The bible is adapted to the Christian ho_The Christian Home As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc.

It is the guardian of her interests, the exposition of her duties, her

privileges, her hopes and her enjoyments. It exposes her errors, reveals

her authority and government, sanctions her obedience, proclaims her

promises, and points out her path to heaven. It makes sacred her marriages,

furnishes names for her children, gives the sacrament of her dedication to

God, and consecrates her bereavements. It is the fountain of her richest

blessings, the source of her true consolation, and the ground of her

brightest hope. It is, therefore, the book of home. She may have large and

splendid libraries; history, poetry, philosophy, fiction, yea, all the

works of classic Greece and Rome, may crowd upon her shelves; but of these

she will soon grow wearied, and the dust of neglect will gather thick upon

their gilded leaves; but of the bible the Christian home can never become

weary. Its sufficiency for all her purposes will throw a garland of

freshness around every page; its variety and manifoldness; its simplicity

and beauty; its depth of thought and intensity of feeling, adapt it to

every capacity and to every want, to every emergency and to every member,

of the household. The little child and the old man, hoary with the frost of

many winters, find an equal interest there. The rich and the poor, the

learned and the ignorant, the high and the low, are alike enriched from its

inexhaustible treasury.

It is a book for the mind, the heart, the conscience, the will and the

life. It suits the palace and the cottage, the afflicted and the

prosperous, the living and the dying. It is a comfort to "the house of

mourning," and a check to "the house of feasting." It "giveth seed to the

sower, and bread to the eater." It is simple, yet grand; mysterious, yet

plain; and though from God, it is nevertheless, within the comprehension of

a little child. You may send your children to school to study other books,

from which they may be educated for this world; but in this divine book

they study the science of the eternal world.

The family bible has given to the Christian home that unmeasured

superiority in all the dignities and decencies and enjoyments of life, over

the home of the heathen. It has elevated woman, revealed her true mission,

developed the true idea and sacredness of marriage and of the

home-relationship; it has unfolded the holy mission of the mother, the

responsibilities of the parent, and the blessings of the child. Take this

book from the family, and she will degenerate into a mere conventionalism,

marriage into a "social contract;" the spirit of mother will depart;

natural affection will sink to mere brute fondness, and what we now call

home would become a den of sullen selfishness and barbaric lust!

The bible should, therefore, be the text-book of home-education. Where it

is not, parents are recreant to their duty. It is the basis of all

teaching, because it reveals "the truth, the way and the life," because it

is God's testimony and message, and is "profitable for doctrine, for

reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness," and was written

"for our learning, that we, through patience and comfort of the scriptures,

might have hope," and be made "wise unto salvation."

"While thou wert teaching my lips to move

And my heart to rise in prayer,

I learned the way to a home above;

And thou shalt meet me there!"

Its invaluable treasures, its manifoldness, its beautiful simplicity, its

striking narrative, its startling history, its touches of home-life, its

expansive views of human nature, of this life and of that which is to come,

its poetry, eloquence, and soul-stirring sympathies and aspirations, make

it the book for home-training. These features of its character will develop

in beautiful harmony the whole nature of your child. Do you wish to inspire

them with song? What songs are like those of Zion? Do you wish them to come

under the influence of eloquent oration? What orations so eloquent as those

of the prophets, of Christ, and of his apostles? Do you desire to refine

and elevate their souls with beauty and sublimity? Here in these sacred

pages is a beauty ever fresh, and a sublimity which towers in dazzling

radiance far beyond the reach of human genius. This is evident from the

fact that tributes of admiration have been paid to the bible by the most

eminent poets, jurists, statesmen, and philosophers, such as Milton, Hale,

Boyle, Newton and Locke. Erasmus and John Locke betook themselves solely to

the bible, after they had wandered through the gloomy maze of human

erudition. Neither Grecian song nor Roman eloquence; neither the waters of

Castalia, nor the fine-spun theorisms of scholastic philosophy, could

satisfy their yearnings. But when they wandered amid the consecrated bowers

of Zion, and drank from Siloah's brook, the thirst of their genius was

quenched, and they took their seats with Mary at the feet of Jesus, and

like little children, learned of him!

Even deists and infidels have yielded their tribute of praise. What says

the infidel Rosseau? Hear him: "The majesty of the scriptures strikes me

with astonishment. Look at the volumes of the philosophers, with all their

pomp, how contemptible do they appear in comparison with this! Is it

possible that a book at once so simple and sublime, can be the work, of

men?" Thus

"Learning and zeal, from age to age,

Have worshiped, loved, explored the page."

How often is this precious book abused! In many would-be Christian homes,

it is used more for an ornament of fashion than for a lamp to the

Christian's path. We find the bible upon their parlor table, but how seldom

in the family room! They make it a part of their fashionable furniture, to

be looked at as a pretty, gilded thing. Its golden clasps and beautiful

binding make it an attractive appendage to the parlor. Hence they buy the

bible, but not the truth it contains. They place it upon the table as such;

and indeed many do not even give it that prominence, but, yielding to the

taste of fashion, place it under the parlor table, and there it rests,

unmolested, untouched and unread even for years. In many professedly

religious families this is their family bible! Ah! it is not so heartsome

as that well-marked and long-used old bible which lies upon the table of

the nursery room, speaking of many year's service in family devotion! The

other unused bible seems like a stranger to the home-heart, and lies in the

parlor just to show their visiting friends that they have a bible! Go into

the nursery and other private apartments of that home, and you see no

bible, while you behold piles of romance and filthy novels,--those

exponents of a vitiated taste and a corrupt society, suited to destroy the

young forever;--whose outward appearance indicates a studied perusal by

both parents and children, and shows perhaps that they have been wept over;

and whose inward substance must ever nauseate healthy reason, as well as

poison the heart of youth, leading them from the sober realities of life

into a world of nonentities.

But upon the family bible you cannot trace the hand of diligent piety. It

is shoved back into some part of the room, as a worthless thing, obsolete

and superfluous. And see! it is not even kept in decent order. The dust of

many day's neglect has gathered thick upon its lids. Oh, Christian parents,

when you thus close up the wells of salvation by the trash of degenerate

taste and vitiated morals, you are despising the testimonies of the Lord,

and leading your children step by step to the verge of destruction. You may

buy them splendid, bibles, gilt and clasped with gold, and have their names

labeled in golden letters upon its lid; but if the good old family bible is

neglected, and the yellow covered literature of the day substituted in its

stead; if you permit them to buy and read love-sick tales in preference to

their bible, and they see you do the same, you are but making a mock of

God's Word, and must answer before Him for your children's neglect of its

sacred pages.

Let me, therefore, affectionately admonish you to be faithful to that

precious book you call the family bible. Read it to your children every

day. From its sacred pages teach them the way to live and the way to die.

Let it be an opened, studied family chart to guide you and them in visions

of untold glory to the many mansions of your Father's offered home in

heaven. It will soothe your sorrows, calm your fears, strengthen your

faith, brighten your hopes, and throw around the graves of the loved and

the cherished dead, the light and promise of reunion in heaven!

"A drop of balm from this rich store,

Hath healed the broken heart once more.

Like angels round a dying bed,

Its truths a heavenly radiance shed;

And hovering on celestial wings,

Breathe music from unnumbered strings."

CHAPTER IX.

INFANCY.

"A babe in a house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of

peace and love;

A resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men;

Yet it is a talent of trust to be rendered back with interest;

A delight, but redolent of care, honey sweet, but lacking not the bitter,

For character groweth day by day, and all things aid it in unfolding,

And the bent unto good or evil may be given, in the hours of infancy."

The birth of each child constitutes a new era in the Christian home, and

multiplies its cares, its pleasures and its responsibilities. The

first-born babe, like

"The first gilt thing

That wears the trembling pearls of spring,"

throws the rainbow colors of hope and joy over the bowers of home, and

awakens in the bosom of parents, emotions and sympathies, new-born and

never before experienced; cords in the heart, before untouched, now begin

to thrill with new joy; sympathies, before unfelt, now swell the bosom.

Sleep on, thou little one, in thy "rosy mesh of infancy," in the first

buddings of thy being! These hours of thy innocence are the happiest of thy

life. Thou art "the parent's transport and the parent's care." Blessings

are fondly poured upon thy head. Rest thee there in thy little bed, thou

happy emblem of the loved and pure in heaven!

"Visions sure of joy

Are gladdening his rest; and ah, who knows

But waiting angels do converse in sleep

With babes like this!"

imparting to his infant soul unutterable things, whispering soft of bliss

immortal given, and pouring into his new-born senses the dreams of opening

heaven.

What charms and momentous interests surround the cradle of infancy! When

the first wailing of dependence reaches the listening ear, what new-born

sympathies spring up in the parent's bosom! What a thrill of rapture the

first soft smile of her babe sends to the mother's heart! It is this, the

parents' likeness unsullied by their faults and cares; it is this, their

living love in personal being,--their love breathing and smiling before

them, lisping their names; it is this,--their new-born hope and care,--that

gives to infancy such a charm, such a never-dying interest, and causes the

parent to cling to it with such fond tenacity. "Can a mother forget her

sucking child?" Never, while she claims a mother's heart! The couch of her

babe is the depository of all those fond hopes and joys and cares and

memories to which a mother's heart is sacred.

The infant is the most interesting member of the Christian home. It is the

first budding of home-life, disclosing every day some new beauty, "the

father's lustre and the mother's bloom," to gladden the hearts of the

family. "As the dewy morning is more beautiful than the perfect day; as the

opening bud is more lovely than the full blown flower, so is the joyous

dawn of infant life more interesting than the calm monotony of riper

years." It is the most interesting, because the purest, member of the

household. It is the connecting link which binds home to its great antitype

above. "Ye stand nearest to God, ye little ones," nearer than those who

have tasted the bitter cup of actual sin. They are the budding promises,

the young loves, the precious plants of home; they are its sunshine, its

progressive interest, its prophetic happiness, the first link in the chain

of its perpetuity. Like the purple hue of the wild heath, throwing its gay

color over the rugged hill-side, they cast a magic polish over the spirit

of the parent, causing the home-fireside to glow with new life and

cheerfulness.

