..
But dream they're happy!"
But what _is_ home,--home in the sphere of nature? It is not simply an
ideal which feeds the fancy, nor the flimsy emotion of a sentimental heart.
We should seek for its meaning, not in the flowery vales of imagination,
but amid the sober realities of thought and of faith.
Home is not the mere dwelling place of our parents, and the theater upon
which we played the part of merry childhood. It is not simply a habitation.
This would identify it with the lion's lair and the eagle's nest. It is not
the mere mechanical juxtaposition of so many human beings, herding together
like animals in the den or stall. It is not mere conventionalism,--a human
association made up of the nursery, the parlor, the outward of domestic
life, resting upon some evanescent passion, some sensual impression and
policy. These do not make up the idea of home.
Home is a divine institution, coeval and congenital with man. The first
home was in Eden; the last home will be in Heaven. It is the first form of
society, a little commonwealth in which we first lose our individualism and
come to the consciousness of our relation to others. Thus it is the
foundation of all our relationships in life,--the preparation-state for
our position in the State and in the Church. It is the first form and
development of the associating principle, the normal relation in which
human character first unfolds itself.
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