Part 10

Does content live with us, or its opposite, discontent? The question cannot be answered by any general considerations of fortune or position. Surely discontent is found in the most extreme cases, and wealth feels often very poor and limited because its desires rise with its means, and its means may be distanced far by some more successful aspirant to fortune. Discontent, ready guest of heart and home always, but never more frequent than among us with whom plenty so swells desire, and competition so quickens rivalry! With us, alas, too frequent guest, impoverishing abundance by inordinate desires, and burdening too many with cares and anxieties beyond reason and beyond strength! Often sad effect of our luxurious civilization, that in apparently the greater number of households, property brings new forms of want, and the demands of ostentation become more rapacious than the natural appetites! How many need now and always to lower their vain pride, and dignify their mediocrity or consecrate their affluence by hearing the Master's voice "Come down: to-day I must abide in thy house."

In some especial form the spirit of discontent is apt to tempt every household, in view of some especial want, or vanity, or ambition. With it, too, come some elements of strife, or indifference, or worldliness, that need peculiar watching. Domestic life, indeed, is sacred from prying curiosity, and it argues generally little to one's credit, to be very accurately posted up in the accounts of home troubles. Without playing the part of the busybody, we may study the facts of human nature, and be aware of the developments of society. We may believe, that where several wills are brought together, they can harmonize only as they agree by appealing to a common standard; that no tempers, however pliant, can accord without mutual principle; that none in authority can govern others without first governing themselves; that a Christian spirit, earnest, kindly, devoted, is the only safeguard of the peace and elevation of the home.

What to many seems the very genius of household comfort, an easy, pleasant worldliness, is a wretched dependence, and will serve one very little in bearing up against the trials of affliction, or the dangers of prosperity. Worldliness may furnish a house, but it needs more, far more, to make a home. Too often the very spirit that prides itself upon crowding the house with magnificence, robs it of every true home grace. Whatever may be the show of hospitality, there is no good cheer for an earnest heart, nothing that returns the Christian benediction, "Peace be with this house." Too often what is called by eminence, "society," has not one truly social element. We read that some years ago, when the button-makers of England were in distress, the Court relieved them at once by directing four extra buttons to be added to the coat tails of approved mode. A refined traveller from France, Germany, or even England, might suppose that most of our city society had originated in some such benevolent purpose, and our usual style of party giving had its origin in a movement for the relief of confectioners, dancing-masters, dressmakers, and liquor dealers, so monstrous is our outlay of money in their line, and so feeble our sense of artistic beauty and conversational zest. No less a guest than he who went with the Publican is needed to give the true grace, and as Christ has been reverently and affectionately received, homes have abounded. There was far more of favor than rebuke in the offer then made, and so it has always proved, whenever and however accepted.

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What is it to take the Master home with us, but to receive the most tender and intimate revelation of God's love ever granted to men,--a searching judge, an honest censor indeed, but more than this, a compassionate friend, a heavenly comforter? Receive him thus, and the whole tone of life rises. Discontent, strife, worldliness, are rebuked. The dwelling then rests upon the Rock of Ages, the light of heaven comes mingled with the sunshine, and divine nurture goes with the daily bread and the vital air. A Supreme will being recognized, all refractory desires are checked and finally subdued into the subjection which is perfect freedom. All the while a reserve power is preparing for the emergencies that may arise. Then man proves his best dignity by adorning strength with gentleness. The woman rises to her true power by the magic touch of that confiding faith, which ever wins divine virtue from the Master's mantle, even as for the lowly suppliant at Capernaum.

Limitation of means is borne with equanimity, and developes new energies instead of breaking down the spirits. Enlarged fortune widens the sphere of beneficence, and repeats the Publican's vow in some way: "Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold." New jubilee of justice and generosity would it not be, if true guidance of the households of Christendom could train desires and purposes, such as sprung up in that man's heart whilst Jesus of Nazareth dwelt in his home. We know not all that transpired in the interview between this kindly host, and his Divine guest; but the conclusion leads us to believe that the conversation turned less upon the forms of ceremony and degrees of belief, than upon practical righteousness, such as appeared impressed so mightily upon the heart of Zaccheus in making his declaration of the worth of justice and mercy. How many households would at once stop their folly and extravagance, and open their eyes to the solemn realities of life, if the Divine guest were to be sought in such a spirit.