Infants are emblems of the loved and sainted ones in heaven. "Of such is

the kingdom of heaven." "Except ye become as this little child, ye cannot

enter into the kingdom of heaven." This is based upon proper principles.

The heart of the child is purely devotional and confidential. It is a

helpless dependent upon the parent. It abdicates its self-will with joy;

silently do the laws of home control it; its reverence and love are the

melody of its being; its life is an exchange of obedience for protection.

Its path is chosen for it by the lamp of parental experience, and the calm

pure light of a mother's love. How close it keeps to the heart that loves

it, and to the hand that leads it! It looks without doubt or suspicion in

the parent's eye, and makes the parent's home and interest its own.

Here is a picture of the true child of God in his tent-home on earth, and

in his eternal home in heaven. For this they are given to us. As they are

to us, their parents, so should we be to our Father in heaven, and so are

all those loved and sainted ones who have gone before us.

"Little children, flowers from heaven,

Strewn on earth by God's own hand,

Earnest emblems to us given,

From, the fields of angel-land!"

Hence it was that Jesus loved little children, took them in His arms,

blessed them, and regarded them as "the lambs of His flock." "He shall

gather the lambs with His arm." He gazed with pleasure into their sweet

faces, invited their parents to bring them unto Him, and held them up as

the type of the spirit and character of the admitted, into heaven. And the

aged John, having in view this typical character of children, addressed his

followers as his little children!

Infants are helpless dependents upon others for subsistence and protection.

If abandoned at their birth, their first breath would soon be succeeded by

their last. Hence they demand all the attention which maternal love and

tenderness can bestow. They live like the tender bud or the opening

blossom, exposed to the blight of a thousand fortuitous events. Hence their

existence is very precarious; in a moment they may sink like the frosted

flower in its lovely blush. This may be said of the soul as well as of the

body and mind. What an argument, therefore, we have here for parental

diligence and promptness in duty to the eternal as well as to the temporal

well-being of the child.

The infant is the first prophecy of the man. It is the germ of manhood. It

is the man in a state of involution. It is the undeveloped man. Infancy is

the twilight of life,--the first morning of an endless being, the age of

germ and of mere sense. As the first dawn of spring is the season of the

undeveloped harvest, so childhood is manhood in possibility. The infant is

the vernal bud of life; it is a being of promise and of hope,--the prophecy

of the future man. Hence the age of education. The mother, in the nursery,

is ever evolving into the strength of maturity those powers of her child

which will be wielded for happiness or for misery. Her babe is an "embryo

angel, or an infant fiend." We behold in that fragile form, the bud of the

strong man,--the possibility of one who may in a few years arouse with his

thrilling eloquence a slumbering nation, or with the torch and sword of

revolution, overturn empires and dethrone kings, or with his feet upon the

walls of Zion, and the words of life upon his lips, overthrow the

strongholds of Satan, and bring the rebel sinner in penitence to the feet

of Jesus. Yea, we see in that wailing infant of a week, the outspringing of

an immortal spirit which may soon hover on cherub-pinion around the throne

of God, or perhaps, in a few years, sink to the regions of untold anguish.

Oh, it is this which gives to the cradle of infancy such a thrilling

interest. The star of those new-born hopes, which hangs over it, will set

in eternal night, or rise with increasing splendor, till it is lost in the

full blaze of eternal day!

Infants are a great, a dangerous and responsible trust. They are the

property of God,--"an heritage from the Lord," given to their parents as a

loan, a "talent of trust to be rendered back with interest." The infant is

especially the mother's trust.

"Though first by thee it lived, on thee it smiled,

Yet not for thee existence must it hold,

For God's it is, not thine!"

Given by its Creator in trust to her, it is her task to bring it up for

God. Here especially do we see the holy mission of the mother. None but the

mother's heart and love can give security for this trust. The father is

unfit by nature for the delicate training of infancy. The mother's hand

alone can smooth the infant's couch, and her voice alone can sing him to

his rosy rest. Her never-wearied love alone can watch beside him "till the

last pale star had set,"

"While to the fullness of her heart's glad heavings

His fair cheek rose and fell; and his bright hair

Waved softly to her breast."

She is the ministering angel of infancy, and the priestess of the nursery

of home. She sets the first seal, makes the first stamp, gives the first

direction, supplies the first want, and soothes the first sorrow. To her is

committed human life in its most helpless and dangerous state. Touch it

then with the rude hand of parental selfishness; let it grow up in a barren

soil, amid noxious weeds, under the influence of unholy example; and the

delicate tints of this blossom will soon fade; the blush of loveliness will

soon give way to the blight of moral deformity.

[Illustration: TEACHING THE SCRIPTURES. J. Porter]

Hence every babe will be the parent's glory or the parent's shame, their

weal or their woe. If entrusted to them, God will hold them responsible for

its moral training. He will require it from them with interest. Their trust

involves the eternal happiness or misery of their child. The productions of

art will perish; the sun will be blotted out, and all the glory and

magnificence of the world will vanish away, but your babe will live

forever. It will survive the wreck of nature, and either shine as a diadem

in the Redeemer's crown of glory, or dwell in the blackness and darkness of

perdition forever.

To you, Christian parents, as the stewards of God, this precious being is

entrusted. The care of its body, mind and spirit is committed to you; and

its character and destiny in after life will be the fruit of your dealings

with it. It looks to you for all things. It confides in you, draws its

confidence from your protection, relies on your known love, takes you as

the pattern of its life, imitates you as its example, learns from you as

its teacher, is ruled by you as its governor, is measured by you as its

model, feels satisfied with you as its sufficiency, and rests its all upon

you as its all and in all.

Thus you are the very life and soul of its being, and hence in its

maturity, it will be a fair exponent of your character. You are the center

around which its life revolves, the circumference beyond which it never

seeks to go. What, therefore, if you are unfit to move and act in its

presence! What, if in its imitation of you, its life be a progressive

departure from God! Oh, what, if in the day of judgment, it be an outcast

from heaven, and, as such, bear the impress of a parent's hand! God will

then hold you accountable for every injury you may have done your child.

Begin, therefore, the work of training that infant, now, while its nature

is pliable, susceptible, yet tenacious of first impressions. "With his

mother's milk the young child drinketh education." What you now do for your

child will be seen in all future ages. "Scratch the green rind of a

sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, the scarred and crooked oak will

tell of thee for centuries to come." "It will not depart from the ways in

which you train it." If, therefore, you would be a blessing to your child,

and avert those terrible judgments of God which rest upon parental

delinquency, begin now, while your infant is in the cradle, to sow the

seeds of life. Prune well the tender olive plants, and direct its evolving

life in the way God would have it go.

"Soon as the playful innocent can prove

A tear of pity or a smile of love,"

teach it to lisp the name of Jesus and to walk in His commandments. But

alas! how many Christian parents are recreant to this duty! How many

destroy their children by the over-indulgence of a misdirected love and

sympathy, and by procrastinating the period of home-education. Forgetful of

the power of first impressions, they wait until their children are

established in sin, and the seeds of evil are sown in their hearts.

This is the reason why so many reckless and wicked children come out of

Christian homes. Their parents permit their misdirected fondness to absorb

all their thoughts and apprehensions of danger and responsibility. Their

love for the body and mind of their children seems to repel all love for,

or interest in, their soul. The former they tenderly nurse, fondly caress,

and zealously direct. But the soul of the infant is unhonored, unloved and

uncared for. It is blighted in its first bursting of beauty. Oh, cruel and

unthinking parents! why will you thus abuse the loveliest and noblest part

of your child? Why make that babe of yours a mere plaything? If "out of the

mouths of babes and sucklings God has perfected praise," then why not train

them up to praise Him? "Take heed that ye despise not one of these little

ones, for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the

face of my Father which is in heaven." Oh, you who are the nurse of infant

innocence, have you ever thought of the deep curse that will attend your

neglect of the babe which God has given you! Have you, pious mother, as you

pressed your child to your bosom, ever thought that it would one day be a

witness for or against you? Far better for thee and it that it were not

born and you never revered as mother, than that you should nourish it for

spiritual beggary here, and for the eternal burnings hereafter! Oh, look

upon that babe! It is the gift of God--given to thee, mother, to nurse for

Him. Look upon that cherished one! See its smile of confidence turned to

you! It is a frail and helpless bark on the tumultuous sea of life; it

looks to you for direction,--for compass and for chart; your prayers for

it will be heard; your hand can save it; the touch of your impressions will

be a savor of life unto life, or of death unto death.

"Then take the heart thy charms have won,

And nurse it for the skies!"

CHAPTER X.

HOME DEDICATION.

"The rose was rich in bloom on Sharon's plain,

When a young mother with her first born thence

Went up to Zion, for the boy was vowed

Unto the Temple-service; by the hand

She led him, and her silent soul, the while,

Oft as the dewy laughter of his eye

Met her sweet serious glance, rejoiced to think

That aught so pure, so beautiful, was hers,

To bring before her God!"

Beautiful thought, and thrice beautiful deed,--fresh from the pure fount of

maternal piety! The Hebrew mother consecrating her first-born child to the

Temple-service,--dedicating him to the God who gave him! What visions of

unearthly glory must have been before her, as she led her little boy before

the altar of the "King of kings!" Happy mother! thou hast long since gone

to thy great reward. And happy child! to be led by such a mother. Ye are

now together in that temple "not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,"

and with united voice swelling those anthems of glory which are poured

from angelic lips and harps to Him who sitteth upon the throne.

What an example is this for the Christian parent! God is the Father of

every home. From Him cometh down every good and perfect gift; and hence to

Him should all the interests and the loved ones of the household, be

dedicated. This is essential to the very conception of a Christian home.

But especially should the children be dedicated to the Lord. That infant

over which the mother bends and watches with such passionate fondness, is

"an heritage of the Lord," given to her only in trust, and will again be

required from her. As soon as children are given they should be devoted to

Him; for "the flower, when offered in the bud, is no mean sacrifice." Then

and then only will parents properly respect and value their offspring, and

deal with them as becometh the property of God. By withholding them, the

parents become guilty of the deed of Ananias and Sapphira. Like the Hebrew

mother, every Christian parent will gratefully devote them to Him, and

rejoice that they have such a pure oblation to "bring before their God."

