| Home Making |
Chapter 8 |
Page 19 |
There is no inheritance which the richest parent can bequeath to a child that can compare for one moment with the influence and blessing of a truly godly home. It gives to the whole trend of the life, away into the eternal years, such a direction and such an impulse that no after influence, no false teachings, no terrific temptation, no darkening calamity, can ever altogether turn it away from its course. For a time it may be drawn aside by some mighty power of evil, but if the work in the home has been true and deep, permeating the whole nature, the deviation from rectitude will be but temporary. If parents give money to their children, they may lose it in some of life’s vicissitudes. If they bequeath to them a home of splendor, they may be driven out of it. If they pass down to them as a heritage only an honored name, they may sully it. But if they fill their hearts with the holy influences and memories of a happy Christian home, no calamity, no great sorrow, no power of evil, no earthly loss, can ever rob them of their sacred possessions. The home songs will sing themselves out again in the years of toilsome duty. The home teachings will knit themselves into a fibre of character, rich in its manly or womanly beauty, and invulnerable as a coat of mail. The home prayers will bind the soul with gold chains fast round the feet of God. Then, as the years go on and the old home of earth is broken up, it only moves from behind, as it were, and goes on before, where it draws the soul toward the better life.
For there is a home of which this earthly home, even at its best, is but a type. Into that home God is gathering the great family. The Christian household that is broken here or scattered shall be reunited there. A father and his son were shipwrecked at sea. They clung to the rigging for a time, and then the son was washed off. The father supposed he was lost. In the morning the father was rescued in an unconscious state, and after many hours awoke in a fisherman’s hut, lying on a soft, warm bed. He turned his face, and there lay his son beside him on the same bed. So one by one our families are swept away in the sea of death. Our homes are emptied and our fondest ties are broken. But one in Christ Jesus we shall awake in the other world to see beside us again our loved ones whom we have lost here, yet who have only gone before us into the eternal home.
Page 19
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