As to the precise form in which Christianity should be acknowledged in the family, we do not propose to lay down any minute, much less any arbitrary rules. The great thing is to cherish a sense of God's presence, and providence, and rule the spirit in the piety and charity which he approves. The stated recognition of his authority we urge ever, and the desirableness of regular use of the scriptures, and prayer daily in the home. If there be fear of routine and indifference, let a true purpose overcome that, and prove that the most thorough habit comports with, nay favors, the highest freedom, and the soul, like the body, is not shackled by an accustomed method of nurture. Of course, no round of ceremonials can be any substitute for living religion; and there is proof enough, that the most rigid routine of lip service may co-exist with the utmost asperity and worldliness. Tokens, alas, there are sometimes, that what passes for piety may bring no Christian graces to the dwelling; and some bigot, who mistakes hatred of the world for godliness, or some flaunting modist, who has adopted a church as a fashion, may bring churlishness or conceit in sheep's clothing into the house. These, and all such shams, make true religion more beautiful, and lend new attraction to the page which records the visit of Christ to a dwelling which the scowling Pharisee scorned, but which the love of God so richly blessed.

Then let the Master be welcome to the household. We cannot do without him. We need him to keep us in God and with one another. Let the atmosphere of the home have the fragrance of his heavenly spirit. It was one of the trials of the early Christians, that they could not live in pagan households without being constantly pained by symbols and usages hostile to their faith. The Greek or Roman wife, if converted to the Gospel, was scandalized by the idols on the hearth-stone, and often brought to death for refusing to join in the idolatry; whilst in the camp and court, paganism was constantly thrusting its pageants upon the follower of the cross. Our modern life is not much troubled with many such tests of faith, and most of our more showy households are utterly innocent of any signs either of Christian or Pagan import in their furniture. From what is seen in some parlors, whether in books or periodicals, or in pictures or statues, we might infer the fondness of the dwellers, now for the battle or the chase; now for the shows of fashion, or the haunts of dissipation; now for the wonders of science and art; now for the shipping interest and the stock market. But too rarely does the household have a true and expressive representation of the ideas most precious to a Christian mind. An ostentatious vulgarity is too much the rule in constructing and adorning the dwelling, and a Christian taste is the exception. How many of our showy dwellings, instead of impressing a cultivated foreigner with a sense of the owner's refinement or spirituality, would only make it clear that the owner had money in plenty to spend, and knew not how to spend it wisely. Let these things be looked to. Let the economy of the household be of itself a confession of faith. Let there he something to show that they who dwell here are God's children, and live within his kingdom. Let not gold be lavished upon unmeaning articles that show rather the capacity of expense than the capacity of meditation, or which, like the mirrors that are the chief ornament of so many houses, favor no reflection beyond that of the vanity which they multiply. If we care for art, let Christian art be not slighted, and with the landscape that portrays the beauty or grandeur of creation, let there be some expressive token that the Father has watched over men by his Providence, and blessed their homes by his Word. We are changing people, almost a nomad race. One of the oldest inhabitants of this metropolis lately remarked, that within his knowledge, not one man now keeps house in the dwelling occupied by his father. Of this fact I know nothing, yet sure it is, that we need in the frequent change of abodes, to build more deeply and securely the spiritual home, and live more among the memorials of things eternal. In the absence of ancestral homesteads with their hallowed scenes and memorials, we should seek to transmit some lasting tokens of our mind, and not make our households as evanescent in their array as the fickle breath of this world's fashions. In some way surely our best thoughts and labor should live for those who come after us, and with goods few or many, as may be, there should go some witness of truth eternal. Alike from our common nature and our peculiar vicissitudes, we need to be deeply grounded in the love of Him who came to open heavenly mansions into our earthly habitations, and to make Him our abiding guest.

Looking into the ancient books of devotion, I find this date associated with a household name, and sacred to the memory of a Christian woman, Monica, the mother of Augustine. Such thoughts of home and its best influences are well, coming to us, as they do, so fragrant with the friendly and pious affections of ages. Monica lived long enough to see her wayward boy a firm disciple at last, and after all his wanderings of thought, devoted to Christ with all the enthusiasm of his nature. How touching is that passage of his confessions in which he speaks of laying her body in the grave, and returning to his lonely home to bless her for her faithful care, and lament his blindness to her gentle pleadings. How comforting the hymn of Ambrose that rose to his mind, as if by some angel's whisper, and lifted his thoughts to the realm whither mother and son had trusted to meet in a companionship beyond parting and beyond tears. Bless this and all like remembrances in former times, or in our own experience. Praise God for all the peace and power, the loveliness and wisdom, that have entered the homes where Christ has been welcomed. Let praise continue in prayer, and live in watching and good works.

_First of May._

The Orphan.

THE ORPHAN.

