The Nature of Home

Our home is the one spot on earth where is concentrated the largest percent of our earthly interest. There are few human beings without a home or the memory of one. The vast multitude that surges through the streets of the great city is made up of individual souls, each of which tonight will seek someplace it calls home. There are those who roll through the streets with golden livery to palaces where brilliant lights and gorgeous tapestry and plushy carpets await their coming.

There are those who walk the frosty pavement with cold and bleeding feet, whose homes are in damp and dreary cellars, or in the rickety garrets of worn and wretched hovels. No lights, no music, no feasts await them, nothing but a crust and a bed of straw. And yet these places in all their wretchedness are the homes of human beings. There is still another class of homes, where has been answered the heart's best prayer, "give us neither poverty or riches;" where peace and joy and love and contentment dwell; where industry and frugality, with sunbrown hands and healthful appetite, sit at the board of plenty. But whether the home be a palace, a cottage, or a garret, it is home.

Home is in the soul itself; and, to a certain extent, is independent of outward circumstances. Of this inward home the outward is but an expression; and yet it is doubtful if the outward is ever a true expression of the inward, inasmuch as men's ideals always transcend their experience. Neither the wretched hovel where vice and hunger dwell, nor the palace where lies the gilded corpse of love can be a true home.

"Home is the resort of love, of joy, of peace and plenty, where supporting and supported, polished friends and dear relations mingle into bliss."

Next to religion, the home sentiment is the strongest in the human heart. At the name of home the better impulse of every heart awakens. As the chord of the instrument is dead to every sound until its own harmonic chord is struck, when it vibrates and taking up the sound prolongs it as if it could not let it die, so many a darkened mind is dead to every appeal save that magic sound, "home!" The lives of thousands who have been snatched as brands from temptation's fire will testify to the magic power of a sister's early love, while the sudden remembrance of a mother's "good night kiss" has stayed the assassin's dagger. In the dark and loathsome dens of iniquity there are those whose lips have, for years, acknowledged their Creator only in oaths; whose eyes have shed no tears, and whose ears have heard only the blasphemies of drunken revelry. And yet could an unseen hand write upon those walls the words "Home" and "Mother's Love," lips would quiver, eyes would swim, and from the depths of many a soul in which the germs of truth and love had long since seemed dead, would burst the heart-rending confession---

"Once I was pure as the snow, but I fell,
Fell like a snow-flake from heaven to hell,
Fell to be trampled as filth of the street,
Fell to be scoffed at, be spit on and beat;
Pleading, cursing, begging to die,
Selling my soul to whoever would buy;
Dealing in shame for a morsel of bread,
Hating the living and fearing the dead."

The powerful influence which the home sentiment exerts over the minds of men was shown in a striking manner a few years ago at Castle Garden, New York. Some ten thousand people had gathered there to listen to that sweet-voiced singer, Jenny Lind. She began with the sublime compositions of the great masters of song. Her audience applauded her with a respectful degree of appreciation. But at length, with sweetness ineffable, born of the holy parentage of genius and passion, she poured forth that immortal song, "Home, Sweet Home." At once the irrepressible contagion of sympathy spread through that vast audience. Peal on peal of thunderous applause resounded, until the song was stopped by the very ecstacy of those who listened; and when the soft refrain was heard again, that mass of humanity was melted into tears; the great masters were all forgotten, while ten thousand human hearts knelt at the shrine of a poor and obscure outcast. Why was this? Was Howard Payne a greater genius than they? Must these mighty names yield their places to one whom the world has forgotten? No; it was simply because when sorrow laid his iron hand on the heart of Howard Payne, in his cruel grasp he chanced to strike that chord which vibrates to a lighter touch than any in the human heart save that alone swept by the master's hand.

"Home of our childhood! how affection clings
And hovers 'round thee with her seraph wings!
Dearer thy hills, though clad in autumn brown,
Than fairest summits which the cedars crown."

The rough experiences of the roaring, toiling, stormy world may blot out all other images from the mind, but the picture of our early home must hang forever on the walls of memory, until "the silver cord be loosed or the golden bowl be broken."