"My child, my treasure, I have given thee up

To Him who gave thee me! Ere yet thine eye

Rested with conscious love upon thy mother,

Long ere thy lips could gently sound her name,

She gave thee up to God; she sought for thee

One boon alone, that thou mightest he His child;

His child sojourning on this distant land,

His child above the blue and radiant sky,

'Tis all I ask of thee, beloved one, still!"

Here is a dedication worthy of a Christian mother. Natural affection and

human pride might lead the fond mother to dedicate her child at the altar

of Mammon, to gold, to fame, to magnificence, to the world. But no, every

wish of the pious mother's heart is merged in one great wish and prayer,

"that thou may'st be His child."

The dedication of our children to the Lord is one of the first acts of the

religious ministry of home. All the means of grace will be of no avail

without it. What will the acts of the gospel minister avail if they are not

preceded by an offering of himself to the Lord who has called him? His holy

vocation demands such an offering. It is his voluntary response to and

acceptance of his calling of God. Thus with Christian parents. What will

baptism avail, so far as the parents are concerned, without this dedication

of their children to Him in whose name they are baptised? No more than the

form apart from the spirit. It would be but a mockery of God.

We have a beautiful example and illustration of this dedication, in the

family of the faithful Abraham. "By faith Abraham, when he was tried,

offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only

begotten son." We might at first view regard this act of his as an

evidence of his want of parental sympathy and tenderness. But not so; it is

rather an evidence of these. What he did was the prompting of a true faith,

yielding implicit obedience to the Lord, and offering as an obligation to

Him, what he loved most upon earth. Had he not loved him so dearly, God

would not have chosen him as a means of testing his father's religious

fidelity. Hence this oblation of his son was the best evidence of his

supreme love to God, and that all he had was consecrated to his service.

This act called for the subordination of natural affection to Christian

faith and love. "Take now thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get

thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering!"

What a startling command was this! How it must have stirred up the soul of

that parent, and for the time caused a bitter conflict between natural

affection and Christian faith! "Take thy son,"--had it been a slave, the

command would not have been so stirring; but a son, an only son, the joy of

his heart, and the pride and hope of his age,--the son he so much

loved,--oh it was this that harrowed up such a revulsion in his soul, and,

for the moment doubtless, caused him to shrink from the very thought of

obedience. But the command was imperious,--it was from God; and though the

parent shrunk from the deed, yet the faith of the faithful servant gained a

signal triumph over all the protestations of natural affection, and

silenced all its rising murmurs; for "Abraham rose up early in the morning,

and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with, him, and Isaac his

son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto

the place of which God had told him." There he built an altar, laid the

wood in order, bound Isaac, and laid him upon the wood on the altar. But

when with uplifted sacrificial knife, he was about to slay his son, just at

the point where God had the true test of his faith, a ministering angel

stayed his hand, and prevented the bloody form in which he was about to

offer his only son to God; "for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing

thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me!" He needed now but

dedicate him in the moral sense to God.

The case of Samuel is another instance of the offering of children unto the

Lord. His mother had asked him of the Lord, and vowed, as she prayed, to

"give him unto the Lord all the days of his life."--1 Sam. I., 11. Her

prayer was answered, and in obedience to her holy vow, she took him, when

very young, with her to the Temple, where she offered him up as an oblation

to the Lord. "For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my

petition which I asked of him; therefore also have I lent him to the Lord;

as long as he liveth shall he be lent unto the Lord!" David also

consecrated all that he had to the Lord,--his possessions as well as his

children. When he built a house, he dedicated it to the Lord, and prepared

"a psalm and song at the dedication of the house."

Here in these examples of Old Testament family offerings to God, we have a

type and illustration of the oblations of the Christian home. The Lord does

not ask the Christian parent, as he did Abraham, to build an altar upon the

summit of some lofty cliff, and there to thrust a sacrificial knife to the

heart of his child, and offer his quivering flesh and bleeding body a burnt

offering to him; but he commands him to bring his child to the altar of

baptism in his church, and there dedicate his life, his talents, his all,

as a living sacrifice "holy and acceptable unto God," vowing before

witnessing angels and men that, as the steward of God and the

representative of the child, he will hold it sacred, as the property of the

Lord, given to him only in trust; that he will consult and faithfully

execute the will of the Lord concerning the child, and that in all his

relations to it, he will seek to make it subserve his purposes and reflect

his glory.

This is the most precious and acceptable oblation of the parent's heart and

home,--more precious than gold or pearls, than rivers of blood, or streams

of oil; and where there is a corresponding dedication of all that belongs

to home, it promotes and preserves the highest privileges and the greatest

well-being of the child. With the deep and sublime feelings of faith we

should, therefore, take our little ones, in infancy, before the Lord, as

the free-will offering of the Christian home; and in all subsequent

periods of their life under the parental roof, we should eagerly watch, in

each expanding faculty, in each growing inclination, in the bent of each

tender thought, in the warm glow of each feeling and desire, for some

indications of the will of God concerning their mission in this life.

This leads us to remark finally, that, in the dedication of our children to

the Lord, we should have reference to the highest function within the

calling of man, viz: the christian ministry; or in other words, we should

offer our sons to God with the hope and prayer that He may call them to the

work of the ministry, and every indication of His answer to our prayer,

given in their mental and moral fitness, should encourage the parent to

train them up with special reference to that sacred office.

This, the state of the church and the many destitute and waste places of

the earth, imperiously demand. Like the Hebrew mother, we should at least

devote one of our sons to the Temple-service, direct his attention to it,

favor it by all our intercourse with him, and use all proper means for his

preparation for it. And you may be assured that God will answer your

prayer. Your offering, if holy, will be acceptable.

"Even thus, of old, a babe was offered up--

Young Samuel, for the service of His Temple;

Nor He refused the boon, but poured on him

The anointing of all gifts and graces meet

For his high office."

But alas! how many parents refuse thus to yield their sons unto God! They

will formally and outwardly dedicate their children to Him in holy baptism;

but afterwards obstruct their way to the ministry, yea, even discourage it

for reasons the most worldly and infidel. They will remind them of its

arduous duties and self-denials; they will remind them that it affords no

money speculations, that the salary of ministers is so small, no wealth can

be amassed by preaching, and besides, they will have to remove so far from

home. And thus by urging such frivolous objections, they beget in their

sons a prejudice against the ministry,--yea, a contempt for it. Ah, if

preaching were a money-making business; if it opened the door to luxury and

affluence and worldly ease, then I am sure every parent would show the

outward piety of dedicating his sons (and daughters too) to the ministry.

Here we see how natural affection, misdirected by the love of worldly gain,

neutralizes the promptings of faith. Had Abraham lived under the same

influence, he would not have obeyed the edict of God. It is because of the

dominant spirit of worldliness in the Christian home, that the laborers

upon the walls of Zion are inadequate to the great work to be done, that

they are insufficient for the great harvest of souls. And this will ever

continue so long as Christian parents refuse to make an offering of their

sons to God, and turn their homes into a den of thieves.

Such parental reservation of children for filthy lucre and the pleasures

of sin for a season, involves a guilt which no redeeming attribute can

mitigate. If God gave his only Son to suffer and die upon the accursed

tree, shall we, his professed followers, not give in turn our sons to Him,

to proclaim the glad news of a purchased and offered redemption? Think of

this, oh ye who profess to be the parents of a Christian home, and have

with the lip had your children dedicated to God in baptism! Think that the

gift of God has bought them with a price, and that as they belong to Him,

you rob God when you withhold them, and deal with them as your own

property, leaving out of view the great law of stewardship. Mistaken

parents! methinks you would give your children to all save to God; you

would devote them to any thing but religion. You fit them for this life,

choose their occupation, labor to leave them a large inheritance, and

rejoice when they rise to eminence in the world.

But in all this, God, religion and eternity are cast into the shade; you

act towards them as if God had no claim upon them, and you were under no

obligations to meet that claim. Think of this, ye who have been recreant to

your duty,--ye who have not followed Abraham to the mount of oblation, nor

brought up your sons as an offered Samuel. Oh think, that God will demand

of you these children, and that if they are not now devoted to the Lord,

you will not have them to return to Him in the great day of final

reckoning. May the momentous interests and responsibilities of that coming

day bring you with your children around the altar of consecration, and

constrain you there to say--

"I give thee to thy God--the God that gave thee,

A well-spring of deep gladness to my heart!

And precious as thou art,

And pure as dew of Hermon, He shall have thee,

My own, my beautiful, my undefiled!

And thou shalt be His child!"

CHAPTER XI.

CHRISTIAN BAPTISM.

"Water--of blest purity

Emblem--do we pour on thee;

Little one! regenerate be--

Only by the crimson flood

Of the Spotless, in the blood

Of the very Son of God!

Father, Son and Holy Ghost!

Take the feeble, take the lost,

Purchased once at Calvary's cost!"

What delightful associations cluster around the baptismal altar! How

tenderly does the pious mother fold her babe to her yearning heart, as she

devoutly approaches that consecrated spot, and there dedicates in and

through this holy sacrament, the child of her love and hope, to Him who

gave it! What a holy charge she there assumes; what a sacred vow she there

makes; what a solemn promise she there gives; what a momentous interest is

entrusted to her there; what a weight of responsibility is there laid upon

her!

Her charge is an infant soul; her vow is to be faithful to it; her promise

is to train it up for God; and her's will be the lasting glory or the

lasting shame! These very engagements and trusts elevate the pious parents;

diffuse a tenderness and sympathy over all the domestic relations, and make

better husbands, better wives, better parents, and better children, by the

deep insight which is given to their faith in those mysterious relations

and mutual obligations which bind them together. As the consecrated water

falls upon the face of the devoted child, the parents feel the solemn vow

sink deep into the soul, and realize the weight of that responsibility

which God lays upon them.

