And thus the home-sympathy demands that all the emotions of home, whether
joyful or painful, must affect all,--must vibrate from heart to heart. It
involves the power of home-transference, by which, each member conveys to
his own affections, all within home. It is thus the law of adaptation and
assimilation, for the home-affections. In obedience to this law the hearts
and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The
necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members
faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love.
It is, therefore, only when the home-sympathy, as a feeling and a faculty,
is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that
it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always
done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself
according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute
feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as
feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but
home-sentimentalism,--a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance,
parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife
may lament the impenitence of her husband; but if they go no further,
their sympathy is really false, because it does not share in and feel the
state of others, nor seek to alleviate their impending miseries.
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