The old man may not recall all the experiences, all the struggles and triumphs of his early manhood; but every feature of his childhood home, every little play-house that he helped his sister build, is photographed upon his heart's tablet and can never fade away. Perchance the golden light of eternity will not dim the brightness of that picture. Whatever else the heart may forget, it cannot forget the place of it's birth; it cannot forget the little broken cart, the sled and the kite, the sister's fond caress, the brother's generous aid, the father's loving counsel, and the mother's anxious prayer.

"That hallowed word is ne'er forgot,
No matter where we roam;
The purest feelings of the heart
Still cluster 'round our home.

"Dear resting place where weary thought
May dream away its care,
Love's gentle star unveils its light
And shine in beauty there."

But the ministry of home consists not alone in its fond memories and hallowed associations. It is the great conservator of good, the "seeding place of virtue." It is the origin of all civilization. The laws of a nation are but rescripts of its domestic codes. The words uttered and the doctrine taught around the fireside are the influences that shape the destinies of empires.

It is the influences of home that live in the life of kingdoms, while parental counsel repeats itself in the voices of the republics. We would impress upon the minds of our readers this grand truth, and would that we night thunder it into the ears of all mankind, that a nation is but a magnified home. Parliament and Congress are but hearthstones on a grander scale. Those great and noble characters who have left a deathless impress upon the history of nations were not fashioned on battle fields, but in the cradle and at the fireside. They are those, moreover, who at every period of life, at every turn or fortune or adversity, have never forgotten the old home.

A mother breathes, under the canopy of a cradle, a prayer that her darling boy may be a conqueror in life's battle; that the hosts of sin may flee before the sword of his manly virtue, and from that cradle there arises a youth with that same prayer upon his lips, and in virtue's coat of mail he goes forth to battle. Harmless as the fall of snow-flakes, from his helmeet drop the broken arrows of temptation's besieging armies. Fearlessly he marches through the dismal swamps of poverty and hunger and cold. With sweating brow he toils up the rugged steep of knowledge.

"Till full upon his vision gleams
The prophecy of early dreams."

Humble and modest as a maiden he receives a nation's benediction with its crown. And when death's untimely visit drops the veil over life's grandest triumph, fifty million human hearts bow in the dust before the sable banners of a nation's sorrow.

When, think you, were fashioned the pillars of that colossal character? Did they spring up to meet the emergencies of fame and power? No! they were sculptured in the sacred quarry of the cradle with that chisel which only a mother's hand can wield. When we stand in the presence of art's grandest achievements we feel like bowing before that genius which can take from the hand of nature a block of marble and hew away the chips that hide a waiting angel. But the mother of Garfield took from the hand of God the unformed elements of a human character and shaped them into something it were blasphemy to compare with the proudest creation that ever leaped from the brain of genius--a God-like man.

"O wondrous power! How little understood!
Entrusted to a mother's mind alone,---
To fashion genius from the soul for good."

No argument is necessary to convince us of the potency of home influence in shaping character. There are certain truths to which it is only necessary to call attention, and minds instinctively assent to them, and to this class, we believe, belong those general truths concerning home which we have mentioned. Indeed, they are recognized and taught in the trite maxims of every-day life. Napoleon understood well the nature of home and its mission when he said, "The great need of France is mothers." An old Scotch proverb says, "An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy." Mohammed said, "Paradise is at the feet of mothers."

Might not some American statesman say, "The throne of freedom's goddess is the hearthstone"? Our government is a grand experiment. Its ship is on an unknown sea and sails through unsounded waters. It is true that other governments have styled themselves republics, but with all of them there have been reservations that have made them republics only in name. Ours is the first experiment with a true republic. If we fail in this experiment, if our government fails, the world will hear the echo of that fall till the end of time as a dismal, warning sound. The victorious shout of error is the most dangerous sound that can fall upon the human ear. Rest assured that our government is no trifle. That ever restless spirit of liberty that today confronts the troubled principalities of Europe, is looking anxiously to the issue of our experiment. Mothers and fathers, that issue rests with you.

Your boys are soon to take the reins of this high mettled steed, America. A nation's only hope is in them, and their only hope is in you; and the instruments which God has put into your hands with which to fit them for this high office, are the influences of home. You today are writing on the yielding tablets of their hearts and minds the preface to the next volume of our nation's history. America should fear the disloyalty and contention of the fireside more than the nefarious plots of scheming politicians.

