| Home Making |
Chapter 9 |
Page 4 |
There is no need for argument to prove the influence of the home memories in the formation of character. When one’s childhood home has been true and sweet its memories never can be effaced. Its teaching may long be unheeded and life may be a miserable waste. Sin may sweep over the soul like a devouring flame, leaving only blackened ruins. Sorrows may quench every joy and hope, and the life may be crushed and broken. But the memory of the early home lives on like a solitary star burning in the gloom of night. Even in revels and carousals its picture floats in the mind like a vanished dream. Its voices of love and prayer and song come back like melodies from some far away island in the sea when the lips that first breathed them out have long been silent in the grave.
There ought to be a powerful motive in this truth to lead us to watch the character of the memories we make in our homes. How will those who go out of our doors be affected in later life by what they remember of their early home. Will the memory be tender, restraining, refining and inspiring? Or will it be sad, bitter and a curse?
Cowper’s mother died when he was only six years old, yet so deep was the impression made upon him by her character that he said there was not a day in all his manhood’s years when he did not remember and think of her. The memory of her tenderness hung over him like a soft summer sky. Will it be so with the children who are playing now in our homes? Does the mother who reads these words so impress the tender lives of her children with the goodness of her own character that the memory and the influence shall remain when their hairs are white with age and when she is long gone from earthly scenes?
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