Nay, the very sage of modern celibacy, Swedenborg, gave years of his life and the chief labors of his pen to prove, that the best wisdom comes from minds united conjugially, imbuing thought with affection, and informing affection with thought, and so best interpreting the God in Christ. They who may be puzzled by his mystical lore will have no difficulty with the more practical argument, or refuse to allow that the most healthy thought and feeling, the most comprehensive culture, frequents the home which a true marriage makes.

“Marriage,” says Jeremy Taylor, “is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms and fills cities and churches and heaven itself. Celibate, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house, and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labors, and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and keeps order, and exercises many virtues, and promotes the interest of mankind, and is that state of good things to which God hath designed the present constitution of the world.”

To carry out the argument and show the necessity of this relation to due provision for children, to the peace and purity of society at large, would but lead us into common-places that can as well be spared. Better pass on and speak of the nature and duties of the relation in question.

It differs from the other relations that we have thus far considered, first of all in the fact, that it is elective or voluntary. The tie is one of choice, not of blood, and of course this fact of itself speaks to reason and conscience to stir themselves in the choice, instead of leaving it to a giddy eye or a silly ear. The relation, moreover, is exclusive, and in this fact it is distinguished from all ties of blood and all other ties of choice. Again it is entire—extending to all the interests of human life. Elective, exclusive, entire, marriage is thus the most momentous of human relations. Decalogue, Gospel, Providence, experience, all declare it such, and rest upon an act of choice the only obligation that brooks no rival and allows no limitation.

In accordance with the tenderness and dignity of the relation, the ruling sentiment and correspondent duties must be. Of the sentiment, more than filial or parental love, more than brotherhood, for which friendship is an inadequate name, and which at once fascinates by natural affinities and binds with the sacredness of religion, I have no elaborate analysis to give. We escape at once the peril of maudlin sentimentality and metaphysical abstraction, by speaking of the sentiment in the practical fruits, which best show its nature.

We say first of all, that husband and wife should be true to each other—true first and last. Wo to them, if they begin their relation with a lie, either spoken or acted. They promise to love, honor and cherish each other, and they lie abominably in the sight of God and their own consciences, if they nullify the solemn promise by capricious levity or sordid selfishness. Full liberty of conscience must be allowed for the action of various minds, temperaments, circumstances, and not all dispositions are to be judged by the same degree of the moral thermometer. Yet of all diversities of gifts, this statement holds good, that marriage begins in an impious falsehood, if the parties do not regard each other with affection and respect, and do not mean to be mutual helpers. An earth-born impulse should not steal a sacred name, nor a mercenary bargain intrude its traffic into precincts more sacred than the temple courts. The sale of a human creature under the marriage ring is more degrading because more voluntary than under the auctioneer’s hammer, and God will not withhold his verdict against the profanation of his altars by such outrage against nature and the Gospel.

The beginning is true, when the bond is sincerely assumed, and spirit and truth go fully together when the whole mind and heart agree in a congeniality without alloy and without misgiving.

True in the beginning, husband and wife are to be true in their progress together. Of that gross falsity against which God launches an express law of the Decalogue, and of whose curse on the offender and the victim, so many wretched lives and homes are the providential commentary, I need not speak with minuteness. Fidelity demands more than any negative policy—demands truthfulness throughout the whole relation, the confidence that will not mask its face or thought in reserve, and will deem it a fraud to confer with any third party upon any matter belonging in its nature to the two. It is the beginning of bitter sorrow, when this limit is overstepped, and that enamel of mutual confidence is broken, which kind Heaven has given for the protection of so delicate a nerve.

Nor does truthfulness end here. It must be positive in word and in action—prompting the parties to share their thoughts and plans together, and to prove by devotion to each other’s welfare the truth of what they say. We spare the digression to many satirists so attractive, and saying nothing of the cheats of married life, whether the frauds of selfishness or the wiles of overfondness, we are better pleased to leave the other aspect of the picture uppermost, and speak of God’s blessing upon all who keep their truth by being true as well as kind.

