! Thus diversified are they in their general
types, and more numerous in their individual conditions than can be
specified. And, surely, it is no vain speculation that inquires--"What
are they? Into what retreats do the elements of this busy crowd
dissolve, night after night?" Whatever they may be, a common interest
envelopes them and links them all together--the interest of humanity.
They have vanished from the streets. One great shadow covers them, and
hides their distinctions. For a time they are all equal. They have
fallen asleep--poor, tired humanity at the best!--they have fallen
asleep on the bosom of a common Providence, that bears them all up, as
it bears the planet on which they now repose, through the orbit of its
great purpose and the immensities of its love. But in the morning all
these diversities will break forth again, each pouring its influence
into the general stream. And who does not perceive how much the
character of that influence must depend upon the condition of those
homes? Who does not see that not only the interest of the common
humanity in its most intimate experiences attaches to them, but the
interest of community? Not only are they the reservoirs of individual
power and peculiarity, but they are the Springs of Social Life. And this
the apostle indicated, when he directed that certain, who bore intimate
relations to the early church, should "first learn to show piety at
home."

Keeping this conclusion in mind, let me ask you to consider, for a
little while, what Home _must_ be.

In the first place--it is the _earliest and the most influential
school_. Nowhere else is the character so moulded; nowhere else is so
much infused into our entire being. For, whatever it may be, it is the
nursery of childhood; and "the child is father to the man." Here dawns
upon the human mind the conception of life. Here, when the nature is
uninscribed and plastic, it takes its first impressions. I suppose it to
be true, that more is learnt, more that is elementary and a key to all
the rest, in the first few years of childhood than in all after time. I
do not deny, of course, that much is corrected and overcome under
another class of influences. But the deepest impressions, the seeds of
the most stubborn habits, are planted at home. Hence the peculiar
anxiety of good men to rescue _children_ from the influences of a bad
home. And, even then, with what obstacles do they have to contend! How
radical are the prejud