If your boys wrangle and contend at home, if they can not discuss with dignity the little questions that arise in their daily intercourse with one another, be sure they will not honor the nation when they take their places in senate halls to discuss the great problems that confront the civilization of the nineteenth century.

Now, if home may be so powerful an influence for good, how important becomes the cultivation of the home sentiment. To be destitute of this sentiment is almost as great a misfortune as to be destitute of the religious sentiment. Indeed, we believe that one cannot possess a true and exalted love of home while there is wanting in his character that which when awakened may yield the fruit of a godly life. What a mighty responsibility rests upon him who essays to make a home, for the founding of a home is as sacred a work as the founding of a church. Indeed, every home should be a temple dedicated to divine worship, where human beings through life should worship God through the service of mutual love--the highest tribute man can pay to the divine.

If the home sentiment be one of the strongest passions of the human soul it was made such for a wise purpose. The affections of the heart all have their corresponding outward objects. We possess no power impelling us to love or desire that which does not exist as a genuine institution and necessity of nature. So this strong home sentiment only proves to us that the institution of home was divinely born. It is based in the very constitution of human nature, and so vital is the relation which it sustains to our needs, that every heart must have a home. It may not be of brick or wood or stone. It may not have a "local habitation and a name." But if not, out of the airy timbers of its own fancy the heart will rear the structure which it demands as a necessity of its being. We are aware that there are thousands who are called homeless; but their hearts' demand is at least partially met by the possession of an ideal home. The body may exist without a home, but the heart, never. The world called Howard Payne a homeless wanderer, yet kings and peasants have implored entrance at the vine-wreathed threshold of that home which he reared in the airy dreamland of poesy.

Another evidence of the divine origin of the institution of home is found in its obvious adaption to the end it serves, and in the striking analogies which we detect between its functions and the general methods of nature.

Every growth in nature is nurtured and sustained through its early existence by a pre-existing guardian. The germ of the oak is nourished and protected by the substance of the acorn until it is strong enough to draw its food directly from the earth, and to withstand the tempest and the scorching sun. So is must be with the germ of that oak which is to wave in the forest of human society. And if we wish it to become a grand and noble oak and not a hollow hearted deformity, we should look well to the protection and nourishment of its early years. We should see that there is the proper spiritual soil from which the little human germ may gather wholesome and strengthening food when it puts forth its tender rootlets into the great world without. The relation which the acorn sustains to the germ is precisely that which the home sustains to the child. If we were to suppose the germ endowed with intelligence, we should still suppose it ignorant of everything but the enviroments of the acorn. It would, of course, be all unconscious that there is a world without full not only of germs like itself, but of giant oaks. So the child is ignorant of the great outward world. The home is its little world and it knows no other.

Precious thought, that it never quite outgrows the blissful ignorance! We take on higher and broader views of life, but we are compelled by a law of our being to look forever upon our home as in some way the grand center from which radiate all other interests.

When the mother shades the windows of the nursery, she but unconsciously imitates the Creator of her child, who through the institution of home has shut from his feeble and nascent mind the flashing colors of the too brilliant world.

But not alone for childhood is the sacred ministry of home. It is the guardian of youth, a consolation amid the weary toils of manhood and a resting place for old age, where he, who is soon to lay off the armor, may find loving hearts and tender hands to guide his tottering steps to the water's edge.

Again, the mature mind is only that of a developed infant. It is still infantile with reference to the universe in its entirety. Nor can it ever fully comprehend the significance of life in the aggregate. Were we to attempt to dwell in the great temple of the world, we should become lost in its vast halls and mighty labyrinths. Hence it becomes necessary to reduce the scale of the world; to isolate the human mind, as it were, from the vastness of aggregate life. And this God has done in the institution of home.

"Home's not merely four square walls.
Though with pictures hung and gilded:
Home is where affection calls,
Filled with shrines the heart hath builded!
Home! Go watch the faithful dove,
Sailing 'neath the heaven above us;
Home is where there's one to love!
Home is where there's one to love us!

"Home's not merely roof and room,
It needs something to endear it;
Home is where the heart can bloom,
Where there's some kind lip to cheer it!
What is home with none to meet,
None to welcome, none to greet us?
Home is sweet,--and only sweet,--
Where there's one we love to meet us!"

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