"Weep not for her! Her memory is the shrine Of pleasing thoughts, soft as the scent of flowers, Calm as on windless eve the sun's decline, Sweet as the song of birds among the bowers." What a purifying and restraining influence does the memory of a pious parent's love, exert upon the wayward child! When he bends in mournful recollection over the grave of a sainted mother, how must every heart-string break, and with what remorse he reviews his past life of wickedness and filial disobedience. The memory of that mother's love and kindness to him, haunts him in all his revels, and draws him back, as if by magnetic force, from scenes of riot and of ruin. Can he think of that mother's prayers and teachings and tears of solicitude, and not feel deeply, and often savingly, his own guilt and ingratitude? If there is a memory of home-life which allures him to heaven, it is the recollection of her love and pious efforts to save him. The child who lives in exile from his country and his home, is soothed in the midst of his cares and disappointments, by the stirring imagery of his far-distant friends and home. And oh, if he has been unfaithful to the ministrations of that home; if he has trodden under foot the proffered love of his parents, and repulsed all the overtures of their pious solicitude, will not the memory of their anguish haunt his soul, and plough deep furrows of remorse in his conscience? The sense of past filial ingratitude, and the recollection of a parent's injured love and disappointed hope, constitute one of the most powerful incentives to repentance and reformation. It was thus with the prodigal son. As soon as he came to himself, he remembered the dear home of his youth, the kind love of his father, and his own unworthiness and ingratitude; and this brought him to repentance and to the resolution to return to his father, confess his sin, and seek pardon. How many now, in thus looking back upon the home of their childhood, do not remember their abuse of parental love and kindness! "Oh! in our stern manhood, when no ray Of earlier sunshine glimmers on our way; When girt with sin and sorrow, and the toil Of cares, which tear the bosom that they soil; Oh! if there be in retrospection's chain One link that knits us with young dreams again-- One thought so sweet we scarcely dare to muse On all the hoarded raptures it reviews; Which seems each instant, in its backward range, The heart to soften, and its ties to change, And every spring untouched for years to move, It is--the memory of a mother's love!" We see, therefore, that there are painful, as well as pleasant, memories of home. When the absent disobedient child remembers how he abused the privileges of the parental home, and brought the gray hairs of his parents down with sorrow to the grave, and turned that household into a desolation; when "Pensive memory lingers o'er Those scenes to be enjoyed no more, Those scenes regretted ever,"