The genial air of May comes to us all laden with the sweet breath of opening blossoms, and has a balm for the spirits as well as for the health. It stirs within us a sentiment deeper than we know how to define, revives our chilled or buried ideals, and makes every heart young again. It cannot but give something of its own tone to our thought, and we find that in all nations this month has been a continued festival in the calendar, and associated with the loveliest imagery of earth and heaven. The heathen nations, who gave the month its present name, called it so after the fairest of their goddesses, and Christians following a similar sentiment, and desirous also of enlisting every natural feeling in the service of a purer faith, transferred the honors of Maia to Mary, and in every land white flowers deck the shrines of the Madonna, and the "Hail Mary" is the burden of the matin and vesper hymn. Some of the hymns and aspirations connected with the season convey thoughts with which an earnest Protestant may sympathize, and grateful for the maternal love that has made our lives so blessed, we cannot ridicule, although we cannot imitate the Italian devotee, who salutes the Holy Mother as the representative of God's tender mercy to man through her sex, in words of such fervor:--

"Joy of my heart! O let me pay To thee thine own sweet month of May.

Mother! be love of thee a ray From Heaven to show the heavenward way.

Sweet Day-Star! let thy beauty be A light to draw my soul to thee."

May we not once more speak the name of Mary, the Blessed Mother, not to adore her as a divinity, but to win from her an illustration of our common humanity in one of its great sorrows and consolations? Cheerfully as under the returning smile of heaven, solemnly as in presence of much grief, our meditation now turns upon orphanage of the affections, as one of the facts of our homes, and upon the secondary relations which may be its solace.

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Consider, first of all, the fact as one of the events of every life, sooner or later. Mary at the Cross is a representation of our common humanity in its bereavements. Every mother and every parent in some way enters into her anguish, as she saw the life of her Divine Son ebbing from those cruel wounds. She was indeed doubly bereaved,--at once childless and fatherless for the victim upon the Cross had been at once the son of her travail and the father of her faith, born of her into the world that she might be born of Him into the spiritual kingdom. His own pains did not make Him insensible to her anguish, nor indifferent to the fact common to our nature, which feels itself always so void and desolate, when the being of all most loved is suddenly taken away. Tenderly He provided for her the consolation that she needed, by commending her to the disciple, whose ever present kindness would be so great a solace in itself, and so powerful a remembrance of the departed by its associations. The disciple took to his house from that hour the mother of Him upon whose bosom he had leaned.

Life is full of cases that illustrate the same principles, although not connected with facts so peculiar. It may be said indeed, that some kind of orphanage is the lot of every person, whose years are not early cut off, and whose heart is not utterly hardened against home affections. The order of nature is that children should survive their parents, and very many of us in tender childhood have learned the worth of kind and judicious parents, by being called to face the trials and cares of life without their counsel and comfort. When the case is reversed, and the parent is mourner for the child, the desolation of the heart is quite as great, and the affections, deprived of their wonted object, are, perhaps, more deeply wounded than the child's can be, even when losing the only protector in losing the parent; so strongly do the affections press downward, and so mightily does the love that sacrifices so much for offspring grow by its own exercise. Every day this bereavement strikes somewhere, and since my last word to you, it has stricken parents whose oldest child was last Sunday present at church, and to-day is in his grave;--on Sunday I spoke to that bright boy pleasantly at our school, and on Friday said the funeral service over his coffin. Never can such a bereavement come without leaving a feeling of double orphanage, for parents in losing their offspring lose at once an instructor as well as a pupil; and surely the eldest born of a family, however young, is spiritually father or mother of much that is best in the parent's heart. Survey life in its whole compass, enlarge our own experience by observation, and we need no argument to interpret Mary's desolation at the Cross, or to learn that some form of orphanage is the common lot; nay, that before life ceases, some portion of our life is severed, when those in whose companionship we had lived are taken away. The world is full of such desolation, and there are many to whom existence is a burden, because its light has thus gone out.

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But God has always some providential alleviations in store for such bereavement, and let us turn from the fact to its solace. In some form the mercy of that voice from the Cross may always be heard, "Woman, behold thy son! Disciple, behold thy mother!" The Christian church itself never practically unmerciful to its people, even in its sternest days, has always rejoiced to comfort orphanage by the solace of secondary relations; providing new protégés for the childless, new guardians for the fatherless, and new homes for the homeless. There are few families of large experience and just feeling, where something of this same office has not been performed; and where, although other gifts may not be needed, the solace of sympathy is never withheld.