We add now a second duty of married persons—one that has a very prosaic sound, touching a matter so near the springs of feeling. We say that husband and wife should be reasonable—reasonable that they may be true in fact as well as in purpose. Feeling of itself, even when healthy, is a poor guide, sadly blind without reason. Whether it go with love or indifference, folly carries misery into the home. The proverb is true enough—

“A stone is heavy and the sand weighty,
But a fool’s wrath is heavier than both;”

and we might add, a fool’s love is quite as heavy as his wrath. We speak not of the folly, which is a natural misfortune, but that of minds befooling themselves by levity, or dissipation, or idleness. Nothing wears better than good sense, and nothing is more essential to permanent congeniality and usefulness. It is sometimes a stern censor, but only because it wishes to be an honest friend. Let married persons take it for their counsellor and it will settle for them many questions, which inflame self-will and disturb love itself. They need above all others to be reasonable, to look to reason with all its revealed lights as the interpreter of God’s will to them, and of their own relation to each other. It is a great thing for them to start in life with reasonable views of the most common-place arrangements of the household. How much disappointment, and bitterness, and sin, come from unreasonable views of expense, and who will undertake to estimate the amount of domestic misery resulting from household extravagance? The dress of many a wife, and the wine account of many a husband has been the ruin of the family. Let every couple start with a fair understanding as to what they can afford to spend, and keep sacredly within the limit. If the world laughs at their simplicity, they can well afford to laugh at the world’s folly, and time will be very likely to put the laugh upon the right side. Much might be said of the deplorable influence of the extravagant notions of most young women in preventing thoughtful men from taking the risks of marriage, and we hazard nothing in saying that the worst vices of cities are closely connected with the growth of feminine extravagance. America will lose her birthright and have no trace of the old domestic order, if the folly runs through the land, and most girls are brought up to exact more expense than the average returns of industry and talent can earn.

Good sense, that honest counsellor, will save the parties from all controversy about prerogative, will interpret their peculiar jurisdictions duly; teaching the man to take the lead without magisterial assumption, to be the guardian without playing the tyrant; teaching the woman to follow his fortunes without being his slave, and to accept his deference without becoming his imbecile toy; exhibiting both in their likeness and difference, equals and not equals, so that the twain are made one by a due balance of gifts and harmony of contrasts.

Is there not need of urging with some emphasis the worth of reasonable relations between husband and wife? Are they not too ready to make a compromise of follies—the one annoyed by having her tastes and habits reviewed in the strong light of a masculine understanding—the other irritated at having his hard worldliness criticised by feminine refinement or sensibility—the two sometimes settling the difficulty by non-interference—the one left to extravagance and frivolity, if she will consent not to insist upon having her husband’s time or thought—the other allowed to drudge as he will, if he will not intrude his utilitarianism into her sphere, or apply common sense to the charming follies that devour the dollars and the days. It is all wrong, and no gifts of fortune can make up for the want of thoroughly rational companionship between parties so allied, and so apt to belittle each other by triviality. Both are gainers by it, and intellectually as well as morally—the more gainers as in generous studies of nature, art, history, society, they take a common interest in the enlarging and ennobling fields of thought, and their habitual confidence makes them educators of each other. Without being alarmed by the valiant Minervas who brandish their flashing spears from reform platforms, and declare an independence at which the old Revolutionary signers would have stood aghast, we believe that the most thorough practical discipline is to be found in this home school, and the enlargement of feminine perception and the refining of masculine vigor, would advance vastly under such a culture. There would be a better mutual understanding of the two great domains of life, and a holy alliance between the two great families of minds. In plain language, if husband and wife would advise with each other fully on all important subjects, the robust understanding would be much helped by the quick wit, and fewer foolish things, far fewer evil things would be done in the world. In phrase more ideal, yet equally true, if insight were better allied with argument—ready sensibility with executive strength—nice perception with comprehensive judgment, reason would have a new avatar on earth, and the light of God would shine as never before in its beauty and its power into each household, and over the great globe.

One more aspect of the class of duties before us now, we have to state, and one that comprises and carries out every other. They who marry are to live united in all the interests and purposes of existence.

The most obvious ground of union is the maintenance of the home and the welfare of the family. The order of Providence seems to require the one to provide by his labor or enterprise the means of livelihood, and the other to see that they are properly used. As manners are simple, and fortunes limited, the union of interests here is a very grave matter, and inefficiency or self-will on either side brings discomfort, perhaps wretchedness. As manners are refined, and luxuries abound, the same unity of minds is equally essential to give grace and true worth to the home. Let each respect the other in the several spheres, and combine to make both what they should be. Let not a man’s laborious gains be squandered in folly, nor a wife’s faithful care be disparaged as trivial. To use a homely word with a sacred meaning, who will not ask a blessing on good housekeeping? Is it not one of the fine as well as the useful arts—do not its very utilities like the fountain of living water sparkle into beauty? Happy they who know more of it than the tender mercies of hotels and boarding-houses reveal. They do not learn it well, unless they mingle faith with their economies, and keep the home in divine peace, as well as in worldly thrift. A home divided against itself cannot stand. Who shall keep it one save He in whom alone all souls can have the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace, and whose blessing is needed quite as much in a ducal palace as in the plainest farm-house?

