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.

by Samuel Philips

The bereavements of home fill up the urn of memory with its most hallowed treasures. Though these memories of the household have an alloy of sorrow and are the product of its adversities, yet there is no pleasure so delicate, so pure, so painful, so much longed after, as that which they afford. They bring to our hearts the purest essence of the past, and cause us to live it over again. They come over us like the "breath of the sweet south breathing over a bed of violets." When we revert to the happy scenes of our childhood, we live amid them in spirit again, and remembrance swells with many a proof of recollected love; sweet ideals of all that lived under the parental roof spring up within us, and pass before us in visions of delight; the home of the past becomes the home of the present. The things of that home are spiritualized and changed into the thoughts of home; we enjoy them again; and we live our life over again with those we loved the most.

"Why in age

Do we revert so fondly to the walks

Of childhood, but that there the soul discerns

The dear memorial footsteps, unimpaired,

Of her own native vigor; thence can hear

Reverberations, and a choral song

Commingling with the incense that ascends,

Undaunted, towards the imperishable heavens,

From her own lonely altar?"