school_. Nowhere else is the character so moulded; nowhere else is so
much infused into our entire being. For, whatever it may be, it is the
nursery of childhood; and "the child is father to the man." Here dawns
upon the human mind the conception of life. Here, when the nature is
uninscribed and plastic, it takes its first impressions. I suppose it to
be true, that more is learnt, more that is elementary and a key to all
the rest, in the first few years of childhood than in all after time. I
do not deny, of course, that much is corrected and overcome under
another class of influences. But the deepest impressions, the seeds of
the most stubborn habits, are planted at home. Hence the peculiar
anxiety of good men to rescue _children_ from the influences of a bad
home. And, even then, with what obstacles do they have to contend! How
radical are the prejudices already formed in that young mind! How
obstinate the customs, how opaque the ignorance, how rank the growth of
error! Nay, into what complete fruition have all these grown, simply in
the neglect of home-culture, to say nothing of influences positively
evil! Really, the color and current of a man's destiny are indicated
here, unless a shock of wonderful transformation comes over him. I do
not mean to say that anybody is wholly the creature of circumstances;
but he is the _subject_ of circumstances. If they do not entirely make
_him_, they furnish the occasion out of which he makes something; and,
viewed either from the platform of the inward or the outward, they
furnish an important key to his life. And, although the path of
reformation is more difficult than the descent into evil, and demands an
effort which too few are inclined to put forth; though by the conditions
of our nature the good is more easily swept away than the bad; still, it
is encouraging to estimate the permanence and the power of those _good_
influences which are received at home. Everybody knows, when he is
pitched into this whirlpool of evil that rolls around him in the world,
how those old home-restraints lie upon him like a magic chain, hard to
be forced away--perhaps never utterly forced away. And, seeking for
those who should stand up in this boisterous sweep of sin, you would
look and I would look to those who had received the best impressions
under the domestic roof. If I were alone, poor, compelled to ask charity
somewhere in this selfish world, I would go, not to the man who has
learnt most of what he calls his "wisdom" from the experience of mature
life, but to him in whose heart there evidently remains something of
childhood's tenderness, kept warm by the remembered pressures of his
mother's breast. If I were seeking to restore some wild prodigal,
brazen-fronted by his own wicked will and by the scorn with which men
have battered him--if I were looking for some gleam of promise in his
turbulent nature, and sounding its depths to find some spring of
repentance--I should never despair if I could discover one gentle pulse
that beat with the memories of a good and happy home. Why, who needs to
be told of the potency of this our earliest school, to say nothing of
other influences, if only a faithful _mother_ presides there? O! mother,
mother, name for the earliest relationship, symbol of the divine
tenderness; kindling a love that we never blush to confess, and a
veneration that we cannot help rendering; how does your mystic
influence, imparted from the soft pressure and the undying smile, weave
itself through all the brightness through all the darkness of our after
life. The mould of character set on the front of the world's great men,
and gladly confessed by them, bears your stamp. Your inspiration burns
along the poet's line. It is your true courage, more than man's rude
daring, that makes the force of heroes. The statesman, when treason to
humanity wears the garb of power, and duty calls him like a trumpet,
hears your voice. The philanthropist, when he feels that the most
efficient service is to be patient and to wait, imbibes the strength of
your fortitude. The sailor, "on the high and giddy mast," mingles your
name close to God's. And thousands in life's great claims, in life's
great perils, trace back the influences of the hour to some early time,
some calm moment, when,--little, timid children,--they knelt by your
side, and from tones of reverence and looks of love and simple words of
prayer, they first learnt piety at home.
But I observe again, that Home is the sphere where are most clearly
displayed _the real elements of character_. The world furnishes
occasions of trial, but it also furnishes prudential considerations.