How shall we urge at length this point of union, or illustrate its bearing upon all interests, plans, and hopes? It is a great thing for two frail natures to live as one for life long. Two harps are not easily kept always in tune, and what shall we expect of two harps each of a thousand strings? What human will or wisdom cannot do, God can do, and His Providence is uniting ever more intimately, those who devoutly try to do the work of life and enjoy its goods together. For them there is in store a respect and affection—a peace and power, all unknown in the heyday of young romance. Experience intertwines their remembrances and hopes in stronger cords, and as they stand at the loom of time, one with the strong warp, the other with the finer woof, the hand of Providence weaves for them a tissue of unfading beauty and imperishable worth. A blessing on the brave and gentle spirit of the elect poet of our time, Alfred Tennyson, for speaking in his exquisite verse a truth that might too much task our prosaic analysis:—

“For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse; could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain, whose dearest bond is this
Not like to thee, but like in difference;
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breath, nor fail in childward care:
More as the double-natured Poet each:
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summed in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,
But like each other even as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world’s great bridals, chaste and calm:
Then springs the crowning race of humankind.”

“It is the worst clandestine marriage,” said old Thomas Fuller, “when God is not invited to it, wherefore, beforehand beg his gracious assistance.” Equally bad, we add, is the marriage, where His presence is not retained, and they who at first sought His blessing do not hold to it ever to keep them true and thoughtful, to lift them into a union to which the Beloved Son was not ashamed to compare His own communion with souls. Perfection on earth we may not ask, nor call a hasty word or impatient thought unpardonable. They who love much must expect to forgive something and forbear sometimes. But this may be expected and is demanded, that they who take each other’s welfare in charge should never do any intentional unkindness, or fail of aught that may be done for the other’s welfare. This may be expected and is demanded, that when the tie that binds them is severed by the only power that can fitly part them, and they are to part at death—they should look back with mutual blessing to the hour of their first union, be assured that through all vicissitudes and infirmities, they have tried to make each other better and happier, and that they have learned of Him whose name at their Cana made their wedding sacred, to trust in the realm where they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God.

Shrink not from applying the truth now before us to ourselves. Parents, apply it, and in training your sons and daughters use good sense upon a subject so often left to utter folly. They talk and think about it enough in a certain way, and with such poor aids as trashy novels and paltry gossip. Let them think and talk about it wisely, and let them not, if you can help it, learn wisdom at the cost of wretchedness. Respect Heaven’s own laws, and do not allow the world’s fashions and tyrannies to get the better of reason and conscience in controlling the most important of destinies. Husbands and wives, apply the troth—allow no routine to chill affection—no monotony to break down thoughtfulness. If the envious years should not allow you to celebrate your golden or even your silver wedding, live while you may in the wisdom which is the word of love, and the worth of it is beyond silver or gold or rubies.

Our Friends.

OUR FRIENDS.

Every important word in human language is of itself a chapter of history, and if we could read it rightly would tell us the mind of all the ages that have shaped its form, and all the individuals who have given its meaning. Starting from the beginning, every such word passes from century to century, nation to nation, and makes of itself a medium as universal as the air which forms its tones. We cannot open our mouths, in any kind or honest way, without declaring the creed of humanity, that began with man’s creation, and has been enlarged or exalted by every sage and benefactor of our race. What word that is applied to men expresses this creed more than that of “friend?” From the very first, men have called each other friends, and our Saviour did not create, but developed the sense of the term, when he called his disciples friends. In the language in which Jesus was educated, the word flowed in the melody of David so true to friendship and to faith, and in the sentences of Solomon, never forgetful in his keenest prudence of the worth of friends. In the language which the evangelists borrowed from Greece, the word had won to itself many a classic charm, and in passing from the conversations of Socrates to the gospel of Christ, it deepened its meaning without damping its joy. St. John took from his Master’s lips more than Plato took from the mouth of Socrates, when that evangelist penned the words, “I have called you friends.” This holy sanction has not been forgotten, nor has Christ’s spirit left the word. Every age fills it anew with meaning, as the golden chalice from age to age is filled anew at the altar. Daily life and high art and letters show its power. It is breathed in many a song and hymn of home affections and fireside companionship. To what pathos it subdues the majestic muse of Milton in his lament for Lycidas—to what solemnity it lifts the wayward heart of Shelley in his elegy on Adonais—and when since the Hebrew harp that thrilled such sorrow at the death of David’s friend, has there been a holier and lovelier tribute to friendship than in the offering which in our utilitarian age the genius of Tennyson has laid on the tomb of Arthur Hallam? These are great instances indeed, but they speak what all may feel. Nay, what is the secret of the power of the poet or sage, except that he can best say what comes home to us all?

