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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

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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

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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

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mon thing to find those living together intensely ignorant of each other. Whole families grow up in daily contact with each other, yet each as ignorant of each as if a hemisphere divided them. Have you never had a young person come to you and say, "I love to talk with you, somehow or other I cannot say these things to father and mother, but you understand me"? Is there not a deal of this alienation between the members of a household, this lack of home sympa

thy, which sends the craving spirit abroad to utter confidences which ought to be home confidences? It seems to be taken for granted by parents and brothers and sisters, that, from the fact of sharing the same blood and dwelling under the same roof, they must be acquainted with each other. They think it necessary to study the character of other men in order to get along with them, but they suppose the home requires nothing of this. Now the home is a miniature world. Within its four walls are brought together the widest contrasts in endowment and attainment. There is every possible diversity in a family,—diversity in the degrees of affection, the love of a brother for a sister is very unlike that of the sister for the brother, that of the child for the mother is very unlike his love for the father. Then there are diversities in character. The mature wisdom of the father differs from the tender affection of the mother. And among the children

one is brave, another timid; one is enthusiastic, another doubting; one is thoughtful, another reckless; one overflows with humor, another is sedate. These and a thousand other differences appear in the same family, are not accidents, but essential to the idea of a family. In a family meet every variety of human character; the highest possible range of virtue, the strongest possible incentive to excellence, brought into contrast and contact with almost all modes and causes of human disagreement, and these not by any perversion, but by a necessity, of which we need to be at all times aware. The family of but one sex or one pursuit, with no diversity of temper and disposition, is not a family.

It is strange how little a fact so patent seems to be regarded in the intercourse of home life. If you were to say to a father, "You do not know your child,” he would consider you guilty of a most unwarrantable impertinence. Not know his own child! what an absurdity. Absurd as it is, observation and experience both assure us that it is very common; and the one inflexible law of the house, the one iron demand, the one and the same expectation of each and all, prove how little those who stand at the head understand those placed in their charge. home which has boys and girls in it up of the most diverse material.

The fact about a is, that it is made We often amuse

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