A HAPPY HOME by M. E. Kern

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 7, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 39.

A HAPPY HOME.

By M. E. Kern

WHO has not had the feelings of Mrs. A. E. Allen, when she wrote:—

"Backward, turn backward, O time in your flight, Make me a child again just for to-night."

How often amid the hurry and toil of a busy life we look back to our childhood days as the happiest days of our life! When we feel the responsibilities of manhood and womanhood resting down upon us, we do wish, sometimes, that we might be a child again under mother's protecting care, enjoying the freedom and contentment we used to, with no thought of the cares and perplexities of life.

A well-disciplined Christian home is something to look back to as a green spot in one's life.

How often our dear old mother's smiling face is presented to us, and how often her prayers come up before us,—prayers for the little ones over whom God had given her charge! We remember those pleasant strolls through the woods to gather wild flowers, and those long winter evenings, when the family gathered round the hearthstone to relate the events of the day, to sometimes pop corn, and hear dear old father read the old family Bible or other books the children liked. Those scenes appear to us as but yesterday. But now the family circle is broken; the children have all grown up and left home, to fight life's battles alone. We are separated from father and mother, sisters and brothers, and sometimes, when the day's work is done and the golden sun is setting behind the western hills, our thoughts turn back to those happy days, and, oh, how we desire that the family circle might meet again round the hearthstone at the old homestead!

That can never be; but the influence of that pleasant home and Christian mother will extend through all our lives, and we live and work with the hope of meeting her in heaven.

"Happy the home when God is there, And love fills every breast; When one their wish and one their prayer, And one their heavenly rest." —M. E. Kern.