AFFECTION.- | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 29, 1871

AFFECTION.—

We sometimes meet with men who seem to think that any indulgence of the affectionate feeling is weakness. They will return from a journey and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendor of an iceberg, surrounded with its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of these families without a heart. A father might far better extinguish his boy’s eyes than to take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature’s scenery than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Who would not rather follow his child to the grave than to entomb his parental affection? Cherish, then, your heart’s best affections for home. Indulge in the warm and gushing emotion of fraternal love. Think it not a weariness. Teach your children to love the rose, and the robin; to love their parents, their God. Let it be the studied object of their domestic culture to give them warm hearts, ardent affections. Bind your whole family together by these strong cords. You cannot make them too strong.