"My Home! the spirit of its love is breathing
In every wind that plays across my track,
From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing
Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.
There am I loved--there prayed for!--there my mother
Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye,
There my younger sisters watch to greet their brother;
Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly!
And what a home? and where, but with the loving?

HOME! That name touches every fiber of the soul, and strikes every chord of the human heart as with angelic fingers. Nothing but death can break its hold. What tender associations are linked with home! What pleasing images and deep emotion it awakens! It calls up the fondest memories of life, and opens in our nature the purest, deepest, richest gush of consecrated thought and feeling.

"Home! 'tis a blessed name! And they who rove,
Careless or scornful of its pleasant bonds,
Nor gather round them those linked soul to soul
By nature's fondest ties, . . . . . . .
But dream they're happy!"

But what is home? Home is a multifaceted sphere. It is not simply an ideal which feeds the fancy, nor the flimsy emotion of a sentimental heart. We should seek for its meaning, not in the flowery vales of imagination, but amid the sober realities of thought and of faith.

Home is not the mere dwelling place of our parents, and the theater upon which we played the part of merry childhood. It is not simply a habitation. This would identify it with the lion's lair and the eagle's nest. It is not the mere mechanical juxtaposition of so many human beings, herding together like animals in the den or stall.
It is not mere conventionalism,--a human association made up of the nursery, the parlor, the outward domestic life, resting upon some evanescent passion, some sensual impression and policy. These do not make up the idea of home.

Home is a divine institution, coeval and congenital with man. The first home was in Eden; the last home will be in heaven for the repentant Christian believer. It is the first form of society, a little commonwealth in which we first lose our individualism and come to the consciousness of our relation to others. Thus, it is the foundation of all our relationships in life,--the preparation--state for our position in the State and in the Church. It is the first form and development of the associating principle, the normal relation in which human character first unfolds itself. It desires to bring about unity--the moral center of all those educational influences which are exerted upon our inward being. The idea of the home-institution rests upon the true love of our Lord and Saviour, involving the marriage union of congenial souls, binding up into itself the whole life, forming and molding all its relations, and causing body, mind, and spirit to partake of a common union. Our loving Lord should be the central fact of our home. In our homes the inner life of its members can find their true complement, and enjoy a common community of family, filled with love.

"Home's not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures are hung and gilded;
Home is where affection calls--
Filled with shrines the heart hath builded."

Home may be viewed in a twofold aspect, as simply physical, and as purely moral. However, the former comes finally to its fullest meaning and force only in the latter when Christ is the head of the heart and home. Then they will be interwoven; in which we cannot understand the one without the other; this is the truest of complements; and the complete idea of home, as we find it in this understanding, which lies in the living union of both, in which Christ is Lord of each member's heart resulting in the true meaning of Home.

By the physical idea of home, we mean, not only its outward, mechanical structure, made up of different parts and members, but that living whole or oneness into which these parts are bound up. Hence it is not merely adventitious,--a corporation of individual interest, but that unity of natural life and interest in which the members are bound up. By the moral idea of home, we mean the union of the moral life and interests of its members in line with Scriptural mandates. This explodes the infidel system of Socialism, Mormonism, and various other false teachings as well as "Women's Rights." These forms of Agrarianism destroy the ethical idea and mission of home; for they are not only opposed to revelation and history, but destroy the very foundation laid by God for home and family.

Love is an essential element of home. Let us remember God is Love. Without this understanding we may have the form of a home but not its spirit, its beating heart, its true motive power, and its pure sunshine. The inward stream would be gone, and home would not be the oneness of kindred souls. Home-love begets all those silken chords, those sweet harmonies, those tender sympathies and endearments which give to the family true meaning. This home-love is the giver of all home delights, yea, of all the love of life. As a child, we first draw love from our mothers care, and it is love which ministers to our first needs. It flashes from parent to parent and from parent to child, making the sunshine and the loveliness of domestic life. Without it home would have no meaning. This true love within the home is a gift of God, which brings the fullness of understanding of the "home-feeling" and the "homesickness," and is the spiritual network of the home-existence and economy. It is stronger than death; it rises superior to adversity, and towers in sublime beauty above the selfish world. Misfortune cannot suppress it; enmity cannot alienate it; temptation cannot enslave it. It is the guardian angel of the nursery and the sick bed; it gives an affectionate concord to the partnership of the home-life and interest. Circumstances cannot modify it; it ever remains the same, to sweeten existence, to purify the cup of life, to smooth our rugged pathway to the grave, and to glorify God. It is the ministering spirit of home, which hovering in soothing caresses over the cradle and the deathbeds of the household fills up the books with all of its sacred memories, authored through the pages of home.

But home demands not only such love, but ties, tender, strong, and sacred. These bind up the many in the one. They are fibers of home-life, and cannot be wrenched without causing the heart to bleed at every pore. Death may dissect them and tear away the objects around which they entwine; and they will still live in the imperishable love which survives. From them proceed mutual devotions and confiding faith. They bind together in one all-expanding unity, the God given designed order of the husband and the submissiveness of the wife, the authority of the parent and the obedience of the child.

"O, the smile of other lands,
Though far and wide our feet may roam,
Can e'er untie the genial bands
That knit our hearts to home!"

The mother should possess the tender-spirit of home. Her motherly yearnings over the cradle of her infant babe, her guardian care of the children, and her bosom companionship with the man of her youth, her love and choice, make her partaker with the personal center of interest, the hope and the happiness of the family. Her love glows in her sympathies and reigns in all her thoughts and deeds. It never cools, never tires, never dreads, never sleeps, but ever glows and burns with increasing ardor, and with sweet and holy incense upon the alter of home-devotion. And even when she is gone to her last rest, the sainted mother's memories linger like the warm fireside of home in the heart of her loved one.

Our nature demands home. It is the first essential element of our social being. The whole social system rests upon it. These cannot be complete out of the home-relations, there would be no proper equilibrium of life and character without the home feeling and influence. The heart, when bereaved and disappointed, naturally turns for the refuge of home-life and sympathy. No spot is so attractive to the weary one; it is the heart's oasis; there is a mother's watchful love and a father's sustaining influence; there is a husband's protection, and a wife's tender sympathy; there is the circle of loving brothers and sisters--happy in each other's love. Oh, what is life without these God given gifts? A desolation!--a painful gloomy pilgrimage through the "desert's heat and barren sands." But home gives to life its fertilizing dews, its budding hopes, and its blossoming joys. When far away in distant lands or upon the ocean's heaving breast, we pine away and become "homesick; "no voice there like mother's; no sympathy there like a wife's; no loved one there like a child; no resting place there like home; and we cry out, 'Home! sweet, sweet home!'"

Thus we instinctively long for the deep love and the true heart of home. It has for our life more satisfaction then all the honors, and the riches and the luxuries of this world. We soon grow sick of these, and become sick for home, however humble it may be. Its endearments are ever fresh, as if in the bursting joys of their first experience. They remain unforgotten in our memories and imperishable in our hearts. When friends become cold, society heartless, and adversity frowns darkly and heavily upon us, oh, it is then that we turn with fond assurance to home, where loved ones will weep as well as rejoice with us.

"Oh, the God given blessing of home, where old and young mix kindly,
The young unawed, the old unchilled, in unreserved communion!
Oh that refuge from this sinful world, when stricken son or daughter
May seek with confidence of love, our Father's love and heart;
Come unto me, my son, if men rebuke and mock thee,
There always shall be one to bless,--for I am on thy side!"

What peace to know that Jesus is on our side and He is the author and creator of the Christian HOME!

For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, May be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; And to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.
Ephesians 3:14-21

This selection has been edited by T2M.