My friends, when I consider the magnitude and importance of the subject now before us, and how many topics of discussion grow out of it--when I think how much must be left entirely unsaid--I entreat you not to suppose that I offer this discourse as anything more than a _suggestion_--a suggestion meant to turn your attention to this subject of Home in the City, and leaving it to the elaboration of your own thoughts. Remember, here abide the deepest springs of social life. The noblest privileges, the greatest duties, find their basis here; and we are taught first "to show piety at Home." And the influence of this institution upon all other fields of human action, private or public, is too obvious to mention. All life flows from the centre, outwards; and the citizen who desires the order and purity of the community in which he lives; the philanthropist, who, under all conditions, regards the highest welfare of his race; the Christian, who urges the secret culture of the soul, must look with peculiar solicitude to this institution. It is one whose impotence is demonstrated by the strength of the instinct which creates it and clings to it--an instinct which associates the most genuine happiness with its sacred enclosure of affection, however rude or poor that spot may be--which, while a man has such a place to call his own, makes him feel that he is somebody, and has some tie and claim in the world; and which, on the other hand, associated the most bitter destitution, the dreariest isolation, with that one word--"Homeless." How this instinct abides, how long and how far it goes with us, is beautifully illustrated in the lines of Goldsmith. "In all my wand'rings round this world of care, In all my griefs--and God has giv'n my share, I still had hopes my latest hours to crown, Amidst these humble bow'rs to lay me down; To husband out life's taper at the close, And keep the flame from wasting by repose. * * * * * Around my fire an ev'ning group to draw, And tell of all I felt, and all I saw; And, as a hare whom hounds and horns pursue, Pants to the place from whence at first he flew, I still had hopes, my long vexations past, Here to return--and die at Home at last."