Friends,—We have and must have some whom we call such. Happy are we if they can be truly so called. It is not for us to choose, whether we shall have friends at all or in any sense, but it is ours to choose, whether we shall have them in the right sense. All people, however depraved, will have some associates whose company they to some extent enjoy, and he who cares for nobody and for whom nobody cares, may be set aside from the human family as essentially monstrous. Of monsters we are not treating, but of men, and with our common nature in view, I speak now of the duties of friends.

This relation is founded in the will of God and the being of man. God has made us dependent upon each other for protection and comfort. The dependence is not limited by family ties alone, but extends to a large circle, in some measure indeed to all with whom we deal or speak. Nor is it confined to material interests. Friendship is as much a moral fact under Providence as light or gravitation is a physical fact. We like to see and talk with people for the pleasure of their society, and are unhappy when long away from those we know best. God has made this to be so in the structure of our nature, and His work as Creator has been constantly carried out by His providential care for society and all its affinities.

Our need of friends shows His designing will, and His designing will is all the clearer as this need is well supplied. In fact, we cannot be truly ourselves without society. Our thoughts and feelings cannot fully come out apart from congenial companionship. It cheers us, it quickens our powers, stirs our purposes, and the very best things that have been done in the world prove its worth. Christ himself needed it, rejoiced in it, consecrated it. As His disciples went forth two and two to found the heavenly kingdom, the social element kept company with the religious in their own hearts, and in their creed. The divine charity which the gospel inspired, cherished personal friendships as well as general humanity. The grim hermit, in an age whose faith gloried in sacrificing companionship to piety, was glad to know that other persons like himself were in the same wilderness, and would have been frantic at the very idea of being the only person living in the world. His lonely cell was many a time lighted up by images of friends still loved.

A freer age has brought out anew the friendship of the gospel, and little as enlightened people nowadays may be inclined to put on the dress and phrases of the Quaker, there has probably never been a time when so many accepted the essential ideas which led George Fox, William Penn and their associates to reject the old names and forms, and call the Christian Church simply a society of friends. There is a kindly feeling over the world now, and much of the best hope of humanity rests upon the fact, that so many judicious and influential people of every land know each other pleasantly and wish each other well. So friendship even in this sinful world is showing God’s will for us, bringing out our own faculties and fulfilling the divine plans for mankind.

The sentiment, that animates the relation, needs little definition or analysis. In some sense, all understand it, although its best sense a true life only can teach. They are friends, who are attached to each other, with any kind of liking or loving. The attachment may begin in interest, as with parties in business or in pleasure, as with the votaries of some art or science, and as the interest or the pleasure is low or elevated, the attachment will shape its character. But however it begins, it never continues well and becomes genuine, unless the parties stand upon the same platform of principle, agree in what is highest and best, and in some way come within the scope of the Master’s sense of a true friend, when he said, “I have not called you servants—I have called you friends.”

Undoubtedly they are the best friends who differ much in incidental traits and agree in the essentials of character. Their likeness and their unlikeness brings them together. Their likeness makes them congenial, and their unlikeness makes them instructive and interesting to each other. Herein they follow the law of elective affinities, that runs through nature, and which makes a certain contrast essential to true harmony. Elective, yet not exclusive or entire, as the relation is, friends choose each other freely without ties of kindred blood, and however cordial the choice may be, it does not imply exclusive regard or entire union of interests. Affection, as well as esteem, enters into the sentiment, but in comparison with relations of blood and marriage, the element of esteem is generally larger in its composition than that of affection. It is esteem growing into affection rather than affection growing into esteem.

Come now to the practical point of view, and consider the duties of friends for ourselves. We have and desire to have friends, those who are such in general and those who are such particularly. What are we to do to keep or make them?

