HOME by Sel. | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 6, 1877

HOME

By Sel.

“Be it ever so humble there is no place like home;” that is, if we strive to let the sunshine in, and to make it the spot of peace and contentment which home should be. There is so much depending upon the influences of home that whenever we see one that is mismanaged we are shocked beyond the power of expression. From the cradle out through the sports of childhood to the verge of manhood, the warmth of the fireside expands the virtues of the soul into bloom and matures them into sweet and charming beauty, or the coldness of the hearthstone freezes the heart into an unsympathizing, unloving, and wicked exclusiveness and selfishness. The soul that begins to live amidst the soft glow of a happy, virtuous, and charitable home will never entirely forget that the world is full of sunshine and flowers,—although it may, in after life, struggle through many midnights and feel the pricking of many a thorn,—or that it was born for Heaven, although it may grovel in filth or lounge in the tents of wickedness.

On account of the weakness of human nature, often nothing on earth is capable of saving us from the commission of sin, and from scarring the soul from its blistering influences; but however low a man or woman whose childhood has been passed in the sunshine of a pure home may fall, it is always safe to conclude that but for these mellowing influences a still lower depth would have been found. And for the boy or girl who has never known what home is, who has never beheld the sweet, dear face of mother beaming at the fireside more brightly than the fire in the grate ever does, and with greater loveliness than the sun of the morning, the human heart, with all its wealth of sympathizing love, cannot bear too warm or deep a sympathy.

To expect a perfect manhood or womanhood from a child who has never known the sweet influences of home, is expecting the bud to develop into the flower without the developing warmth of the sunshine. For a perfect development of nature, for the strengthening of all that is pure, and noble, and good in the soul, and the destruction of all that is evil, the home must be depended on. If we would have the boys and girls go out into the world like ministering angels to their kind,—if we would have their hearts so full of gentle love that their words will fall upon kindred souls, and awaken their drooping hopes into new life, as the shower imbues the fading grass with fresh vitality, we must train them in the home, and freight them with gentleness at the fireside.

But upon noble manhood and womanhood rest the interests of the world. If every man and woman were pure, and upright, and noble, we should have no crime and comparatively little wretchedness. Government would never be in danger of treason’s assaults or treachery; mind that is now wasted in wrong-doing would be turned into channels in which its energies would bear rich harvests of blessings for the world; the sword would cease its bloody work, and the tread of armies would no longer shake the earth, and blight the verdure and the flowers of the fields. What a vast responsibility, therefore, rests upon the heads of families, and how few realize it.

If every boy and girl in America had a home to-day, and if every home was what it should be, the abode of virtue, the temple of forgiving charity, the school of industry, culture, and gentility, the history of the American Republic a hundred years hence could even now be written.

With so much depending upon it, therefore, the management of the home should be the subject of constant, earnest study and ceaseless anxiety. It should always be pleasant—the pleasantest spot on earth to the child. Our children will seek the sunshine and beauties of life, and if the home does not furnish them, they will go elsewhere to enjoy them. Pictures, and books, and flowers should be abundant, and as beautiful as the means will admit of. Neatness and order should be visible everywhere. Politeness should always characterize the intercourse between the members of a family. Especially should the children be taught the beauties of gentleness, charity, and kindness, by their constant and unostentatious practice by the parents, not only toward the children, but toward the world.

It must never be forgotten that these tender little hearts are easily hardened, and that nothing will so quickly harden them as a constant exhibition of uncharitableness and cruelty toward mankind. If parents are selfish, and live as if they were natural enemies of their kind, the child develops a similar nature, and goes through life, perhaps, in consequence, without knowing how rich a happiness comes from drying a scalding tear, or healing a wounded heart. It is so easy for a man or woman to speak a kind word or to do a kind act, that a failure to do either is almost unaccountable. We do not fully know what happiness is until we have learned that “man liveth not for himself alone.” Velvet carpets, lace curtains, elegant furniture, magnificent libraries, paintings and statuary may adorn the home, but they are powerless to confer happiness, and if an attempt is made to center the affections of the heart upon them, we become less and less happy in proportion to our success in doing it.

It is only when we are charitable, and loving, and kind to our fellows, when we try to cover with flowers the ragged edges of the rocks which frown in the pathway of a brother, that we begin to realize that

Heaven begins here. The writer is now thinking of a beautiful home. Its rooms and halls are radiant with sunshine. Its appointments are tastefully elegant. It is a lovely bower of grace and beauty. It is a spot in which selfish indolence would delight to lounge, away from the responsibilities and perplexities of life. But the charming lady who presides over this little place of beauty finds her greatest happiness in ministering to the wants of the needy, and in painting the sunshine upon the clouds which have gathered over less fortunate hearthstones. Closing her elegant piano, and leaving her tastefully ornamented parlors, she seeks pleasure in going into the home of poverty, and with her delicate hand, not afraid of work, assisting to kindle the dying embers upon the hearthstone into a cheerful blaze. She is a friend to the friendless, a sister to those in need of a sister’s influence and advice, and a kind Christian, loving mother to the orphan. In a home like hers, not only children, but those who are older, learn the grand purposes of life, and are mellowed into better beings; and it is to such homes that the world must look for the men and women who are to make it great and noble.—Sel.