Passing through the streets of a Southern city one day we saw a poor laboring man lift up his little girl as he passed out of the gate, and kiss her a kind good-bye. That was the best thing in his whole day's work, although he knew it not.

We parents should labor and pray to make the "father's house" the last place our children wish to leave, and the place where they would like to die. Let it be to our children so happy a place that its sweet tones sound in their hearts when they are away at school, or gone out from us into the wide world beyond; that its memories, following them through prosperity or adversity, shall bring them back to us when sorrow has bowed them down, or temptation overtaken them. He whose heart is stayed in the love and holy faith of a happy Christian home may have many sorrows and disappointments, but he cannot be wholly crushed by adversity. He may be "troubled on every side," yet he will not "be distressed;" he may be "perplexed," but he will not be "in despair;" he may be "persecuted," yet he cannot be "forsaken;" he may be "cast down," yet he cannot be "destroyed."

Advancing our argument to a higher place, we must make our homes sacred. That they are cultivated and happy is not enough; to be perfect they must be sacred. And a Christian home is sacred, for it is a dwelling place of God. If we dig among the ruins of the dead and buried cities of the ancients, we will find memorials of their household worship. Even they had their household gods-even they had some sort of religion. But we do not want such homes as these, or the modern substitutes, which are proposed in the place of true Christian homes. Christianity only, but Christianity fully, meets the highest and deepest wants of our nature. All the evil that is in us, it can take away; all the good we are capable of, it can implant and nurture. The Gospel plan of life is divinely perfect, for it provides for all the wants of our race in this world and in the world to come. And this blessed Gospel of Christ must be the law of life to the family, as well as to the individual. Husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, must learn from Christ the duties of their place, and receive from Him grace to discharge them.

All the truth in the world, outside the Word of God, cannot substitute one truth that is peculiar to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is not too much truth in the Gospel, as there is not too much light and heat in the sun. We can spare none of it, and yet there is enough for every duty, every relation, every condition of life. Every virtue and every grace that can establish and adorn the family life finds its root and support in the Gospel of Christ. The family that would live by another than the law of Christ robs itself of the most exalted privilege possible to humanity. And the home, where Jesus is most truly the Lord of all hearts, and the pattern of all lives, is most like heaven-of all places in the world.

If in making our homes happy we also make them sacred, we will have achieved for our households the utmost that is possible to us in this world. We will make them types of the heavenly homes that await the good.

And this feeling, that heaven is home, has its roots deep in our hearts. Our Redeemer sanctions the sentiment, and makes an appeal to our instinctive faith in its truthfulness: "Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also."

Thrice happy is that man whose memory of a Christian home quickens his desire for a better, in "Our Father's House" in heaven! In such a case we might say, with a good old German saint when about to go hence, "Blessed are the homesick, for they shall get home!" [ The End ]