The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities — John Shaqi
The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our CitiesOsgood, Samuel
Religion
The Hearth-Stone: Thoughts Upon Home-Life in Our Cities
Osgood, Samuel
Christian life; Conduct of life
Go home, and in addition to the blessings of plenty and of peace, consider
the means of intellectual and spiritual culture there. The laboring man
may own a better library than a prince or prelate of the olden time. For a
pittance trifling even to him, he may have tidings daily from all quarters
of his own country, and from foreign lands. His children bring with them
more learning from the common school, than would have sufficed of old to
constitute the wisdom of a sage. For a less sum than the tippler gives for
the draught that fevers his blood and crazes his brain, the artisan may
adorn his house with choice works of art, through the cheap and beautiful
products of the engraver's skill; and thus the beautiful from the hand of
man and of God, may refine and cheer the common lot. Music, that voice of
the beautiful arts, is becoming a familiar blessing, and a part of
ordinary education. Groups of children by the fireside, and in the field
and garden, sometimes at the corners of the streets or in their walk home
from school, are heard singing their songs and hymns together, thus
exchanging discord for peace, quarrels for harmony. Even the utilities
that are becoming the custom of our time, have their refining and exalting
influences. The light that streams up in our streets and houses, is the
handmaid of a light brighter than its own. The pure water that gushes up
in so many homes, has connections far more substantial than fanciful with
the living water of the divine word. Facts enough show that human
civilization needs, in the most literal sense, its water-baptism before
its spirit-baptism can be realized.
The spirit is not lost sight of even in this utilitarian age. In religion
the means of culture have their consummation. Within every home, in any
degree worthy the name, Christianity proves its power, whether the gospel
be nominally professed or not. The very unity of the family comes from
Him, who has decreed the purity of the home by his fundamental law, and
bound parents to each other and their offspring by a tie at once of
principle and affection. Greater still the blessing where Christianity is
fully known and practised in its truths and graces, where the pleasant
fireside is a consecrated altar, and the earthly mansion opens ever into
the heavenly.
Consider then the blessings of our homes--their plenty, their peace, their
means of intellectual and spiritual culture.
Consider them well, and moreover, own God's hand in them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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