Without any absolute hypocrisy, one measures his speech and restrains
his action in the street and the market. And it is easy to conceive how
small men may perform great deeds, and mean men seem philanthropic, and
cowards flourish as heroes, with the tremendous motive of publicity to
urge them. But at home all masks are thrown aside, and the true
proportions of the man appear. Here he can find his actual moral
standard, and measure himself accordingly. If he is irritable, here
breaks forth his repressed fretfulness. If he is selfish, here are the
sordid tokens. If he passes in any way for more than he is worth, here
you may detect the counterfeit in the ring of his natural voice and the
superscription of his undisguised life. No, the world is not the place
to prove the moral stature and quality of a man. There are too many
props and stimulants. Nor, on the other hand, can he himself determine
his actual character merely by looking into his own solitary heart.
Therein he may discover _possibilities_, but it needs actuality to make
up the estimate of a complete life. He must _do_ something as well as be
something; he must do something in order that he may be something. For,
what he thinks is in his heart may be exaggerated by self-flattery, or
darkened by morbid self-distrust. It needs some occasion to prove what
is really there. And Home is precisely that sphere which is sufficiently
removed from the factitious motives of publicity on the one extreme, and
the unexercised possibilities of the human heart on the other, to afford
a genuine test. What a man really is, therefore, will appear in the
truest light under his own roof and by his own fireside. I can believe
that he is a Christian, when I know that he faithfully takes up the
daily duties, and bears the crosses, that cluster within his own doors.
I shall think that the world rightly calls him a philanthropist, when,
notwithstanding common faults and infirmities, he receives the
spontaneous award of the good husband and father, and the kindness of
his nature is reflected in the very air and light of his dwelling.
And,--talk of noble deeds!--where will you find occasions for, where
will you behold manifestations of, a more beautiful self-sacrifice, a
more generous heroism, than in the labors and in the endurance of
thousands of men and women, shut out from the world's observation in
silent nooks and corners of this very city, amidst the relationships and
cares and struggles of home? But whether it be in forms of good or evil,
we know that the real elements of character, the genuine moral qualities
of people, must be expressed there.
And, I remark once more, that at Home we must find _the most essential
happiness or misery of life_. The same conditions apply here as those
which relate to character. The world is a theatre of _seeming_, and we
can hardly tell by what we notice there who is, or who is not, happy. We
know that gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair;
and that men will bear up with a smile while untold agony is gnawing at
their heart-strings, and will die laughing, in an agony of defiance,
under the sword-strokes of fortune. On the other hand we may count some
as unfortunate, in whose bosoms, all the while, there are flowing
inexhaustible springs of peace, and who derive real joy from what we
suppose to be a hard and pitiable lot. But amidst the undisguised
realities of home we can form the most correct estimate of a man's
condition. In the first place because, as has been remarked, he is there
most truly himself. He gains opportunity for reflection, and gives vent
to the secret burden of his heart. There he empties the load of his
envies, his rivalries, his disappointments; which he has carried before
the world muffled in courtesy or pride. These, it may be, meet and are
re-acted upon by kindred elements; engendered, perhaps, by the very
atmosphere which he himself, in the first place, created. Oh! how many
rich dwellings there are, crowded with every appointment of luxury, that
are only glittering ice-caverns of selfishness and discontent;
pavilions of misery, where jangling discord mars the show, and a chill
of mutual distrust breathes through the sumptuous apartments, and
heartless ostentation presides like a robed skeleton at the feast. You
feel that nothing is genial or spontaneous there. The courtesy is dreary
etiquette, and the laughter forced music. You would dine as happily with
the forms on the canvas, with the cold marbles in the hall. For all this
magnificence is nothing more than a gorgeous pall over dead
affections--nothing more than the coronation of a living woe.