First of all we are to be sincere. Herein we must stand directly at issue with the fashionable world, that looks upon all sociability as an affair of manner, and manner as but one branch of costume—the mere dress of the tongue and eyes and looks. Let manner be respected, as it should be, yet what is it in its best estate but the simple and thoughtful expression of a gentle heart and a noble mind? It cannot be put on like a cloak, but must grow out as foliage and bloom from the life. It is so generally with manners in promiscuous society, but especially so between friends. They must be sincere alike for the sake of giving and of gaining the true goods of friendship. The heart itself thus acts happily, delighting in the free utterance of its convictions away from the world’s folly and harshness. It craves a congenial sphere to breathe freely and fully. Sincere alike in his playful talk and serious conservation, a man finds his nature expanding as his life opens under genial influences refreshing as sunshine and dew. Sincerity indeed needs a grain of caution, and a thoughtful person will not tell his whole mind always. But judicious reserve need not be won at the cost of truth or by the sin of hypocrisy. Taught discretion by some experience of the ridicule or the deceit in store for garrulous frankness, a true friend will be sincere always, yet need not feel himself called upon to open his whole heart to those unable or unwilling to give his confidence hospitality. His spirit will not be without answer. Truth will sit upon his lips and win truth for him. The true will find the true.

But not only are we to be sincere for the vast comfort and gain of free, genial companionship, but for its direct service to others. If we wish to know ourselves, we should be willing to help others know themselves by telling them the truth. Says Lord Bacon, “there is no such flatterer as a man’s self, and there is no such remedy against flattery of a man’s self as the liberty of a friend.” It is easy enough to get more or less than the truth regarding our failings, and friends often fret and spoil each other by a mutual retail of compliments and scandals which they make a business of collecting to be used in congratulation or condolement. What is better in view of such tale-bearing than a sincere counsellor, who at due times will tell the simple and entire truth, and above flattery and calumny will give honest advice upon faults of character and errors of conduct,—mingling kindness with caution, and never so encouraging as when thoroughly frank? This is a nice point, and one full of difficulties, yet the point is a main one, and a brave, generous heart need not fear the difficulties. No man is a true friend, who is not ready to be a faithful adviser, willing to wound self-love in its tenderest part, and give passing pain for the sake of lasting blessing. Not often and never with any assumption must he do this, but humbly as before the searcher of hearts, and in view of the benign and majestic being who washed his disciples’ feet before telling them of their defects, and opening to them the fulness of his wisdom and love.

Again, friends should be earnest as well as sincere—earnest not merely in feeling or temperament, but in the aims of life. What are we good for to others, unless we have heart ourselves for what is worthy, and are trying to be and do something for whatsoever is true, honest, pure and lovely, and of good report? A man is worth little or nothing to others unless he is earnest for worth in itself. What more frequent cause is there of the too frequent flatness of what passes for society, than the want of earnestness in its members, the prevalence of a monotonous mediocrity of thought and manner, which makes people uninteresting because they are not interested in much of any thing sensible or elevating? How much power there is in the true companionship to which each brings the zest of his own pursuit, the enthusiasm of his own favorite aim, and all are made wiser and happier by the thought and spirit of each. Part of the influence of such friendship is seen at once in cheerful looks and renewed courage. The better part is not seen, for wherever persons really in earnest meet together, no matter what their calling or topic may be, there is a power among them, that brings their heart into closer relation with the eternal heart, and whether conscious of it or not, men go away confirmed in faith—deepened, whatever their creed, in the sense that God is, and his spirit is abroad among his people.

The nobler their pursuit or their habitual aims, the greater power do friends give and take by their earnestness—the better the spirit which they bring to their personal intercourse. They are more interesting as individuals, as they are mutually interested in matters above themselves, and instructive and attractive to each other. Every honorable interest unites those who cherish it, and beautifully has Jeremy Taylor said, “He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together.” Of every honorable interest the quaint old poet’s saying upon honor itself holds good:—

I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

What earnestness for every generous aim filled the heart of him who sat at the table of communion, inflamed the earthly minds around with heavenly faith and fervor, as he bade them be one with him in God, after he had said, “I have called you friends.” Blessing repeated in some measure where any sincere and earnest people interchange thoughts and feelings! Blessing written on all true companionship since Jesus lived and died!

Need we add kindness to sincerity and earnestness as essentials of friendship, for is it not implied? Implied, certainly, although there is a certain kind of earnest sincerity, that lacks the tenderness which this word expresses. It expresses none other than the crowning grace of charity in its familiar application. Kindness, genuine and between persons of congenial minds, watchful to yield its balms and dews, when fortune is sharp or the world is a weariness, instant ever with a sympathy unaffected and unobtrusive in trouble and in joy—living commentary upon the sacred sentence:—

“A faithful friend is the medicine of life,
And they that fear the Lord shall find him.”