It becomes an important practical question with many, how those secondary relations shall be formed, which may in some measure take the place of the ties severed by death. Here may be children without father, or mother, or both. Here are homes that are childless either through death or by the absence of the blessing, whose absence is of itself to our nature as a bereavement. It is not well to leave the heart void, and God himself, whose Spirit moved our Saviour to commend his mother to his disciple, has provided alleviations. They who need them for themselves or seek them for others must use their best judgment and principle in the choice. There may be gross wrong or frivolous error in the selection, for there are some so desperate as to drown grief in dissipation, and others so light-minded as to lavish upon a parrot, or a dog, or a horse, the affections that belong to immortal creatures.

There are three most obvious modes of selection. The orphan finds a protector by some natural relationship, or by attracting some guardian friend, or by being placed under the care of one, who occupies by marriage the position of the parent taken away. Each of these secondary relations has been full of blessing, as also of danger and trial. Many are the cases in which a desolate child has been abused by a relative, swindled by a friend, and oppressed by a stepfather or stepmother. But not judging through plays and romances, but through life as we see it from a perhaps favored position, we have cause of much satisfaction in view of the secondary relations spoken of. How many a lonely child finds counsellors and helpers among kindred and friends, who keep alive in his heart the parent's memory by their kindness, and deepen the first relation by the second! How many desolate parents comfort themselves by comforting others; and how much grief is soothed, like Mary's, by distilling healing balm for others from its own wounds! Among the ministers of mercy, that cheer this too benighted world, none is more powerful than that which carries comfort to the suffering in the name of some departed child; and who shall number the countenances that contemplate the little ones, whose angels behold the face of our Father in Heaven, to copy their tenderness, and throw their light upon the path of the disconsolate?

Of one class of secondary relations, I cannot but say a word in justice to the subject, and in a different tone from that which usually prevails. The word stepmother has become a proverb in the language, and persons who should know better, sometimes idly speak, so as to add to its odious significance. But may not this relation be assumed in so true and devoted a spirit, and its offices be so performed, as to be great mercy to the orphan? No wonder indeed, that wretchedness comes from the misalliances that sometimes introduce a giddy trifler without ideas, or a selfish worldling without conscience, into the place that has been made sacred by a true Christian mother now no more in the world,--when, in fact, some greedy hawk creeps into the nest of the dove, or the wanton butterfly invades the cell of the ant, or the provoking wasp steals the sweets of the honey-bee's hive. No wonder that trouble comes, when natural rivalries and jealousies are embittered by one, who is mother in name but not in feeling, one whose first joy is personal vanity, and whose least wish is to sacrifice any whim for the welfare of those now entrusted to her care. Well may the curse of Heaven rest upon such connections. Let not a shallow fancy or reckless impulse, never excusable, but least excusable in mature years, dictate a choice so sacred as that which replaces the natural parent by another. Let the choice be guided by words as sacred as those which came from the Cross, and let him, who commends his children to another's care, use his best thought and principle, as if called in this way to say, "Woman, behold thy son! Son, behold thy mother!"

Whatever may be the form of the secondary relation, whether the virtual adoption be from natural relationship, from friendliness or by marriage, two obvious principles should preside over the choice, as in the example of the Cross. The secondary relation should be such as not to shame the first; and such also as to be a mutual blessing, a blessing to the orphaned and the protector. When Jesus commended his mother to his most loved disciple's care, he carried out the spirit of his own entire life, and placed her in the charge of one whose companionship would be a constant remembrance of himself. The lessons of the former years were deepened by those that followed--the disciple was ever nearer his Master by the mother's presence and the mother was nearer to her Son by the disciple's ministry. Happy are they whose existence, however saddened by bereavement, is not broken into incongruous or antagonistic fragments,--happy are the orphan hearts who, like that adopted mother and son, cherish throughout life the same high allegiance, and mature their first vows in their secondary obligations.

This cannot well be, unless the second principle named be observed, and due congeniality be found between the orphaned and the protector. Some choice may generally be used, and the choice should turn on the fitness of the one to guide and the other to be guided. No statement is given of the process in our Saviour's mind, that led him to make the bequest of the Cross, that legacy of love. But He knew what was in man, and knew well how much the mother and disciple were fitted for that filial companionship; the one by his deep intuitive mind fitted to enlighten her faith, and the other by her boundless affection fitted to inflame his piety and charity, to kindle his meditative wisdom into seraphic love. Let not the example be lost upon those who shrink from claiming equal sanctity. Are any of us to choose for an orphan or a half-orphan a protector, whether a guardian or an adopted parent, remember the legacy of the Cross, and in Christ's name minister to the desolate.

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