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

Of cares, which tear the bosom that they soil;

Oh! if there be in retrospection’s chain

One link that knits us with young dreams again—

One thought so sweet we scarcely dare to muse

On all the hoarded raptures it reviews;

Which seems each instant, in its backward range,

The heart to soften, and its ties to change,

And every spring untouched for years to move,

It is—the memory of a mother’s love!"

We see, therefore, that there are painful, as well as pleasant, memories of home. When the absent disobedient child remembers how he abused the privileges of the parental home, and brought the gray hairs of his parents down with sorrow to the grave, and turned that household into a desolation; when