nce the latter has
over the former. It gives texture and coloring to the whole woof and web of
character. It forms the head and the heart, moulds the affections, the will
and the conscience, and throws around our entire nature the means and
appliances of its development for good or for evil. Every word, every
incident, every look, every lesson of home, has its bearing upon our life.
Had one of these been omitted, our lives would perhaps be different. One
prayer in our childhood, was perhaps the lever that raised us from ruin.
One omission of parental duty may result in the destruction of the child.
What an influence home exerts upon our faith! Most of our convictions and
opinions rest upon home-teaching and faith. A minister was once asked, "Do
you not believe christianity upon its evidences?" He replied, "No; I
believe it because my mother taught me!"

The same may be said of its influence upon our sympathies, and in the
formation of habits. It draws us by magnetic power to home, and develops in
us all that which is included in home-feeling and home-sickness.

"I need but pluck yon garden flower,
From where the wild weeds rise,
To wake with strange and sudden power,
A thousand sympathies!"

In this respect how irresistible is the influence of a mother's love and
kindness! Her very name awakens the torpid streams of life, gives a fresh
glow to the tablets of memory, and fills our hearts with a deep gush of
consecrated feeling.

Our habits, too, are formed under the moulding power of home. The "tender
twig" is there bent, the spirit shaped, principles implanted, and the whole
character is formed until it becomes a habit. Goodness or evil are there
"resolved into necessity." Who does not feel this influence of home upon
all his habits of life? The gray-haired father who wails in his second
infancy, feels the traces of his childhood-home in his spirit, desires and
habits. Ask the strong man in the prime of life, whether the most firm and
reliable principles of his character were not the inheritance of the
parental home. What an influence the teaching's and prayers of his mother
Monica had upon the whole character of the pious Augustine! The sterling
worth of Washington is a testimony to the formative power of parental
instruction. John Quincy Adams, even when his eloquence thundered through
our legislative halls, and caused a nation to startle from her slumber,
bent his aged form before God, and repeated th