"Better is a dinner of herbs," says the wise man, "where love is, than a
stalled ox and hatred therewith." And many a home exists where there
_is_ but little more than a dinner of herbs, which affection and mutual
loyalty, and sweet dispositions, convert into a palace. And there are
fixed boundaries of peace, that society cannot encroach upon, while the
processions of ambition and pleasure and ceaseless pursuit, pass by its
windows and disturb it not. Here the good man and the brave man--the
man who has nobly discharged his duty at whatever cost--is respected and
understood. Hither he can retreat beyond the shots of calumny which have
torn the ensign of his good name; beyond the deceit of men, which halts
at the threshold. Here he can look calmly out upon the changes of
fortune and the frowns of the world. Here his perplexed spirit finds
inspirations of strength, and space for rest. There is no happiness in
life, there is no misery, like that growing out of the dispositions
which consecrate or desecrate a Home.
Moreover, the elements of profoundest joy or suffering are there,
because there are unfolded the deepest experiences of our mortal lot.
There transpire those events which constitute the _eras_ of our
existence. There, day by day, grows the sentiment of filial veneration
and love. There is the joy of wedded felicity. There wells up in the
heart the first strange gush of parental affection. There comes the
intimation of awful change staring upon us with the face of death.
There falls the shadow of the funeral train, passing across the
threshold. There breaks in upon us the sense of bereavement, in the
vacant chambers; where the familiar foot-step patters, where the
familiar voice is heard no more. From the very nature of things, the
profoundest happiness and misery of human life must be experienced among
the conditions of Home.
Having thus in some respects considered what Home _must_ be, I have
virtually anticipated whatever may be said in the second division of
this discourse respecting what Home _ought_ to be.
Thus, as it is the earliest and most influential school, it behoves
every one who is bound by its responsibilities to make it an agent of
the _best culture_. The great subject of Home Education, is of itself
enough for a series of discourses; and I have not room to lay down even
the general propositions which belong to it, much less for
specifications. But I would remind you--and I think the suggestion is
especially needed amidst the whirl of city life--that there _is_ such a
thing as Home Education, and it presses its claims upon everybody who
inhabits a Home. There is such a thing as Home Education, differing from
school education, whether of the week day or the Sabbath, and therefore
it is a matter we ought to attend to, and not suppose we have done
enough when we patronize an academy, or help fill a class on Sunday. To
every parent--to every influential member of a household--there is
committed a charge which can be shifted to no one else; there is an
opportunity which no outside teacher possesses. There are some duties in
life that we have to look for and to go after; there are others which
are passed right into our hands, whether we will or not. And this duty
of Home Education is of the latter kind. Now, I have just said that I
cannot specify here, and even if there were room I am not sure that it
would be advisable. For I doubt whether we can give any manual of
methods and instruments in this respect, any more than there can be a
manual of religious exercises suited to every spiritual peculiarity.
Dispositions, capacities, circumstances, must create their own methods.
And perhaps the poorest method of all would be some system of domestic
education, which the experimenter thinks will do the work exactly. I am
somewhat suspicious of systems. I am more than suspicious of any
constrained formal method, bringing up children in a mere manual drill,
crimping them into a mould of mincing proprieties, and making them speak
with an automaton click. Perhaps the most headlong young men that can be
found, are those who spent their early days in a sort of strait jacket
with a clock-work movement. They were wound up so tight when they were
boys, that now they take great pleasure in going fast, and running down.
In other words, having felt their early training to be mere _training_,
the moment they strip off the constraint, they plunge into the opposite
extreme of _no_ constraint. Nay, I believe that even children who are
left to their own instincts, and shoved out into the world to take care
of themselves, are generally better balanced, and go with steadier
motion than these. Of course, however, neither extreme is right. There
is such a thing, I say once more, as Home Education, involving all
necessary training and true constraint; and yet not oppressively felt as
such, because it is free, informal, and respects the spontaneity of the
childish nature. But, whether our Home Education be formal or informal,
direct or indirect, there is one kind of education which we are sure to
impart. It is the education of example, silent, effective, stronger and
more easily apprehended than any set of maxims. I would we were all duly
impressed with the responsibilities of Home as they appear in this
light; might feel, however we may be absorbed in business or in
pleasure, that the young mind and heart are receiving influences, and
growing into expressions that in some way will surprise us.
