The sweetest type of heaven is home. Nay, heaven itself is the home for whose acquisition we are to strive most strongly. Home in one form or another is the great object of life. It stands at the end of every day's labor, and beckons us to its bosom; and life would be cheerless and meaningless did we not discern across the river that divides it from the life beyond glimpses of the pleasant mansions prepared for us. Yes, heaven is the home towards which those who have lived aright direct their steps when wearied by the toils of life. There the members of the homes on earth, separated here, will meet again, to part no more.
Home Circle
The home circle may be, ought to be, the most delightful place on earth, the center of the purest affections and most desirable associations, as well as of the most attractive and exalted beauties to be found this side of paradise. Nothing can excel in beauty and sublimity the quietude, peace, harmony, affection, and happiness of a well-ordered family, where virtue is nurtured and every good principle fostered and sustained.
The home circle is the nursery of affection. It is the Eden of young attachments, and here should be planted and tended all the germs of love, every seed that shall ever sprout in the heart; and how carefully should they be tended! how guarded against the frosts of jealousy, anger, envy, pride, vanity, and ambition! how rooted in the best soil of the heart, and nourished and cultivated by the soul's best husbandry!
Here is the heart's garden. Its sunshine and flowers are here. All its beautiful, all its lovely things are here. And here should be expended care, toil, effort, patience, and whatever may be necessary to make them still more lovely. It is around the memories of the home circle that cluster the happiest and sometimes the saddest of the recollections of youth. There is the thought of brother and sister, perhaps now gone forever; of childish sorrow and grief; of the mother's prayer and the father's blessing. Do you wonder that these memories, both bitter and sweet, linger in the chambers of the mind long after those of the busy years of maturity have faded away before the approach of age? With what assiduity ought all who have arrived at the years of maturity strive to make their homes pleasant—and especially is this true of parents—so that its members when they go from thence will carry with them thoughts that through all the weary years that are before them will afford a pleasant retreat for them when well-nigh wearied with the care which comes with increasing years.
We can not honor with too deep a reverence the home affections; we can not cultivate them with too great a care; we can not cherish them with too much solicitude. There is the center of our present happiness, the springs of our deepest and strongest tides of joy. When the home affections are duly cultivated all others follow or grow out of them as a natural consequence. If any would have fervent and noble affections, such as give power and glory to the human heart, such as sanctify the soul and make it supremely beautiful, such as an angel might covet without shame, let him cultivate all the feelings that originate, as from a radiant point, in the home circle.