God commands us not only to dedicate our children to Him, but to do so in

the way He has appointed, viz., in and through Christian baptism. In this

way we bring our children into the church, and train them up in a churchly

way. We bring them to God through the church. In their baptism we have, as

it were, a confirmation of their dedication by "the mighty Master's seal."

It is the link which binds our children to the church, the rite of their

initiation into the kingdom of Christ, the sign and seal of their saving

relation to the covenant of grace. By it they are solemnly set apart to the

service of God, enrolled among the members of His kingdom, entitled to its

privileges and guardian care, and placed in the appointed way of salvation

and eternal life, receiving the seal and superscription of the Son of God.

This is indispensable to the demands of the Christian faith. To deny that

infants are thus included in the covenant of grace, destroys the purity and

spiritual unity of the Christian compact, and subverts the foundations and

harmony of the Christian home.

It is revolting to the parent's faith to forbid his little ones the

privilege of the church, and to treat them as aliens from the covenant of

promise. Does the gospel place them under such a ban of proscription?

Surely not! He who instituted the family relation had special regard to the

family in all the appointments of his grace. His command is like that of

Noah, "Come thou and all thy house into the ark." "The promise is unto you

and your children." This is the comfort of the parent, that his children

are planted by the ordinance of God into the soil of grace, where they may

grow up as a tender plant in the likeness of His death, and be "like a tree

planted by the rivers of water, that shall bring forth his fruit in his

season; his leaf shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper."

Baptism in the Christian home is eminently infant baptism. Take this away,

and you sever the strongest cord that binds church and home. As the Jew was

commanded to circumcise his child, and thus bring it into proper relations

to the theocratical covenant, so the Christian has a similar command from

Christ to bring his children, through the holy sacrament of baptism, to

Him. It is not our purpose to discuss the baptistic question. When we

shall have thrown sufficient light upon it to convince the Christian

parent, that it is a duty to have little children dedicated to God in

baptism, our plan shall be fully executed. We must either admit infant

baptism, or deny that the Christian covenant includes children, and that

the parent is bound to dedicate them to God. Hence the objection brought

against infant baptism can, with equal propriety, be urged against

circumcision; for the latter is the type of the former. In baptism Christ

places Himself in true organic relations to the child, and thus opens up to

it the sources from which alone the Christian life can proceed and develop

itself.

The baptism of our children is grounded in their need of salvation at every

age and stage of development. It is also based upon the very idea of Christ

Himself; upon primitive christianity; upon the extent and compass of the

Christian covenant; and upon those vital relations which believing parents

sustain to their offspring. It might be proven from the commission given by

Christ to His disciples to "preach the gospel to every creature;" from His

language and conduct in reference to children; from the usage of the

Apostles and of the apostolic church. The idea and mission of Christ

Himself, we think, would be a sufficient argument in favor of infant

baptism. He included in His life the stage of childhood, and came to save

the child as well as the man. His own infancy and childhood are securities

for this. He entered into and passed through all the various states and

stages of man's development on earth, and thus became adapted to the wants

of every period of our life,--man's infancy as well as man's maturity.

Ireneus says, "Christ Jesus became a child to children, a youth to youth,

and a man to man." The fact, too, that the blessings of the covenant of

grace are extended to the children of believing parents, is sufficient to

prove the validity of infant baptism. Peter said on the day of Pentecost,

when he called upon his hearers to be baptized: "for the promise is to you,

and your children, and all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our

God shall call."

Thus His gospel excludes none, neither is it restricted to a certain age or

capacity. As the child, as well as the man, fell and died in the first

Adam, so the child, as well as the man, can be made alive in the second

Adam. As infants, therefore, are subjects of grace, why not subjects also

of baptism? As they are included in the covenant, why not enter it by the

divinely constituted sacrament of initiation? As they are included in the

plan of salvation, why not receive it in a churchly way? If Christ is the

Saviour of infants, why not bring them to Him through baptism?

Besides, the idea of following Christ reaches its full meaning only through

infant baptism. His own infancy, as we have already seen, is a warrant of

this. Without it He cannot penetrate and rule in every natural stage of

human life. Hence a denial of infant baptism is a subversion of the

fundamentals of Christian doctrine. The very constitution of the Christian

family, its unity and mission must be overthrown; for infant baptism is

incorporated with the nature of christianity itself, with the conception

and necessities of the individual Christian life, and of the Christian

family life.

And yet with the plainest teachings of the gospel before them, is it not

strange that there are so many virulent enemies to infant baptism? Their

rejection of it seems to rest mainly upon the untenable position that

baptism has meaning and force only when it is the fruit of an antecedent,

self-conscious faith on the part of the subject, and that it is but the

outward demonstration of a separate and prior participation of some inward

grace. As infants have not a self-conscious faith, it is believed,

therefore, that they are not, of course, fit subjects of baptism.

There is a cunning sophistry in all this. It goes upon the supposition that

faith necessarily demands the prior development of self-consciousness. It

assumes that faith is bound to a particular age, and can be exercised only

after the full and complete development of the logical consciousness, and

is dependent upon it; it also assumes that this faith must necessarily be

exercised by the subject of Christian baptism.

Now this is all mere assumption. There is no scripture for it. In all this,

the distinction is not made between faith in its first bud, and faith in

its ripe fruit. The first may exist in the unconscious infant, just as

undeveloped reason exists there; because natural powers do not generate

supernatural faith. Faith is the gift of God; and its existence does not

depend upon any particular stage of mental development. The enemies of

infant baptism can see nothing in baptism. They can see no objective force

in that holy sacrament; but regard it as something merely external,

extraneous, unproductive,--a mere unmeaning form in which a prior faith is

pleased to express itself, as the conclusion of a work already

accomplished. The great error here lies just in this, that they mistake it

as an act of faith, whereas it is an act of Christ. They think it is the

formal rite through which they elect and receive Christ; whereas it is the

sacrament in which Christ elects and receives them.

If, in church worship, man placed himself in a relation to God, without God

placing Himself in a relation to man, then we might reject infant baptism.

But this is not so. God, in baptism, places Himself in a relation to the

subject, receives the subject until it become a part of the organism of

grace in its subjective and objective force, and is recognized as a member

of the church of Christ. Now the falsity of the position assumed by the

enemies of infant baptism lies just here, that only the subjective side of

baptism is held up, while its objective, sacramental character is left

altogether out of view. It reverses the relative positions of faith and

baptism, making the former to take the place of the latter, and holding

that any one dissociated with the church, can receive and exercise a true

living faith, which overthrows the very idea of the church itself. It makes

faith first, baptism second, entering the church third; whereas baptism

comes before the conscious faith of the subject. If so, then why object to

infant baptism?

Baptism is that sacrament by means of which the order of divine grace is

continued. It generates faith, and its development is from authoritative,

to free, personal faith. "What the personal election of Christ was to the

first circle of disciples, that baptism is for the successive church, the

divine fact through which Christ gives to His church its true and eternal

beginning in the individual." If so, then is it not plain that baptism goes

before the self-conscious faith of the subject? And if this church-founding

sacrament brings your child into a living and saving relation to the

church, then why deny it that baptism? Dare you reverse the divine

procedure which God has ordained for the salvation of His people? And if

Christ is related to the individual only through the general; if He is

related to the members only through the body, and having fellowship with

them only as the Head of that body, then is it not plain that your

children, in order to come to Him as such, to be incorporated with Him and

related to Him in a saving way, must come to Him through the church,--must

become a member of it, and that too in the manner and through the medium

He has prescribed, viz., baptism?

He who, for the reason, therefore, that children can have no self-conscious

faith, refuses to have them baptized, but exposes his ignorance of the

divine procedure of grace as developed in the church, of the true moral

relation between parent and child, and of the scripture idea of the

Christian home. Why not for the very same reason refuse to teach them, to

have them pray, to bring them up to church service? Yea, why not deny to

them salvation itself? For the very same reason for which you reject infant

baptism, you must also reject infant salvation; for faith is held up in the

Word of God as a qualification for salvation with more emphasis than as a

qualification for baptism. Hence if you say that infants cannot be baptized

because incapable of faith, you must also say, by a parity of reasoning,

that infants cannot be saved, because incapable of faith.

This is a dilemma, and to avoid it, some enemies to infant baptism have

even confessed that they see no hope for the salvation of children. Thus

Dr. Alexander Carson says, "The gospel has nothing to do with infants. It

is good news, but to infants it is no news at all. None can be saved by the

gospel who do not believe it! Consequently by the gospel no infants can be

saved!" But if out of Christ there is no salvation, then tell me, how will

infants be saved? We have no answer from these enemies, yea, there is no

answer!

Christian parents! what think you of this? When bending over the grave of

a beloved child, with the cherished hope of meeting it in heaven, how would

such intelligence as this startle you from your dream of reunion there, and

cast a deep pall of desolation around your sorrowing hearts? Does not the

parent's faith forbid the intrusion of a doctrine so revolting as this?

Though you have been in your home, the divinely appointed representative of

your child, and in its baptism exercised faith in its behalf, on the ground

of those natural and moral relations which the Lord has constituted between

you and your child, yet in this startling dogma of the enemies of its

baptism, you find a virtual denial of the existence of such moral relations

and parental vicarage; yea, a denial of parental stewardship and of the

religious ministry of the Christian home. The revulsion with which the

Christian heart receives such a denial of infant baptism is at least a

presumptive evidence against it. But we think enough has been said to lay

the foundation of some practical comments upon the subject of Christian

baptism.

If it is a fact that infants are proper subjects of baptism, then it is the

duty of Christian parents to have them baptized. It is not only a duty, but

a delightful privilege, to consecrate them to God in a perpetual covenant

never to be forgotten, regarding them as the members of the kingdom of

Christ, and so called to be God's children by adoption and grace.

Their baptism involves many parental duties and responsibilities. If it is

both a sign and a seal of the covenant of grace, and a means of grace, so

that the parent's faith, in their baptism, places the child in covenant

relation to the Incarnate Word, through the life-giving Spirit, then it is

plain that the parent is bound to secure for the child those blessings

which that baptism contemplates, and which hang upon the exercise of a

receiving faith. This sacrament gives the child a churchly claim upon

parental interposition in its behalf, in all things pertaining to its

spiritual culture,--in a true religious training, in a proper direction in

the use of the means of grace, in a holy Christian example. Here it is the

parent's duty to represent the church, to act for the church in religious

ministrations to the child, to be the steward of the church in the

Christian home, to rear up the child for a responsible membership.