In the next place I observe, that if we display our real dispositions
and characters at home, we should recognize it practically as _a sphere
of moral discipline_. The family is a divine ordinance--the Home is an
institution of God, forecast in the peculiarities of our very nature.
History shows no period when it did not exist, and we discover no tribe
so barbarous as to be without it. It is the foundation of all society.
It embosoms the germ and ideal of the State. According to the purity of
its relations, the intensity of its sympathies, the inviolability of its
rights, a nation's life is high or low, feeble or strong, fickle or
enduring. And if it is thus rooted in the nature and the history of man,
we may well believe that it affords some of the profoundest occasions
for that moral discipline which is the great purpose of our existence
upon the earth.
It is certainly the great sphere in which our affections are to be
cultivated. Of course I do not mean that this is the limit of their
cultivation. But here they are nurtured, and out of this they grow. As
love is the Infinite Nature itself, so is it the prevalent sentiment of
all life. It has been ordained that this great element should flow
through every form of being, linking them together by a common feeling,
and lending some interest to the most insignificant. And man has been
set in the family relation that this sentiment might be developed.
There is no one in whose heart it does not exist. You cannot find me a
being so defaced, so alienated from the common stock of humanity, as to
cherish in his bosom no secret fount of love, no fibril of affection
linking him to something else. But of this love there are numerous
degrees; and the highest forms of it, that go forth in expressions of
self-sacrifice and worldwide sympathy, are only developed by culture.
And for this culture there are rich opportunities amidst the relations
and sanctities of Home.
And there is opportunity among these relations also, for active duty,
and in its daily tasks and responsibilities, is often illustrated that
practical lesson which society so much needs--the lesson of mutual help.
It is a school where we may learn endurance and charity. Out of its
trials is developed the sense of religious need; and under the shadow of
its bereavements we appreciate the glorious vision of Faith. There are
other issues in life, where we need these divine helps; none where we
feel the need of them more. Those who have stood by the sick-bed and
taken the last look of the dearest earthly objects, and yet have lifted
hearts of trust, and eyes of transcendent hope, are able to meet the
intensest sorrows of the world, and to come out like refined gold. Home,
then, should be regarded especially in this light, as a sphere where the
richest elements of our moral culture are supplied.
Finally, if at home we find the most essential happiness or misery of
life, of course each should do his best to make it the most _attractive_
of all places. He should bring not his worst, but his best temper there.
How many are there who bottle up their wrath all the day long, and
uncork it when they get home! They had better reverse the process. If
you must chafe under disappointment, and indulge angry passion, let it
out in the excitement of the world, where the rough friction of business
will help you to get rid of it, or where nobody has time to care whether
you get rid of it or not.
And let _business_ stay where it belongs. Do not interrupt social claims
with its speculations; nor drag the counting-room into the parlor.
There are some men with whom business is a disease; they are never easy
with it and never rid of it. Thus, perhaps, they acquire a reputation
for smartness and enterprise; but they do it, it is to be feared, by
putting aside other and more sacred claims.
Nor let him who is the genial companion abroad, be the morose boarder in
his own house, reserving his vivacity for society and the lees for the
fireside. It is a great deal better to be like the stream that is good
and welcome wherever it flows, but is sure to be fresh at its source.
Indeed, there are men who are made up of foam, and sparkle, and who
circulate in society, but contribute nothing to the necessaries of life,
and are returned empty. It is an unfortunate gift that cheers the world
outdoors, but casts only a dreary shadow inside.
Of course, in speaking of the influence of dispositions in making home
attractive, I would include the duty of those who stay at home as well
as of those who go abroad, and that self-sacrifice and kind hearts
should be found as well as brought there. Indeed, if time would allow me
to make a theme of what now can be only a hint, I should dwell largely
upon _woman's_ influence in this matter.
