every power of our being to
praise God?

CHAPTER XXI.

SOME SECRETS OF HAPPY HOME LIFE.

"The primal duties shine aloft like stars;
The charities that sooth and heal and bless
Are scattered at the feet of men like flowers.
* * * * The smoke ascends
To heaven as lightly from the cottage hearth
As from the lofty palace."
--WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.

Home life ought to be happy. The benediction of Christ on every home
to which he is welcomed as an abiding guest is, "Peace be to this
house." While perfection of happiness is unattainable in this world,
rich, deep, heart-filling happiness certainly may be, and ought to be,
attained.

Yet it requires wise building and delicate care to make a home truly
and perfectly happy. Such a home does not come as a matter of course,
by natural growth, wherever a family takes up its abode. Happiness has
to be planned for, lived for, sacrificed for, ofttimes suffered for.
Its price in a home is always the losing of self on the part of those
who make up the household. Home happiness is the incense that rises
from the altar of mutual self-sacrifice.

It may be said, in a word, that Christ himself is the one great,
blessed, secret of all home happiness; Christ at the marriage altar;
Christ when the baby is born; Christ when the baby dies; Christ in the
days of plenty; Christ in the pinching times; Christ in all the
household life; Christ in the sad hour when farewells must be spoken,
when one goes on before and the other stays, bearing the burden of an
unshared grief. Christ is the secret of happy home life.

But for the sake of simplicity the lesson may be broken up. For one
thing, the husband has much to do in solving the problem. Does a man
think always deeply of the responsibility he assumes when he takes a
young wife away from the shelter of mother-love and father-love, the
warmest, softest human nest in this world, and leads her into a new
home, where his love is to be henceforth her only shelter? No man is
fit to be the husband of a true woman who is not a good man. He need
not be great, nor brilliant, nor rich, but he must be good, or he is
not worthy to take a gentle woman's tender life into his keeping.

Then he must be a man, true, brave, generous, manly. He must be a good
provider. He must be a sober man; no man who comes home intoxicated,
however rarely, is doing his share in making happiness for his wife and
family.