No parent, therefore, who neglects the baptism of the child, can have "the

answer of a good conscience towards God." If we are satisfied to have our

homes separate from the church; if we are satisfied with individualistic,

disembodied, unassociated christianity,--a religion that owns no church,

but which has its origin, root and maturity in the self-conscious activity

of the individual, we may then neglect this duty. But in doing so, to be

consistent, we must also discard the sister ordinance of the Lord's supper,

yea, all the churchly means of grace; yea, the church itself; for why

repudiate one ordinance,--one idea of associated Christianity, and not all

the others?

That baptism is greatly abused and neglected, none will deny. It is often

abused by neglect of the proper time of its administration. The earliest

period of infancy is the proper time; for then there will be a proper

correspondence in time between the dedication and the baptism. In this we

have an example from Jewish circumcision. The pious Jew took the infant

when it was but eight days old, and had it circumcised. But many Christian

parents defer the baptism of their children until late childhood, while

their vows of dedication are left in mere naked feeling and resolution,

having no sacramental force and expression; and as a consequence will grow

cold and indifferent. When parents thus delay having their children brought

within the fold of God and the bosom of the church, they presume to be

wiser than God, and oppose their own weak reason to His word and promises.

Baptism is often abused, also, by being used as a mere habit, an unmeaning

form, without a proper sense of its significance, importance, duties and

responsibilities. It is administered because others do the same,--because

customary among most church members, and because perhaps it looks like an

adherence to the outward of christianity and the church at least. When they

have thus obeyed the law of habit, and girded themselves with the formula

of parental duty, they feel they have done enough; and perhaps neither

their children nor the vows they assumed at their baptism ever after recur

to them as objects of specific duty.

But we would remind such parents, that habit is not always duty, and our

adherence to habit does not prove our sincerity and the truthfulness of our

purpose. It does not always imply "the answer of a good conscience towards

God." If having our children baptized is simple obedience to the law of

habit, it is not the performance of a parental duty, but the abuse of a

blessed privilege; there is in it all no living churchly expression of

willing vows. In this way we only reach its outward form, and we do that,

not because of its inherent worth, not because of a duty and privilege; but

because we desire to cope with others, and decorate our religion in the

popular dress of other people's habits.

Baptism is also abused by mistaking the object and design of its

administration. Why do many parents have their children baptized? Because

they wish to express their vows of dedication in that sacramental form and

way which God has appointed? Because they desire to bring them into the

fold and bosom of the church, and place them in saving relations to the

means of grace? Alas, no! but too often because they make their baptism the

mere occasion of giving them, in a formal, public way, their Christian

names. They christen their children to give them a name; and often with

them this holy sacrament is as empty as the name. Their baptism, in their

view, is but the sealing and confirming the name they had before chosen for

the child; and when this is done they have no more thought of the baptism.

With them the baptism of their children is the ordinance of name-giving.

Before it takes place they are busied about getting a name from the most

approved, and fashionable novels of the day. This takes the place of

dedication. Their prior thoughts are all absorbed in getting a strange,

new-fangled name,--such an one as will carry you away by association to

some love-sick tale, or remind you of the burning of Rome, or some other

deed which has disgraced humanity. And then as soon as this is done, they

fix upon some auspicious occasion when either in the church or in the

presence of a select company at home, (for children cry now-a-days too much

to bring them to church) they have their pastor to baptize them.

Perhaps a great feast is prepared; godfathers and godmothers (if they have

the warrant of some valuable presents) are chosen; and then in all the

glare and parade of fashion, they have the ordinance administered. And what

then is the first joyful cry of the fond parents, after the solemn ceremony

is ended? Why "now, dear, you have your name!" And this is the end,--yes,

the finale of the vows there made before God,--the end of all until God

shall call them to account!

It requires but very little discrimination to see that in all this the

nature, design, and obligations of Christian baptism are left totally out

of view. They do not here appreciate this ordinance as a channel for the

communication of God's grace to their children. When baptized they do not

regard them as having been received into gracious relation to God, as

plants in the Lord's vineyard, as having put on Christ, and as having their

ingrafting into Him not only signified but sealed. Thus being undervalued,

it is, as a consequence, abused and neglected.

The great neglect of Christian baptism is doubtless owing to the low,

unscriptural views of its nature and practical importance; for if they

realized its relations to the plan of salvation, and its office in the

appropriation of that salvation to their children, they would not permit

them to grow up unbaptized, neither would they be recreant to the solemn

duties which are binding upon the parent after its administration. But upon

the subject of baptism itself, we have seen that there is great laxity of

feeling and opinion.

The spirit of our fathers upon this point is becoming so diluted that we

can scarcely discern any longer a vestige of the good old landmarks of

their sacramental character. Instead of walking in them, Christians are now

falling a prey to a latitudinarian spirit of the most destructive kind.

They are, in leaving these old landmarks, falling into the clutches of

rationalism and radicalism, which will ere long leave their homes and their

church

"A wreck at random driven,

Without one glimpse of reason or of heaven!"

Even ministers themselves seem to grow indifferent to this wide-spread and

growing evil. They hardly ever utter a word of warning from the pulpit

against it. Their members may be known by them to neglect the baptism of

their children; and yet by their silence they wink at this dereliction; and

when they have occasion to speak of this ordinance, many advert to it as a

mere sign, as something only outward, not communicating an invisible grace,

not as a seal of the new covenant, ingrafting into Christ. No wonder when

this holy sacrament is thus disparagingly spoken of, that Christian parents

will neglect it practically, as a redundancy in the church,--as a tradition

coming in its last wailing cry from ages and forms departed,--as a church

rite marked obsolete, as an old ceremonial savoring of old Jewish shackles,

embodying no substantial grace, and unfit for this age of railroad

progression and gospel libertinism.

Will any one deny the extent of such a spirit in the church and homes of

the present day? Let him refer to church statistics, where he may receive

some idea of the magnitude of this evil. In them we can see the extent to

which parents have neglected the baptism of their children. We take from a

note in the "Mercersburg Review" the following statistical items: "The

presbytery of Londonderry reports but one baptism to sixty-four

communicants; the presbytery of Buffalo city, the same; the presbytery of

Rochester city, one to forty-six; the presbytery of Michigan, one to

seventy-seven; the presbytery of Columbus, one to thirty. In the presbytery

of New Brunswick, there are three churches which report thus: one reports

three hundred and forty-three communicants, and three baptisms; another

reports three hundred and forty communicants, and two baptisms. In

Philadelphia, one church reports three hundred and three communicants, and

seven baptisms; another, two hundred and eighty-seven communicants, and one

baptism."

These statistics speak volumes. They tell us how Christian parents neglect

the baptism of their children, and also how the church winks at it. And

from this neglect we can easily infer their indifference to it. If we refer

to the statistics of all other churches, we shall witness a similar

neglect. No branch of the church now is free from the imputation of such

neglect. It is now difficult indeed, to induce parents to have their

children baptized, because they think it is no use! "Let them wait," say

they, "till they grow up, and then they will know more about it!" This

shows us where the parent stands, viz., in an unchurchly state, and radical

to the very core. It shows us what that influence is, which is at work upon

his mind. "He will know more about it!"--just as if that in religion is

worthless until we know all about it. Baptism then is not worth anything

until the child understands all about it! In that parental utterance we

hear the wildest shout of triumphant rationalism!

But again, baptism is often abused by parental unfaithfulness to its

obligations. In the baptism of their children, parents solemnly vow to

bring them up in the nurture of the Lord, to train them up in His holy

ways, to teach them by precept and example, to pray for them and teach them

the privilege of prayer. And yet how grossly are these solemn vows left

unperformed, and even never thought of in all after life! Perhaps the very

opposite course is taken even on the day of baptism. Parents! by this you

endanger your own souls as well as the souls of your children. How will the

memory of such neglected duty and privilege sink with deepening anguish in

your souls, when you shall be called hence to answer to God for your

parental stewardship! Be not deceived; God is not mocked; neither will he

hold you guiltless when you thus outrage His holy sacrament.

Baptism is often abused by the unfaithfulness of children to its

privileges, influences and blessings. Many children fight against these,

prevent parents from performing their duties, and repel all the overtures

of the Christian home, all the offers of the Spirit's baptism, abandoning

the means of grace, refusing to assume the baptismal engagement taken for

them by their parents; and thus, so far as they are concerned, undo and

neutralize what their parents did for them. Oh, ye baptized children,--ye

to whom the holy ministry of home has been faithfully applied,--know ye

not that the frowns of abused heaven are upon you, and that the memory of

your rebellion against the prerogatives of the family, will constitute an

ingredient in your cup of woe? The privilege of baptism lays you under

solemn requisition. If unfaithful to it, it will be your condemnation, and

add new fuel to the flame of a burning conscience.

Parents and children! be faithful to this holy ordinance of God. It is a

solemn service. You should approach the baptismal font with a trembling

step and a consecrated heart. And what a solemn moment it is, when you take

your child away from that altar! There you gave it up to God,--dedicated it

to His service; and there in turn He commits it to you in trust, saying to

you as Pharaoh's daughter said to the mother of Moses, "Take this child and

nurse it for me, and I will pay thee thy wages," and you bore it away, as

did that faithful mother, to bring it up for God. There you solemnly

promised that in training that child, the will of God should be your will,

and the law of all your conduct towards it. You can never forget that

solemn transaction, and how you there vowed before witnessing men and

angels that you would be faithful to the little one God has given you. What

now has been the result? Eternity will answer.

CHAPTER XII.

CHRISTIAN NAMES.

"She named the child Ichabod."--1 SAMUEL.

"Thus was the building left

Ridiculous, and the work confusion named."

