ious
Memories. A Mother's Recollection. The Pleasures of Remembering the Pious
Dead. Irving. The Saving Influence of Memory. Painful Memories. Critical
Power of Memory. Mementoes of Home. Pictures. Memorials. Letters from Home.
Seek Pleasing Memories.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ANTITYPE OF THE CHRISTIAN HOME.--Typical Relation between Home and
Heaven. The Christian's Tent-Home in its Relation to Heaven. The
Antitypical Character of Heaven. A Comparative View of our Earthly and our
Heavenly Home. Christ the Center of Heaven's Joy and Attraction. Union
between Home and Heaven. A Conscious Union of the Members in Heaven. Family
Recognition and Love in Heaven. Family Greeting and Joy in Heaven. Longings
after Heaven. Conclusion.

CHAPTER I.

WHAT IS THE CHRISTIAN HOME?

SECTION I.

HOME IN THE SPHERE OF NATURE.

"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 young sisters watch to greet their brother;
Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly!
And what is home? and where, but with the loving?"

Home! That name touches every fibre of the soul, and strikes every chord of
the human heart as with angelic fingers. Nothing but death can break its
spell. What tender associations are linked with home! What pleasing images
and deep emotions 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 in the sphere of nature? 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 being