But home is to be rendered attractive not only by the disposition, but
by the customs of its inmates. It must be a place to live, not merely to
eat and sleep in; a place where we can find entertainment, and not
always leave in search of it. It is really a monstrous folly, this
fashionable treatment of home, which leads people to abandon it almost
every night in pursuit of pleasure, or else to sweep it with a rout,
which considers a household evening very dull, and makes Sunday a day
for sleeping and yawning. The central idea of home is _stability_, and
this has much less chance to be realized in the city than in the
country. In the latter, old forms and landmarks are not so liable to
interruption, and the slow process of time works instead of the hand of
innovation. But in a city, where a man emigrates before he has fairly
settled, and where many move with every May-day, the idea of a homestead
is almost obsolete. Elegance, solidity, venerable associations, none of
these can resist the march of improvement, and the rapid tide of
business enterprise. The main streets of a great city in this country,
may almost be termed so many dissolving views of perpetual change and
renewal. But, perhaps, there is hardly one of us who does not feel that
by his or her own exertions the essential element of Home can be made
far more abiding than it now is; and where we hear of frivolous
daughters and dissipated sons, many a parent may ask the question, "What
have I done to cheer and consecrate the household world, and make it
more abiding?"
My friends, when I consider the magnitude and importance of the subject
now before us, and how many topics of discussion grow out of it--when I
think how much must be left entirely unsaid--I entreat you not to
suppose that I offer this discourse as anything more than a
_suggestion_--a suggestion meant to turn your attention to this subject
of Home in the City, and leaving it to the elaboration of your own
thoughts. Remember, here abide the deepest springs of social life. The
noblest privileges, the greatest duties, find their basis here; and we
are taught first "to show piety at Home." And the influence of this
institution upon all other fields of human action, private or public, is
too obvious to mention. All life flows from the centre, outwards; and
the citizen who desires the order and purity of the community in which
he lives; the philanthropist, who, under all conditions, regards the
highest welfare of his race; the Christian, who urges the secret culture
of the soul, must look with peculiar solicitude to this institution. It
is one whose impotence is demonstrated by the strength of the instinct
which creates it and clings to it--an instinct which associates the most
genuine happiness with its sacred enclosure of affection, however rude
or poor that spot may be--which, while a man has such a place to call
his own, makes him feel that he is somebody, and has some tie and claim
in the world; and which, on the other hand, associated the most bitter
destitution, the dreariest isolation, with that one word--"Homeless."
How this instinct abides, how long and how far it goes with us, is
beautifully illustrated in the lines of Goldsmith.
"In all my wand'rings round this world of care,
In all my griefs--and God has giv'n my share,
I still had hopes my latest hours to crown,
Amidst these humble bow'rs to lay me down;
To husband out life's taper at the close,
And keep the flame from wasting by repose.
* * * * *
Around my fire an ev'ning group to draw,
And tell of all I felt, and all I saw;
And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue,
Pants to the place from whence at first he flew,
I still had hopes, my long vexations past,
Here to return--and die at Home at last."
Hopes, my friends, which I think glow in the breasts of most of us, and
burst spontaneously from our lips. "Let us," we say, "if our lot may be
so ordered--if the lines of duty run not otherwise--let us live at
Home." Here, amidst those darkened and brightened associations which are
woven in the warp and woof of our deepest experience. Here, where gentle
memories steal upon us with the shadows of the twilight, and for ever
tapestry the walls. Here, where we have held delightful intercourse with
man, and secret communion with God. Here, where we have tried to do our
duty, and exercise our love, and to drink with patience the sweet and
bitter which our Father mingles in life's mysterious cup. Here, where
old friends are always cherished and new ones gladly come. Here, where
the dearest ties of earth have bound us in a family circle; and though
here and there we find broken links, we still keep hold of them, and
they draw us up.
And when on this familiar hearth our own vital lamp burns low, and the
golden bowl begins to shudder and the silver cord to untwine, let our
last look be upon faces that we best love; let the gates that open into
the celestial City be these well-known doors--and thus may we also
_die_ at Home!