Christian baptism suggests Christian names. This introduces us to an

important topic, viz., the kind of names Christian parents should give to

their children at their baptism. Baptismal names are indeed an important

item of the Christian home. Much more depends upon them than we are at

first sight of the subject, disposed to grant.

Christianity eminently includes the great law of correspondence between its

inward spirit and its outward form. Its form and contents cannot be

separated. The principle of fitness, it everywhere exhibits; and hence its

nomenclature is the herald of its spirit and truth. The names that religion

has given to her followers signify some principle of association between

them. They were adopted to designate some fact in the history of the

individual, or in his relation to the church. Hence the names adopted for

the children of the Christian home should be the utterance of some fact or

calling which belongs to that home. Their name is one of the first things

which children know, and hence it makes a deep impression upon them. And as

our Christian names are given to us at the time of our baptism, one would

think that there is always a correspondence between the name and some fact

or interest connected with the occasion. We should then receive a Christian

name, a name which does not bind us by the laws of association to what is

evil either in the past or the present, but which indicates a relation to

some precious boon involved in the dedication of the child to God.

Is this always so? By no means. It once was. It was so in the Hebrew home

and in the families of the apostolic age. But in this day of parental rage

after new-fangled things and names, taken from works of fiction and novels

of doubtful character, we find that parents care but very little about the

baptismal name being the herald of a religious fact. "What is in a name?"

was a question propounded by a poet. His answer was "nothing!"

"That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet."

The principle here evolved is false. There is much in a name; and at the

creation names were not mechanically given to things; but there was a

vital correspondence between the name and the thing named. Much depends

upon the name. It exerts a potent influence for good, or for evil upon the

bearer and upon all around him.

Primarily, a name supposed some correspondence between its meaning and the

person who bore it. Hence the name should not be arbitrary in its

application, but should "link its fitness to idea," and with the person,

run in parallel courses.

"For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together,

Nor stoppeth its perceptions to be curious of priorities."

Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, felt that practically there was much in a

name, when he heathenized the names of the young Hebrew captives. By this

he thought to detach them from their Hebrew associations. God was in each

of their original names, and in this way they were reminded of their

religion. But the names this Chaldee king gave them were either social or

alluded to the idolatry of Babylon. Their Hebrew names were to them

witnesses for God, mementoes of the faith of their fathers; hence the king,

to destroy their influence, called Daniel, Belteshazzar, i.e. "the

treasurer of the god Bel;" Hannaniah he called Shadrach, i.e. "the

messenger of the king;" Mishael he called Meshach, i.e. "the devotee of the

goddess Shesach." He showed his cunning in this, and a historical testimony

to the potent influence of a name.

By this same rule of correspondence, Adam doubtless named, by order of his

Creator, the things of nature as they struck his senses.

"He specified the partridge by her cry, and the forest prowler by

his roving,

The tree by its use, and the flower by its beauty, and everything

according to its truth."

The Hebrews obeyed the same law in naming their children. With them there

was a sacred importance attached to the giving of a name. For every chosen

name they had a reason which involved the person's life, character or

destiny. Adam named the companion of his bosom, "woman because she was

taken out of man." He called "his wife's name Eve, because she was the

mother of all living." Eve called her first-born Cain (possession) "because

I have gotten a man from the Lord." She called another son Seth

(appointed,) "for God hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom

Cain slew." Samuel was so named because he was "asked of and sent to God."

God Himself often gave names to His people; and each name thus given,

conveyed a promise, or taught some rule of life, or bore some divine

memorial, or indicated some calling of the person named. Says Dr.

Krummacher on this point: "Names were to the people like memoranda, and

like the bells on the garments of the priests, reminding them of the Lord

and His government, and furnishing matter for a variety of salutary

reflections. To the receivers of them they ministered consolation and

strength, warning and encouragement; and to others they served to attract

the attention and heart of God." This was right, and fully accorded with

the economy of the Hebrew home, and with the conception of language itself.

Would that the Christian home followed her pious example! But Christians

now are too much under the influence of irreligious fashion. Instead of

giving their children those good old religious names which their fathers

bore, and which are endeared to us by many hallowed associations, they now

repudiate them with a sneer as too vulgar and tasteless. They are out of

fashion, too common, don't lead us into a labyrinth of love-scrapes and

scenes of refined iniquity, and are now only fit for a servant.

Hence instead of resorting to the bible for a name, these sentimental

parents will pore over filthy novels, or catch at some foreign accent, to

get a name which may have a fashionable sound, and a claim upon the

prevailing taste of the times, and which may remind one of the battles of

some ambitious general, or of the adventures of some love-sick swain, or of

the tragic deeds of some fashionable libertine!

And when such a name is found to suit the ear of fashion and of folly, it

is applied to the child, and reiterated by the minister before the

baptismal font; and as often as it is afterwards repeated it reminds one

perhaps of deeds which put modesty to blush, and startle the ear of justice

and humanity. What a burning shame is this to the Christian home! The

child who is cursed with such a name has ever before him the memorandum of

his parent's folly, and as a recognized example, the character of him after

whom he has been named. As often as he is hailed by it, he blushes to think

that he has been called by pious parents after one who, perhaps, has turned

many a home into desolation, and disgraced and blighted forever the fond

hopes and joys of the young and old.

Have thoughts and associations like these no demoralizing influence? How

can parents admonish their children against novel reading after they have

taken their names from novels? The giving of Christian names at the present

time is indeed a ridiculous farce, an insult to christianity, and a

representation of stoical infidelity before the baptismal altar. It is

there an act of the Babylonish king to heathenize the child. We might

almost say that the folly has become a rage. The rage for new names

especially,--names which do not adorn the sacred page, nor carry us back to

the times and faith of our fathers, but which have gained notoriety in the

world of fiction, and associate us with the lover's affrays and with the

desperado's feats,--these are the names which Christian parents too often

seek with avidity for their children. If you were to judge their homes by

these names, you would think yourself in a Turkish seraglio, or amid the

voluptuous scenes of a Parisian court, or in the bosom of a heathen

family. What, for instance, is there about such names as Nero, Caesar,

Pompey, Punch, that would remind you that you were in a Christian home?

It is often disgusting, too, to see how some Christian parents, who live in

humble life, seek to ape, in their children, the empty sounding titles of

the world. They only show their vanity and weakness, and often bring

ridicule upon their children; for--

"To lend the low-born noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule

and evil;

Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them cedars,

And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame,

Tendeth to its deeper scorn, as if it were to call the mole a mammoth."

When we thus give our children names associated with battle-fields, empty

titles, brilliant honors, and lucrative offices,--positions in life which

they can never expect to reach, and which, if they did, would not do honor

to the child of a Christian family, we do them great injury; we fasten in

them feelings the most disastrous, and draw out propensities unbecoming the

child devoted to the Lord, breeding in his soul a peevish repining at his

station. Alas! that Christian homes should ever become so servile in their

devotions to the rotten sentiments and flimsy interests of misguided and

perverted fashion! Her smile in your home is that of a harlot; her touch is

the withering blight of corruption; her dominion is the desolation of

family hopes and the extermination of those sacred prerogatives with which

the Lord has invested the Christian fireside. The ball will take the place

of prayer; novels will take the place of the bible; favorites will take the

place of husbands and wives; and the children will regard their parents

only as their masters.

Christian parents should, therefore, give suitable names to their children,

that is, such names as will correspond with their state, character and

relations to God,--names which do not suggest the idea of war, rapine,

humbug, romance, and sensuality, but which are associated with the

Christian life and calling, and which serve as a true index to the spirit

and character of the parental fireside. Reason, as well as faith, will

dictate such a choice; for

"There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; names should note particulars

Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant

acceptation."

Our name is the first and the last possession at our disposal. It

determines from the days of childhood our inclinations. It employs our

attention through life, and even transports us beyond the grave. Hence we

should give appropriate names to our children,--such as will interest them,

and neither be a reproach, on the one hand, nor reach to unattainable and

unworthy heights, on the other; for the mind of your child will take a

bias, from its name, to good or to evil.

Why not adopt scriptural names for them? Are they not as beautiful as other

names? They are. And is not their influence as salutary? It is. And are

they not more suitable for the Christian home than any other? They are.

Where is there a more lovely name than Mary,--lovely in its utterance, and

thrice lovely in the glowing memories which cluster around it, and in the

hallowed home-associations it awakens in the Christian heart, drawing us at

once to the feet of Jesus, where a Mary sat in confiding pupilage, and

sealed her instructions and gratitude with the tear-drop that glowed like

early dew upon her dimpled cheek? Would Christian parents desire to give

their children more beautiful names,--beautiful in the light of history and

of heaven,--than that of Benjamin, "son of the right hand;" of David,

"dear, beloved;" of Dionysius, "divinely touched;" of Eleazar, "help of

God;" of Eli, "my offering;" of Enoch, "dedicated;" of Jacob, "my present;"

of Lemuel, "God is with them;" of Nathan, "given, gift;" of Nathaniel,

"gift of God;" of Samuel, "asked of God and sent of God," &c.?

Besides, there are names of distinguished Christians, such as Wilberforce,

Howard, Page, Martyn, Paul, Peter, John, Fenelon, Clement, Baxter,

&c.,--bright as dew-drops on the page of history, and as beautiful in their

enunciation as any chosen from the world of heartless fashion,--as

beautiful in sound, and infinitely more so in associations which bind them

to deeds of humanity and Christian love. The utterance of such names would

be more becoming the Christian home; because they aid in developing the

purest, holiest and loftiest idea of its nature and calling. Such names

will bind your little ones to pure and holy persons and deeds, and will

suit the book of life in which you hope to have them enrolled.

"Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not

found,

God will give thee His new name, and write it on thy heart;

A name, better than of sons, a name dearer than of daughters,

A name of union, peace and praise, as numbered in thy God."

CHAPTER XIII.

HOME AS A NURSERY.

"The Ostrich, silliest of the feathered kind,

And formed of God without a parent's mind,

Commits her eggs, incautious, to the dust,

Forgetful that the foot may crush the trust;

And, while on public nurseries they rely,

Not knowing, and too oft not caring why,

Irrational in what they thus prefer

No few, that would seem wise, resemble her."

