ices already formed in that young mind! How
obstinate the customs, how opaque the ignorance, how rank the growth of
error! Nay, into what complete fruition have all these grown, simply in
the neglect of home-culture, to say nothing of influences positively
evil! Really, the color and current of a man's destiny are indicated
here, unless a shock of wonderful transformation comes over him. I do
not mean to say that anybody is wholly the creature of circumstances;
but he is the _subject_ of circumstances. If they do not entirely make
_him_, they furnish the occasion out of which he makes something; and,
viewed either from the platform of the inward or the outward, they
furnish an important key to his life. And, although the path of
reformation is more difficult than the descent into evil, and demands an
effort which too few are inclined to put forth; though by the conditions
of our nature the good is more easily swept away than the bad; still, it
is encouraging to estimate the permanence and the power of those _good_
influences which are received at home. Everybody knows, when he is
pitched into this whirlpool of evil that rolls around him in the world,
how those old home-restraints lie upon him like a magic chain, hard to
be forced away--perhaps never utterly forced away. And, seeking for
those who should stand up in this boisterous sweep of sin, you would
look and I would look to those who had received the best impressions
under the domestic roof. If I were alone, poor, compelled to ask charity
somewhere in this selfish world, I would go, not to the man who has
learnt most of what he calls his "wisdom" from the experience of mature
life, but to him in whose heart there evidently remains something of
childhood's tenderness, kept warm by the remembered pressures of his
mother's breast. If I were seeking to restore some wild prodigal,
brazen-fronted by his own wicked will and by the scorn with which men
have battered him--if I were looking for some gleam of promise in his
turbulent nature, and sounding its depths to find some spring of
repentance--I should never despair if I could discover one gentle pulse
that beat with the memories of a good and happy home. Why, who needs to
be told of the potency of this our earliest school, to say nothing of
other influences, if only a faithful _mother_ presides there? O! mother,
mother, name for the earliest relationship, symbol of the divine
tenderness; kindling a love that we never blu