The hearthstone; or, Life at home

The palace, the splendid home for himself, does not satisfy him, so long as the Deity to whom he owes his life and fortunes has no national sanctuary. He resolves to take no rest for his eyes nor slumber for his eyelids until he has found out a home for his Lord, a " habitation " for the God of Israel. And when his son Solomon completed the grand cathedral which his father had begun, his aspiration is that God will accept it as an earthly cottage not worthy, of course, of Him who dwelleth in the heavens, but still well furnished and complete, having in it the perpetual fires and incense of home and the voices of prayer and joy and sadness that sound so homelike. David even rejoiced at the thought that its very minarets and towers would be homes for the birds that were wanderers in the sky. Its altars were to afford the swallow a home and the sparrow a nest for her little ones. HOMES, ANCIENT AND MODERN, Home is written on the heaven above us and the earth beneath. Said Rowland Taylor, as he walked from London to his dear parish of Hadley, within whose limits he was to be burned alive for his religious opinions in the dark days of Mary and of Bonner, "There are but one or two stiles more for us to climb over and then I shall be home." It cheered the good man's heart that since he had to die he was to die near home. To be away from home, either when full of life or when expecting death, is to be lonely and to feel a void in one's heart. Hence, in one of the most beautiful of modern hymns or sacred poems, " Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom," John Henry Newman gives expression to this loneliness of feeling when he says, " The night is dark and I am far from home." Who of my readers has not felt the magic influence of John Howard Payne's world-famous song of " Home, sweet home " ? The secret of its popularity is not in any special excellence of meter, or even originality of thought. Rather it is the utter absence of originality that makes it universal. It merely voices in simple strain the melody of every human heart since the first home was built on earth till now. It is a subject that never tires, but has eternal memory and hope in it. Home is a talisman, and we whisper the word in our own hearts and wear the thought of it about us like a charm or amulet. Like a spring gushing through hard rocks it sparkles with constantly renewed freshness, and our hearts yearn toward it, " As for some dear familiar strain Untired we ask and ask again. Ever, in its melodious store, Finding a spell unheard before." Whenever the time comes to a young man that he ceases to love the home of his parents and his childhood, he may be sure that there is something wrong with him, and that morally he is on a downward track. The first symptom of the loss of purity of heart in a youth is when he begins to speak disparagingly or unfilially of home. The greatest men in the history of this and every other 28 THE hearthstone; or, life at home.