And I could only reëcho the message of Him above. My soul full of deepest pity for one 'neath the chast'ning rod, There, by her little one's grave, I left her alone with her God. ALLIE B. LEWIS. CHRISTIAN HOME CULTURE. It is important for us to realize that the Sundayschool, valuable and effective as it is in its own field, If can never take the place of Christian home culture. there be a parent who has ever laid the flattering unction to the soul, that the attendance of the child upon the Sunday-school would serve as excuse before God, for the neglect of his or her own parental duty, I beseech you to drive far away this temptation of the devil. "Bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord," stands sentinel at the door of every professedly Christian home, and must be met at the judgment seat by every parent, whether there is or is not a Sunday-school at hand. The single hour of an entire week that the most faithful teacher has with the class, can never take the place of the nurture that is to extend throughout that week in parental hands. However well the work of the teacher may be done, it can form no part of the parent's answer to the summons of heaven. It is better for parents to realize this now than when it is forever too late. My subject is so broad, it involves so many considerations, that I can only hope to touch a few of them, and even these briefly, within the limits of a single article. Culture, itself, is a broad word, far broader than much of its current usage. Too often it means a dilettant cultivation of two or three departments of thought, pervaded by affectation and marked by exclusiveness, as different as possible from the foursquare manhood or womanhood that the word, rightly conceived, really covers. Unless there be a restrictive and explanatory adjective affixed, the word "culture" can not be properly applied to anything less than the rich and harmonious development of all the departments of the nature, all the faculties of mind, and heart, and soul, and body. That is, not a cultured man or woman who is an accomplished musician, or a fine artist, or can understand and analyze Emerson's essays or poems. Such an one, while accomplished in one or more of these certain directions, may lack many of the elements of true culture, and may be utterly wanting in some of its large departments. The word "home" prefixed to "culture," may be considered as somewhat limiting our horizon of thought. In the great majority of instances in our day, the work of intellectual culture is largely removed from the home to the school, and generally with great advantage. The schools can concentrate and employ an amount of knowledge and ability which would manifestly be unattainable in nine out of every ten homes, if, indeed, the proportion be not still higher. No doubt intelligent parents can assist and supplement the work of the schools, but the pressure of the cares of life is such that it will always be necessary to do the larger amount of intellectual development in the school-room. Yet the atmosphere of the home should be such as will exercise no blighting influence upon what is brought home from the school. Parents should manifest an interest in the studies of the children, should be ready to aid them in the mastery of the lessons where the ability is possessed, should show pleasure in their triumph over difficulties, and sympathy when the hard bridges are being crossed and difficult heights scaled. The voluminous daily papers, with their eight, twelve and sixteen pages, that consume all the hometime of many fathers and some mothers, become a curse to many family circles, utterly debarring, as they often do, the encouragement and assistance that thorough home culture could give the pupil and the teacher alike in the arduous work of intellectual education. I pity the man who immerses himself in his own paper or own book, and has no word of interest in the children's studies; pity him because of his loss of sympathetic union with the boys and girls; pity him because of duties he is leaving undone; pity him because of the account he must render to God. After all, however, this is not the most important part of home culture. My subject title embraces another adjective-"Christian" home culture. While it is true that the title thus rendered complete is not limited thereby but rather extended, that Christianity covers every department of life and every faculty of the being, yet I presume it was with special reference to its moral and spiritual aspects that the subject was assigned to me. Thus considered, "Christian home culture" is a matter of transcendent importance. Outside the home circle, intellectual and physical culture may proceed, in spite of negations within the home, always losing something by those negations, yet able to triumph over them in the end. Not so with the moral and spiritual influences. They begin in infancy, they lay the foundations of character, they penetrate and pervade the warp and woof of the nature. Though divine grace may in the end form a beautiful character through the furnace of experience, yet always there will be something higher and richer that the character might have been, if home culture had contributed its quota to its rounded fullness. It will doubtless be expected that I shall indicate some special measures to be taken, or practices inaugurated, with a view to the improvement and perfection of home culture. Our tendency is to imagine that there is some special machinery by which this is to be accomplished, and that what we most need is knowledge of the necessary machinery and starting it in operation; this done, all will be well. I need hardly say to the thoughtful that this is a mistake. It is impossible to suggest or describe plans of this kind that will be universally applicable. The homes of the rich and poor, the learned and unlearned, of the busy and idle, of the city and country, so differ from each other in their demands and leisure, in their abilities and opportunities, that suggestions which might be extremely valuable for one would be useless for another. Glowing pictures are sometimes presented of what is done, say, in a certain minister's family, an elaborate system of home culture, which, doubtless, is admirable in itself, achieves noble results in the family, and, perhaps, beyond it; but which it would be impossible to successfully or profitably use in another family on another plane of development, or in another class of the community. I shall not, therefore, undertake to formulate the exercises and methods and observances of a definite system of home culture, but only to indicate some of |