To nurse means to educate or draw out and direct what exists in a state of

mere involution. It means to protect, to foster, to supply with appropriate

food, to cause to grow or promote growth, to manage with a view to

increase. Thus Greece was the nurse of the liberal arts; Rome was the nurse

of law. In horticulture, a shrub or tree is the nurse or protector of a

young and tender plant. We are said to nurse our national resources.

Isaiah, in speaking of the coming Messiah and the glory of his church,

says, "Thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side." "Kings shall be thy

nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers."

The place or apartment appropriated to such nursing is called a nursery.

Thus a plantation of young trees is called a nursery. Shakspeare calls

Padua the nursery of arts. We call a very bad place the nursery of thieves

and rogues. Dram-shops are the nurseries of intemperance. Commerce is

called the nursery of seamen. Universities are the nurseries of the arts

and sciences. The church on earth is called the nursery of the church in

heaven. Christian families are called the nurseries of the church on earth,

because in the former its members are nursed and propagated for the purpose

of being transplanted into the latter.

In the same sense and for the same reason, the Christian home is the

nursery of the young,--of human nature in its normal state. And as home is

the nursery of the state as well as of the church on earth and in heaven,

we must see that it is a physical, intellectual and religious nursery. We

shall briefly consider it in these aspects. Indeed the Christian home

cannot be considered in a more interesting and responsible light. The

little child, dedicated to God in holy baptism, is entirely helpless and

dependent upon the ministrations of the nursery. There is the department of

its first impressions, of its first directions, of its first intellectual

and moral formation, of the first evolution of physical and moral life.

There the child exists as but the germ of what is to be. It grows up under

the fostering care and plastic power of the parents. God's commission to

them in the nursery is, to bring up these germs of life, in His nurture

admonition.

"Take the germ, and make it

A bud of moral beauty. Let the dews

Of knowledge, and the light of virtue, wake it

In richest fragrance and in purest hues."

The nursery is the department of home in which the mother fulfils her

peculiar mission. This is her special sphere. None can effectually take her

place there. She is the center of attraction, the guardian of the infant's

destiny; and none like she, can overrule the unfolding life and character

of the child. God has fitted her for the work of the nursery. Here she

reigns supreme, the arbitress of the everlasting weal or woe of untutored

infancy. On her the fairest hopes of educated man depend, and in the

exercise of her power there, she sways a nation's destiny, gives to the

infant body and soul their beauty, their bias and their direction. She

there possesses the immense force of first impressions. The soul of her

child lies unveiled before her, and she makes the stamp of her own spirit

and personality upon its pliable nature. She there engrafts it, as it were,

into her own being, and from the combined elements of her own character,

builds up and establishes the character of her offspring. Hers will,

therefore, be the glory or the shame.

"Then take the heart thy charms have won,

And nurse it for the skies."

The nursery is that department of home in which the formation of our

character is begun. Infancy demands the nursery. It is not full-formed and

equipped for the battle of life. It lies in the cradle in a state of mere

involution, and in the hands of its parents is altogether passive, and

susceptible of impressions as wax before the sun. The germ of the man is

there; but it has yet to be developed. Its indwelling life must be nurtured

with tender and assiduous care. It demands an influence suited to the

expansion of its nature into bloom and maturity. It demands physical

development, mental evolution, moral training, and spiritual elevation. In

order to these it must live amidst the sweet and plastic socialities of

maternal relationship. It must come under the fostering influence of a

mother's heart, and be reared up by the tender touches of a mother's hand.

This idea is embodied in home as a nursery. This is fourfold in its

conception and relation to the child.

The nursery is physical. This involves the means of keeping the child in

health, and the appliances of a vigorous physical development. The

Christian mother, to this end, should make herself acquainted with the

physiology of the infant body. Many well-meaning mothers, from sheer

ignorance, destroy the health of their children; and it is on this account

perhaps that four-tenths of them die under five years of age. They should

also consider the bearing of the body upon the mind and morals of their

children. How often do ignorant and indolent parents, by giving their

children over to the care of sickly and immoral nurses, ruin forever the

health and souls of their offspring. Much, then, depends upon the physical

nurture of your child. If you would not injure its mind and soul, you must

nurse its body with tender care and wisdom. A vital bond unites them; they

reciprocally influence each other, and hence what affects the one must have

a corresponding influence upon the other. Neglect the body of your child;

destroy its health either by extreme and fastidious care, or by a brutal

neglect, and you at the same time do lasting injury to its mind and morals;

for the body as the vehicle of mind and spirit, is used for spiritual ends,

and should, therefore, be nurtured with direct reference to these.

Your child, in the nursery, is like the tender plant. The storm of passion

and the chill of indifference and the oppression of parental tyranny should

not be heard and felt there; for where the storm rages and coldness freezes

and the hand of cruelty oppresses, we can have no beautiful and vigorous

development of physical or moral powers. There will be a stinted and

one-sided growth. At best it will be dwarfish, and tend to counteract the

spontaneous outflow of mental and moral life. The tender plant, when,

cramped and clogged by existing impediments, cannot spring up into

beauteous maturity. Neither can your child, when crammed with sweetmeats,

and oppressed and screwed into monstrous contortions by the cruel

inquisition of fashion and fashionable garments.

In this way the misdirected love and cruel pride of mothers often destroy

the health and beauty of their children. They cause a sickly and dwarfish

growth by too much confinement and mental taxation, by a too rigid choice

of diet, by daily, uncalled for decoctions of medicine, and by fitting the

body in a dress as the Chinese do their children's feet in shoes; in a

word, by making the entire nursery life too artificial, and substituting

the laws of art for those of nature. The result must be a delicate,

artificial constitution, too fragile for the trials and duties of life. The

body of your child has not the blooming, blushing form of nature, but the

cold marble cast of a statue; and it imprints itself upon the disposition,

the spirit, the mental faculties. It shows itself in peevishness, in

imbecility, in such a passive, slavish subjection to the rules and

interests of mere artificial life, as to admit no hope almost of spiritual

progression.

The nursery is also intellectual. The mind of your child is unfolding as

well as its body; and hence the former, as well as the latter, demands the

nursery. How much of the mental vigor and attainments of children depend

upon the prudent management of the nursery. Hence parents should

"Exert a prudent care

To feed our infant minds with proper fare;

And wisely store the nursery by degrees

With wholesome learning, yet acquired with ease.

And thus well-tutored only while we share

A mother's lectures and a nurse's care."

Parents may abuse the minds of their children in the nursery, either by

total neglect, or by immature education, by too early training and too

close confinement to books at a very early age, thus taxing the mind beyond

its capacities. This is often the case when children betray great precocity

of intellect; and the pride of the parent seeks to gratify itself through

the supposed gift of the child. In this way parents often reduce their

children to hopeless mental imbecility.

Again, parents often injure the minds of their children by their misguided

efforts to train the mind. Even in training them to speak, how imprudent

they are in calling words and giving ideas in mutilated language. It is

just as easy to teach children to speak correctly, and to call all things

by their proper names, as to abuse their vernacular tongue. Such

mutilations are impediments to the growth of the intellect. The child must

afterwards be taught to undo what it was taught to do and say in the

nursery. But as this subject will be fully considered in the chapter on

Home Education, we shall refrain from further comment here.

The nursery is moral and spiritual. The first moral and religious training

of the child belongs to the nursery, and is the work of the mother. Upon

her personal exhibition of truth, justice, virtue, &c., depends the same

moral elements in the character of her child. In the nursery we receive our

first lessons in virtue or in vice, in honesty or dishonesty, in truth or

in falsehood, in purity or in corruption. The full-grown man is the matured

child morally as well as physically and intellectually. The same may be

said of the spiritual formation and growth of the child. Spiritual culture

belongs eminently to the nursery. There the pious parent should begin the

work of her child's salvation.

From what we have now seen of the nursery, we may infer its very common

abuse by Christian parents in various ways. They abuse it either by

forsaking its duties, or giving it over to nurses. The whole subject warns

parents against giving over their children to dissolute nurses. What a

blushing shame and disgrace to the very name of Christian mother, it is for

her to throw the whole care and responsibility of the nursery upon hired

and irreligious servants. And why is this so often done? To relieve the

mother from the trouble of her children, and afford her time and

opportunity to mingle unfettered in the giddy whirl of fashionable

dissipation. In circles of opulent society it would now be considered a

drudgery and a disgrace for mothers to attend upon the duties of this

responsible department of home. But the nurse cannot be a substitute for

the mother.

"Then why resign into a stranger's hand

A task so much within your own command,

That God and Nature, and your interest too

Seem with one voice to delegate to you?"

The same may be said of boarding schools, to which many parents send their

children to rid themselves of the trouble of training them up. They are

sent there at the very age in which they mostly need the fostering care of

a parent. There they soon become alienated from home, and lose the benefit

of its influence; and there too they often contract habits and are filled

with sentiments the most degenerating and corrupt. They grow up and enter

society without any conscious relation to home, and as a consequence,

regard society as a mere heartless conventionalism. To this part of the

subject we shall, in another chapter, devote special attention. It demands

the prayerful consideration of Christian parents.

"Why hire a lodging in a house unknown,

For one whose tenderest thoughts all hover round your own?

This second weaning, needless as it is,

How does it lacerate both your heart and his!"

CHAPTER XIV.

HOME-SYMPATHY.

"Sweet sensibility! thou keen delight!

Unprompted moral! sudden sense of right!

Perception exquisite! fair virtue's seed!

Thou quick precursor of the liberal deed!

Thou hasty conscience! reason's blushing morn!

Instinctive kindness, ere reflection's born!

Prompt sense of equity! to thee belongs

The swift redress of unexamined wrongs!

Eager to serve, the cause perhaps untried,

But always apt to choose the suffering side!"

Where shall we find a more exquisite picture of home-sympathy than this,

from the pen of that truly pious woman, Hannah More! We consider the

home-sympathy as an argument against the neglect and abuse of the nursery.

