THE FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND MAGAZINE. The Home Affections. A FRENCH philosopher has said, with equal truth and beauty," There is a place on the earth to which vice has no entrance, where the gloomy passions have no empire, where pleasure and innocence live constantly together, where cares and labours are delightful, where every pain is forgotten in reciprocal tenderness, where there is an equal enjoyment of the past, the present, and the future ;—it is the home of a wedded pair, but of a pair who, in wedlock, are lovers still." In this happy home-for true love can warm earth's poorest hovel to a home-and around this happy pair there rise up the little pledges of conjugal affection and fidelity, whose smiling faces and cheery voices are like another sun, everywhere diffusing light and gladness. The family thus becomes a little Cosmosa little world complete within itself, and out of which spring all the relations, affections, and obligations of an earthly life. How tender and endearing are the ties which connect husband and wife, parent and child, and bind all their hearts in one! The conjugal relation, being the most intimate and the most sacred which can be formed between two human beings, has its corresponding duties and obligations. If the happiness of the wife is to be the great object of the husband's life and the end of his conduct—if much of his happiness is derived from her confidence in his affection, and the proof of this affection be his chief duty-if he is bound to look upon her whom he has taken to his heart as worthy of being admitted to all the counsels of his heart-if there be any delights which he deems essential to his own happiness, and has been imperatively called upon to share them with her, and to feel in all that happens that he has another sent to share his pleasures,-then it follows that the happiness of the husband must become the rule of conduct to the wife. no human affection to be to her like his happiness to be to her like the happiness which she can inspire, and which it is his to enjoy. While he is "engaged in other cares during the business of the day, the business of her day is but the continual discharge of many little duties that have a direct relation to wedlock in the common household which it has formed. He must often forget her, or be useless to the world; she is most useful to the world by remembering him. From the tumultuous scenes which agitate many of his hours, he returns to the calm scene where peace awaits him; and happiness is sure to await him, because she is there waiting whose smile affection, so As there is there is no is peace, and whose very presence is more than happiness to his heart." In the beautiful language of our immortal poet Here Love his golden shafts employs, here lights His constant lamp, and waves his purple wings,- The husband, in seeking the happiness of his wife, and the wife, in seeking the happiness of her husband, implies mutual forbearance and mutual concession, and the performance of every duty in the spirit of that love which is supposed to be constantly burning on the domestic hearth, bright as a flame and pure as vestal fire. Only second to the conjugal affinity is the relation between parent and child. What a poor, dull world this would be, without the promise and the presence of children! But with the birth of each successive child, not only are new affections awakened and called into play, but new obligations and responsibilities are imposed upon us. Out of the reciprocal ties which unite the parent and the child there arise reciprocal duties. On the one hand, the parent is bound to provide for the physical wants of the child, for his mental culture and moral training, for all which can fit and qualify him for the niche which he has to fill in this world, and for the grand disclosures which await him in the world to come; and, on the other hand, the child is equally bound to reverence, love, and obey his parent. His filial relation demands filial affection, and whatever service and whatever sacrifice such affection may dictate and determine. As the tie is indissoluble, the obligations are abiding and perpetual. As death only can terminate the one, so death only can release from the other; and it is in the mutual performance of these duties that each is conscious of those pure delights which are inseparable from parental love and filial affection. Then, how beautiful and yet how powerful is that law of mutual love and dependence which binds together the different members of the family! It is the arrangement of Infinite Wisdom to place the two sexes side by side in the home of wedded love. Nor is it possible to deny the influence of the one upon the other. The brother, by his noble, manly, virtuous conduct, inspires his sister with what is just in principle and good in character; while she, by her milder graces and feminine virtues, lends gentleness to his courage, simplicity to his intelligence, and attractiveness to even the sterner qualities of his sex. It is within this home circle that there come into play those kindly feelings and loving charities which enter so largely into our individual and social happiness. We may visit the halls of the great and the noble, we may move in the midst of every form and variety of earthly splendour, we may feast with princes, and sit among crowned heads, but what is all this compared with the pleasures of an English hearth-the fireside of virtue and goodness! "There is a love that lasts awhile A one-day's flower, no more; Opens in the sunshine of a smile, And shuts when clouds come o'er. "There is a love that ever lasts, A shrub that's always green; 'Tis in the bosom of the family that heart speaks to heart, while fond affection lights up the eye, and makes eloquent every tongue. Every face is bright, every voice is sweet, every care is given to the winds, and past sorrows seem but as dreams of the night. It is the temple consecrated and sacred to love, the sanctuary of every pure thought, the home of every true affection, at the door of which a halt is put upon the step of the intruder, and into which nothing may enter that defileth or maketh a lie. Nor is this the exclusive possession of any one class. The humblest peasant that tills the earth has his snug hearth, with all its little joys and delights. He is a man with all the sympathies and all the susceptibilities of our common humanity, who can appreciate no less than others all the comforts and all the pleasures of domestic life. What a perfect photograph has Burns given us, in his "Cotter's Saturday Night," of the circle of loving hearts and beaming faces around his father's fireside at the hour of evening prayer :— "The priest-like father reads the sacred page- 66 Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre. Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed; The precepts sage they wrote to many a land; How he who, lone in Patmos banished, Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, And heard great Babylon's doom pronounced by Heaven's command. 66 Then, kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King, 46 No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise, In such society, yet still more dear, While circling time moves round in an eternal sphere. Compared with this, how poor Religion's pride, In all the pomp of method and of art, When men display to congregations wide May hear, well-pleased, the language of the soul, A scene this which the poet never forgot—which no one could forget. Nor can we believe that if any member of such a family were to leave the parental roof for foreign lands, he could ever lose the memory of home. Let him plant his foot on whatever shore, let him mingle with people of whatever tongue, let his ambition and his fortune, his pleasures and his prospects be what they may,-whether his hopes bloom and blossom as a flower, or melt away as a vision of the night,-never, "till shining on his shroud, can be quenched the holy light of home." But more than all this. It is around the domestic hearth, and amid the ever-delightful play of the home affections, that there are given to childhood and youth those lessons of Christian truth which are the best preventive to every form and variety of superstition. If Protestantism be the basis on which, as on a sure foundation, rest all the grand institutions of our country, then its principles are bound up with our country's liberties, both civil and religious. In her children every mother has the world at her feet. To her it has been given by God to educate the mind and mould the Christian character of those who are to be our future preachers, lawyers, and legislators—the men who are to fill the highest offices, and discharge the most sacred functions, both in the Church and the State. She has a noble mission and a divine ministry. The England of the future, and the future of the world, is dependent on her Christian instruction and example. Her empire is home; but it is Heaven's high purpose that home should guide and govern the world. Happy the land whose homes are the abode of love and virtue, and on whose hearths are enthroned those principles of truth and righteousness which give strength and stability to a nation, and perpetuity to the nation's life. WOMEN AND WORK. IT has been often said—and it cannot be said too often-that before women can take their proper place in the world, truer ideas in regard to work must prevail. In the development of this question of women's relation to work, lies the key to some problems that the age is trying to solve. Such questions as these agitate the thinking part of society to-day :-How shall marriage be made to produce the best results? What influences can we bring to bear upon our homes to give the greatest possible strength and symmetry to the character of children? How can the relations of men and women in society become more natural and noble? A false public sentiment has crystallized itself into a law forbidding women to work except from necessity. There must be a philosophical reason for every strong public feeling, even if the feeling be wrong, and this prejudice is rooted in the ancient chivalrous regard for women which was suitable in an age when the forces of the world were almost purely physical. 66 MOTHER, 'TIS WORTH A GUINEA TO HEAR HIM!" 89 When the chief business of men was to defend themselves in moated castles, the chief business of women might well be embroidery. The world has been ruled for some centuries by spiritual, rather than physical power; men are thinking, in the main, instead of fighting; selfishness is being displaced by benevolence, and those elements of character in which woman is rich to dominate. But she is still kept in the castle at her embroidery-that is to say, this disposal of her meets with the approbation of the greatest number. When men were ruled by their passions, and the world was a battle-field, there was not much chance for women to work. But conditions have changed; men have adapted themselves to the change, and women must do the same. There is no room for false sentiment in regard to work, in a society that calls for the noblest expression of whatever life there may be in its members. The kind of work is not important, but the idea must prevail that it is as degrading for a woman to waste life as for a man. The possession of power must be regarded as positive command to use power for the good of society. Whatever the force that is in a woman's hand-time, money, talent of one kind or another-that force she must learn to use as conscientiously as if the white hand were brawny and brown. Idealists may repeat till they are hoarse that woman's work is in the household; it will not alter the reality to tens of thousands of women who have no household. All this cry of woman's sphere is but the echo of our semi-savage ancestors, who left their wives securely guarded and went off crusading. When parents look at their daughters with a view to developing the best that is in them-when they educate them as human beings, with individual relations to society and to God, and not as marriageable beings merely when they teach them that the world is a domain for them to conquer, and that idleness and vanity are as ignoble in them as in their brothers, we shall see a race of girls fit for wives and mothers. To let girls grow up under the prevailing influences, and then try to make them all at once self-sustaining, noble women, is like training a peach-tree to a trellis, and then expecting it to have all the semblance and conditions of an independent life. E. M BARTON. "MOTHER, 'TIS WORTH A GUINEA TO HEAR HIM!” "MOTHER! Oh, mother! do come and hear our preacher! It's worth a guinea to hear him!" So said little James to his mother, who had been in the habit of neglecting the house of God, and breaking the Sabbath. "Hold your tongue, child, and don't bother me about your preacher. I am tired with my ironing, week-days, and I want a bit of rest; and Sunday is the only day I have to enjoy myself with my friends. I have no time for church; besides, I have no gown fit to go in." |