The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities. Samuel Osgood

palaces and more princely fortunes. None can show so many favored homes. Go to thy home, and tell how great things the Lord, the giver of the harvests, hath done for thee in its plenty.

      Consider too its peace as well as its plenty. No wars disturb it, nor rumors of war. No civil strifes threaten its tranquillity. No tyrannical powers intrude upon its freedom. Every household is better guarded than any feudal castle. Equal laws make it more impregnable than walls or moats. Public opinion is a host of defence stronger than an army with banners. We do not indeed forget our own imperfections and failings. We do not forget that millions are in bondage in our land, and that if they have homes in favored cases, they have them by their owners’ mercy, not by their own legal right. Yet to-day the slave is somewhat a sharer in his master’s bounty, and this feast, that carries our thoughts back to the time of the great Hebrew Exodus, allows us to enjoy the liberty that God has bestowed upon us and these free States, and forbids us to despair of the redemption of any of the races yet held in bondage. It is something to boast of, that slavery is the exception now among civilized nations, instead of being, as of old, the universal law for the weaker from the stronger. For ourselves, we disclaim all share in its origin and continuance, deeming it to be a local misfortune to be deplored, not a national institution to be honored.

      As a nation, we are lovers of equal law. The sober thought, nurtured by the best experience of the Atlantic States, finds its response in the new regions of the farthest West, and not even the mad thirst for gold has made the restless people on our Pacific coast forgetful of their birthright of liberty and law. A mighty habit of civil order has entered into our national life. The strongholds of order are in our homes. There each man finds the motive that leads him to resist alike the disorganizer and the invader. Thence we derive the assurance of the best of standing armies; for men that have households to defend, will be as little inclined to yield to hostile invasion as to destructive revolution. How peaceful our homes! As mighty is the power nurtured within them that makes them so.

      Go home, and in addition to the blessings of plenty and of peace, consider the means of intellectual and spiritual culture there. The laboring man may own a better library than a prince or prelate of the olden time. For a pittance trifling even to him, he may have tidings daily from all quarters of his own country, and from foreign lands. His children bring with them more learning from the common school, than would have sufficed of old to constitute the wisdom of a sage. For a less sum than the tippler gives for the draught that fevers his blood and crazes his brain, the artisan may adorn his house with choice works of art, through the cheap and beautiful products of the engraver’s skill; and thus the beautiful from the hand of man and of God, may refine and cheer the common lot. Music, that voice of the beautiful arts, is becoming a familiar blessing, and a part of ordinary education. Groups of children by the fireside, and in the field and garden, sometimes at the corners of the streets or in their walk home from school, are heard singing their songs and hymns together, thus exchanging discord for peace, quarrels for harmony. Even the utilities that are becoming the custom of our time, have their refining and exalting influences. The light that streams up in our streets and houses, is the handmaid of a light brighter than its own. The pure water that gushes up in so many homes, has connections far more substantial than fanciful with the living water of the divine word. Facts enough show that human civilization needs, in the most literal sense, its water-baptism before its spirit-baptism can be realized.

      The spirit is not lost sight of even in this utilitarian age. In religion the means of culture have their consummation. Within every home, in any degree worthy the name, Christianity proves its power, whether the gospel be nominally professed or not. The very unity of the family comes from Him, who has decreed the purity of the home by his fundamental law, and bound parents to each other and their offspring by a tie at once of principle and affection. Greater still the blessing where Christianity is fully known and practised in its truths and graces, where the pleasant fireside is a consecrated altar, and the earthly mansion opens ever into the heavenly.

      Consider then the blessings of our homes—their plenty, their peace, their means of intellectual and spiritual culture.

      Consider them well, and moreover, own God’s hand in them.

      God is Creator and Lord of nature. From him comes the plenty of our homes. Man does not create, he finds the bounties of his lot. His utmost industry and skill but find the blessings stored up for him. We may look upon the kingdom of nature from many points of view. We may consider the organism of the heavens, the great periods of the earth’s apparent formation, the influence of climate and position upon the history of nations, and see God’s hand in natural laws. But what view of the universe is more sublime, and at the same time more touching, than that from the home? The heavens themselves help in keeping it upon its foundation by the force of the great law of attraction, whilst every element and domain of the earth conspires to give it blessing. Tenderly indeed does the Lord of this great Cosmos care for the dwellings of men. His love looks down from the stars of heaven that shine into the casement, and is reflected from the little flower that blooms in the garden, or cheers the sick man’s chamber. To God, Creator and Preserver, be our thanksgiving.

      God is in history, and to his hand we trace the peace of our homes. Our familiar social blessings are not the exhalations of a day, but the growth of ages. No clearer or more striking view of the development of the Divine plans in the course of events can be given than the domestic view. All that God has done for man as an individual soul or as a social being, thus is made to appear. There is a providence in the development of liberty, and so too in the progress of law, and in the combination of them both in a true social order. What better symbol of their combination and proof of providential guidance than the peaceful home? How vast the providential agencies instrumental in framing that statute-book which, next to the Bible, is the safeguard of the dwelling, and which bands the whole nation together in defence of every citizen’s right—the constitution of our country, to us the bequest of ages, guided by an arm mightier than man’s, and to issues beyond his dream. In two grand lines of influence it brings to every household the co-ordinate powers which, from quarters once antagonistic, unite in a true civilization. It guarantees to every family the liberty so dearly prized by the old parent races of the Germanic North, whilst it gathers them into a great nation under the guidance of that law which was the bequest of the Roman empire to the world. These and all the leading lines of history meet in the home, and in them we own God’s guiding hand. From the East with the Star of true empire, came the benign power that united these two mighty agencies of our civilization. Surely it was the religion of Jesus that wedded Roman law to Germanic liberty, and laid the foundations of constitutional freedom and domestic peace. Blessed indeed was that bridal, and the living Word that hallowed the union still dispenses the blessing, and calls the children of its lineage to a future brightening unto the perfect day.

      The Constitution, and above it, the Bible! In this is the Word of God, and the way of life, present and eternal. It is the chief agency in intellectual and spiritual culture, giving the mind its true aim, the soul its rightful dignity, life its highest grace. Where the Bible is held in honor, the home has purity and elevation. Interesting indeed is the ecclesiastical view of Christianity. For its priests and temples we have no words of disparagement. Yet we most honor the church in honoring the home, for where the family is most blessed, there the church is most worthy. The history of the gospel neither ends nor begins with that of cathedrals and priesthoods. Since God laid the foundation of domestic purity on Sinai, since Jesus bore the grace of the gospel to the homes of Judah and Galilee, the brightest illustrations of the beauty and power of religion have been given in abodes far less stately than the temple, or the cloister, or the palace. The end is not yet, not yet developed are our grounds of gratitude to the Heavenly Father for the gospel in the blessings of our homes. God’s love in giving them, we own and adore.

      Responsibility walks ever hand in hand with privilege, and human duty follows in the path of Divine goodness. No topic of graver import can be urged now, than that of the obligation of Christian people to diffuse domestic blessings. This topic carries us into the heart of the momentous social questions of our age. The Christian should have his answer ready, an answer too which considers all the needs of man’s being, and respects alike his physical and moral wants.

      The most obvious, certainly the most obtrusive evil in the homes of the wretched, is