Then griefs by being communicated are less and joys greater. “Indeed,” says South, “sorrow like a stream loses itself in many channels, and joy, like a ray of the sun, reflects with a greater ardor and quickness when it rebounds upon a man from the breast of a friend.”

In such kindness there will be an element of magnanimity which will check the selfish calculation that measures regard by gold, and exchanges relations of affinity for bonds of profit and loss. We will not say there is no friendship in trade, but that it is incongruous to make trade of friendship. The more the relation is one of reciprocal sentiment, and the less it is unbalanced by patronage or dependence, the more it moves in its own element and yields its own reward.

The more likely too it is to be lasting, and crown sincerity, earnestness, and kindness, with constancy. Too many things there are to break the unity of our lives, and scatter into fragments our book of experience. Yet some ties we need, and may have, that run their silken thread through its various chapters, and make a volume of the leaves else fragmentary as the Sibyl’s. True friends are such ties, and whether of our kindred or not, they can be won by friendliness and kept only by constancy. Some deemed such may fall off and become indifferent, perhaps false, but who that has any heart cannot feel happy in some form of constant kindness, and say with the Scripture and from experience:

“A friend loveth at all times,
And a brother is born for adversity.”

Happiness indeed, when as we go through life and take its ups and downs, and look upon its ever-enlarging horizon, we can meet betimes and often some one or more whom we have known from youth, and whose very faces and voices express our best remembrances and hopes. As rising above dull etiquette, we call them by their familiar names, and say William, or Henry, or Mary, or Ellen, grim time seems to drop his inexorable scythe, and the roses that appeared withered in our path bloom out as amaranths of immortality. Power, as well as pleasure, comes from the interview, especially if, under the incentive, noble friendship gives its fascinations to wisdom, and thus stirred we review our lives closely, scrutinize our ways seriously, and our whole experience rises up under a new charm to warn us of evil and urge us to good, ready to say religiously:

“Change not a friend for any good, by no means,
Neither a faithful brother for the gold of Ophir.”

Do we think enough of this whole subject of companionship—enough of it for ourselves and our children? In some way, perhaps, we may think enough of being in society, and we may have a sharp eye on our list of acquaintance, be eager enough for the silly race of ostentatious eating, drinking, and dressing, that is the life of our semi-barbarous fashion, or for the frivolous social circles, where friendship is part of the play, and they who flatter each other to the face, laugh at each other as soon as the back is turned; and in perhaps honeyed words character is depicted as sharply as if cannibals had but changed their policy, and brought their teeth to bear in a different way, not upon the flesh but upon the life. Perhaps we have a better ambition, and desire for ourselves and our children the society of the refined, and wise, and good. This is well, but one point must not be overlooked. There is no getting into really good society but by growing into it. We may win entrance to the houses and tables of distinguished people perhaps, but our real friendship with persons of sterling character must depend on our character and culture. Ask honestly—what are we, what have we made and are making of ourselves and our children? And our worth will be the precise measure of the friendship we deserve and are likely to have. Here is motive for the best culture of the mind and heart. A man’s own essential character—what he thinks, knows, is, and can do,—it is this that opens to him true companionship, and by a law as universal as that of specific gravity, he rises or falls to his own level. Is it not worth a life’s effort to be worthy to win and enjoy the intimate companionship of choice minds?

Do we think of this in the training of our children? Do we try to educate their social affections morally and intellectually—strive to make our houses attractive to sensible people, to give our sons distaste for profligates, and our daughters disgust for fops and fools? Are we laying the foundations of sincere and elevating relations that shall put the due check upon the evil communications that so corrupt good manners? If not, think seriously of the neglect, and do better, as you fear God and love the best in the life he has given us.

Cheerfully, gratefully, leave the subject as we consider what He has done for us, and ask His blessing on all whom we hold dear. God bless our friends! Bless them all in their widest and their inmost circle; bless all the kindly people with whom we have interchanged pleasant words, and who more than the landscape have reflected in any way his light and love; bless all who from age or wisdom have taught us truth and reverence, instructors, guardians, counsellors, pastors, on earth or gone from the earth; bless those nearer sharers of our lot, sincere, earnest, tender, constant companions, whose names are familiar at our table and sacred in our prayers; bless Him, whose gospel crowns all good will with its divine love, and calling all friends who lived in God’s love, leaves to all the benediction of His parting prayer: “Holy Father! keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.”