It is the instinctive impulse of the parent's heart to be faithful to the

trust of home. What mother, prompted by such sympathy, can be recreant to

the duties of her household? Can she, keenly sensible to the danger of her

children, anxious for their welfare, prompt to do them justice, eager to

procure them interests and joys, yearning to alleviate their misfortunes,

push them from her arms, and give them over to the care of unfeeling and

immoral nurses? If among all the members of the Christian home

"There is a holy tenderness,

A nameless sympathy, a fountain love,--

Branched infinite from parents to children,

From husband to wife, from child to child,

That binds, supports, and sweetens human life,"

then the law of sympathy is the standard of faithfulness to the loved ones

of home, and its violation is an abuse of the affections and faith of the

heart. We shall now consider the natural and spiritual sympathy of home.

What are the natural elements of home-sympathy? The original meaning of

sympathy is "harmony of the affections." As such it is an instinctive

element of human nature. "Sympathy," says Adams in his Elements of

Christian Science, "is a natural harmony by which, upon matters especially

that concern the affections, one human being shall, under certain

conditions, feel, feel in despite of all concealment of language, the real

state of the other." It is, in a word, that law of our nature which makes

the feeling of one become affected in the same way as are the feelings of

another, so that, in obedience to this law, "we rejoice with them that

rejoice, and weep with them that weep." In order to this the motive need

not be the same in those in whom the feeling is the same; for that feeling

engenders a feeling of its own kind in the other, independent of similar

motive. Home-sympathy is that primary power of the heart by which all the

affections of one member are extended to all the other members. It awakens

in each for all the others, those delicate sensibilities which impel to the

most self-denying and benevolent acts. The parent who sympathizes with the

child, will extend to it all the aids within a parent's ability.

Its nature is to yield more of itself to weeping than to rejoicing, to

misery than to joy. The parent will exert more power and do more for the

wretched child than for those of his children who are not in the same

condition. He will leave the latter in their security, and seek the one

lost sheep of his little flock. Thus it exerts a sheltering influence

against the dangers and miseries of human life. It is the law of

home-preservation, written upon the heart, obeyed by the affections, and

impelling each member to yield a voluntary devotion to the welfare of all

the others. It is this which makes it one of the most lovely attributes of

home. It is one of the golden chains that link its members together in

close unity, making one heart of the many that are thus fused together, and

blending into beautiful unison their specific feelings, and hopes and

interests.

It is, therefore, the law of oneness in the family, weaving together, like

warp and woof, the existence of the members, and locking each heart into

one great home-heart, "like the keys of an organ vast," so that if one

heart be out of tune, the home-heart feels the painful jar, and gives forth

discordant sounds. By it we are not only bound to our kindred, but to our

friends, our nation, our race. It impels us to all our acts of benevolence

even to an enemy. Earth would be a dreary scene, and society would be a

curse, if it did not reign in human nature.

Sympathy was a rich and interesting theme with the ancients. It entered

into all their philosophy and religion, and gave rise to numerous fables.

They believed that sympathy was a miraculous principle, and that it reigned

in irrational and inanimate things. Thus they thought that "two harps being

tuned alike, and one being played, the chords of the other would follow the

tune with a faint, sympathetic music." It was also believed that precious

stones sympathized with certain persons, that the stars sympathized with

men, that the efficacy of ointment depended upon sympathy, that "wounds

could be healed at a distance by an ointment whose force depended upon

sympathy, the ointment being smeared upon the weapon, not upon the wound."

Upon this belief many erroneous, superstitious and dangerous systems of

philosophy and religion were established. The natural philosophy of

Baptista Porta, or Albertus Magnus, was founded upon the principle of

sympathy. Plato applied this principle to marriage, and maintained that

"marriage was the union of two souls that once, in their preexistent state,

were one, and that sympathy urges them to union again, and sends them

unconsciously seeking it over the world." In the middle ages it was

maintained that two friends could be so moved with mutual sympathy as to

have, under certain conditions, a true and perfect knowledge of one

another's state, even when at a great distance apart. To the revival of

this erroneous view of the law of sympathy may be ascribed the theories of

Mesmerism and spiritual rappings at the present day.

Home-sympathy, viewed as a feeling and a faculty, is twofold in its nature,

viz., passive and active. As passive, it is the mere sense of harmony of

feeling among all the members, producing the idea and feeling of the

oneness of home. It makes a unity of affection, so that the temper, hopes

and interests of each member have a living echo and response in all the

others. It gives to home its unitive heart, preserves its vital coherence,

fuses all the hearts together, makes each a thread in the web of

home-being, where each finds its true measure, is inspired with the

home-feeling when all is right, and oppressed with home-sickness when

separated from it.

But home-sympathy is also active. As such it is "the active power that one

person has naturally of entering into the feelings of another, and being

himself affected as that other is." Each member of home has the power in

his feelings of making the feelings of all the other members his own,

though he may not have the causes of the feelings of the one with whom he

sympathizes. Thus one friend may feel the grief of another, actually and

really, though he may not suffer the loss of that friend. He can make the

emotion which that loss caused, his own. We may weep with the mother who

pours her floods of anguish upon the grave of her child, though we may not

have sustained the same loss. The husband weeps with his wife, though he

may not be able to feel the pangs which penetrate her heart. The child can

enter into the feelings of the parent, and be affected to tears or to joy

by them.

And thus the home-sympathy demands that all the emotions of home, whether

joyful or painful, must affect all,--must vibrate from heart to heart. It

involves the power of home-transference, by which, each member conveys to

his own affections, all within home. It is thus the law of adaptation and

assimilation, for the home-affections. In obedience to this law the hearts

and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The

necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members

faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love.

It is, therefore, only when the home-sympathy, as a feeling and a faculty,

is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that

it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always

done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself

according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute

feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as

feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but

home-sentimentalism,--a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance,

parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife

may lament the impenitence of her husband; but if they go no further,

their sympathy is really false, because it does not share in and feel the

state of others, nor seek to alleviate their impending miseries. The

home-sympathy is not simply the look of the priest and Levite upon the

half-dead traveler, but also the help of the good Samaritan. Its language

is not only, "Be ye clothed and fed," but also, "I will clothe and feed

thee." The mere indulgence in the feeling of sympathy is but to harden the

heart in the end. Such were the sympathies of Rosseau,--mere heart-stimuli,

without legitimate deeds and objective force, existing only as a love-sick

sentiment. And this was both the theme of his eloquence and the cause of

his misery. Such, too, were the sympathies of Robespierre,--a mere

ebullition of disembodied sentiment, borne up like a floating bubble upon

muddy waters, and exploding upon the slightest depression.

But, on the other hand, when home-sympathy is issued in faithful action as

its emotions prompt, it becomes an efficient agent in the happiness and

peace of the family. It not only gives eloquence to the tongue, tears to

the eye, but faithfulness to the life. It serves as a key-note to the mind

and heart, framing the home-energy, revealing to us our real state, and

prompting, by the instinct of love, the means for our highest welfare.

"How glows the joyous parent to descry,

A guileless bosom true to sympathy!

A long lost friend, or hapless child restored,

Smiles at his blazing hearth and social board;

Warm from his heart the tears of rapture flow,

And virtue triumphs o'er remembered woe!"

Sympathy is excited and measured by the power of natural affection. In

proportion to the strength of the latter will be the attractive power of

the former. That soothing voice which calms the wailing-infant; that fond

bosom from which the child draws its subsistence, and on which it pillows

its weary head; that smile which throws a sunshine around its existence,

and all those acts of kindness administered by the hand of love, draw the

child instinctively to the parent's heart, and blend in sweetest union its

very being with theirs.

The principle of home-sympathy reigns in some degree in every household

whose members have not sunk below the level of the brute. Its nature

demands that it be mutual. It should glow with peculiar warmth in the wife,

the mother, and the sister; because it is a more prominent instinct of

woman. It is an intuition of the mother's heart.

"When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!"

Who but she can smooth the pillow and soothe the anguish of the child of

affliction? There is a tenderness in her nature, a softness in her touch, a

lightness in her step, a soothing expression in her face, a tender beam in

her eye, which man can never have, and which eminently fits her for the

lead in home-sympathy. The want of it is a libel upon her sex. It is her

prerogative,--the magic power she wields in the formation and reformation

of character.

But her sympathy should find response in the bosom of her husband, the

father, the brother; for, if true, it must he mutual. Their joys and their

sorrows must be common. Thus heart must answer to heart, and face. "The

cruelty of that man," says J.A. James, "wants a name, and I know of none

sufficiently emphatic, who denies his sympathy to a suffering woman, whose

only sin is a broken constitution, and whose calamity is the result of her

marriage." Without such mutual sympathy, the members of the family would be

cold and repulsive, and society would be deprived of its most lovely

attributes; its members would lose the connecting link which brings them

together, and its entire fabric would fall to pieces and degenerate into

barbaric individualism.

"Had earth no sympathy, no tears would flow,

In heart-felt sorrow, for another's woe;

The joyous spirit then would weary roam,

A stranger to the dear delights of home."

We shall now consider briefly the religious elements of home-sympathy.

These involve harmony of the spiritual affections, and a transfer to all

the members, of the religious experience and enjoyment of each. As natural

sympathy arises out of and is measured by natural affection, so spiritual

sympathy is the product of faith and love. Hence the latter is purer, more

refined and efficient than the former. If the members of the family are the

children of God, they will live together in the unity of the Spirit as well

as of natural affection. The sympathy of the pious portion will be

interposed in behalf of the salvation of the impenitent members. There will

be an identity of soul-interest. The pious mother will make the everlasting

interests of her husband and child, her own; and will labor with the same

assiduity to promote them as she does to promote her own salvation. She

will thus enter into the spiritual emotions of her kindred, and bear them

vicariously, making thus her religious sympathies the law of preservation

to all the members of her household.

The Christian Home As it is in the Sphere of Nature and the Church; Showing the Mission, Duties, Influences, Habits, and Responsibilities of Home, its Education, Government, and Discipline; with Hints on "Match Making," and the Relation of Parents to the Marriage Choice of their Children; together with a consideration of the Tests in the Selection of a Companion, Etc. · 第 29 / 32 章

The bible is adapted to the Christian home. It is the book for the family.