pose

III.

HOME INTERCOURSE.

HE HOME-CIRCLE established, the life in the home commenced, of what kind and to what pur

shall the intercourse be between these immortal spirits brought by the will of God into the most intimate relations? Shall it be of chance, a thing unthought of, guided neither one way nor the other; or shall it be under law, always looking to some definite end, to which, however indirectly, it is always drawing nearer?

Some would

Perhaps the question is an open one. say that to attempt any thing like law in a thing so constant, so free, so familiar as domestic life, would be seriously to abridge it in these its most valuable characteristics. It would make it unnatural and constrained, and render its intercourse but an epitome of the intercourse of men in the world. That we certainly do not want. Heaven forbid that the hollow artificiality and constraint which characterize our social lives should gain a footing in our homes. There

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should be one place sacred to human nature and the human heart, one place uncontaminated by the restraints of society which make men to each other so unlike what they are in themselves. There ought to be within the home the fullest and frankest interchange of thought, conviction, and purpose, the most unrestricted living out of the life within. Will the establishment of some controlling power check or prevent this? Will it not rather promote it?

The consequence of all judicious law, thoroughly administered, is freedom. Perfect liberty is that which is perfectly submissive to a perfect law. The perfect liberty of the Saviour was the result of his perfect submission to the Divine law. The liberty we admire in the playful limbs of the young animal, in the grace of the swallow's flight, or the proud sweep of the eagle's wing, is the perfect submission to the law which controls and makes possible such results. This is liberty which never can exist except under law. Where there is no law, liberty is changed to license, and the difference you may see in the graceless plunges of the kite when the string is broke, in the mad erratics of the locomotive when it has left the track, or, among men, in the atrocities of a mob, a rebellion of slaves, or a mutiny of Sepoys. Law is the builder of the world, the conservator and the impulse of society, and right laws never fetter, but free. If we are to free the

home from many things which threaten it, if we are to check that license which has largely possessed it, if we are to have a true liberty again within it, we must bring it under law, and the daily intercourse - a thing whose influence is never intermitted, a thing never to be considered of small moment should have its law. It should be the established purpose of the home to make all intercourse between its members - of whatsoever kind it may be subsidiary, however remotely in some instances, to the advance of the soul in its truest culture, just as it is the object of the Christian man to make every thing which he does in life tend toward one end, an object he does not lose sight of in his pleasures any more than in his duties.

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What are some of the general laws which will tend to promote a true home intercourse, laws whose pressure shall be felt by all every day, but only as the pressure of the air is felt, as an element of life and freedom?

I should say, first of all, that without the spirit of self-denial a true and improving home intercourse is impossible. It is hard enough to get along in the ordinary intercourse of life with selfish people. They mar every occasion and every scene into which they intrude, and the presence in the home circle of a single selfish person, parent or child, breaks up every thing like harmony and satisfaction. In the home re

lations all selfishness should be abjured, and the most scrupulous and painstaking care be constantly exercised that in no way self-love infringe upon or disturb the rights or happiness of others. Dante, describing his visit to the Infernal Regions, says that written over the gateway was an inscription ending with these words, "Let him who enters here bid farewell to hope." So over the door-way of each home should there be inscribed, Let him who enters here bid farewell to self. There is no power in the home, in its nature or its constitution, which can stand against selfishness, whether it be the selfishness of all or the selfishness of one. Give it every advantage, all that position, culture, wealth may give, yet is it impossible that it should resist the benumbing influence of one selfish soul. It is blighted so, even as the beauty of Eden was blighted by the selfishness of Eve. You and I have seen and felt this, nay, have we not ourselves been conscious that some petty, selfish desire of our own has struck roughly the delicate homechords, and brought hoarse jangling into the domestic harmony? And are none of us prevailingly selfish at home, using its sanctity and seclusion for the exercise of a spirit we dare not show to men? Are there none of us, standing well with men for courtly urbanity, before whom home cowers, all its doings and its sayings, its omissions and its commissions, ordered to

meet our will or avert our displeasure? Is there no father and husband of us all who feels it his prerogative to have every thing at home to suit him, his whim, his comfort, his pleasure, the law of all, which anxious wife and timid children study and endeavor to satisfy? Is there no one of us that meanest of all mean things, a domestic tyrant? And are there no children, growing into men and women, wearying parental indulgence and taxing parental love, and alienating brotherly or sisterly affection, by persisting in consulting only for self? Are none of our homes desecrated by these grosser forms of selfishness, or by such as, less offensive in their form, are still as baleful in their spirit? Then are our homes happy homes, then have we escaped that which so largely characterizes the home, an abode which many seem to think was created for the fullest exercise and the largest license of their own self-will, but which is, indeed, only a home when all self-will is shut out, when each has learned those mutual compromises which alone make a true living together possible. Self-denial should be the first law of the home.

Again; the difficulties in our home intercourse spring very much from our ignorance of each other. The members of a household should therefore become acquainted with each other. This is not the unmeaning phrase it may at first seem.

It is not an uncom