387. Harbor of Home

Harbor of Home

Mar_5:19 : ’93Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee.’94

There are a great many people longing for some grand sphere in which to serve God. They admire Luther at the Diet of Worms, and only wish that they had some such great opportunity in which to display their Christian prowess. They admire Paul making Felix tremble, and they only wish that they had some such grand occasion in which to preach righteousness, temperance and judgment to come. All they want is an opportunity to exhibit their Christian heroism. Now the apostle comes to us and he practically says: ’93I will show you a place where you can exhibit all that is grand and beautiful and glorious in Christian character, and that is the domestic circle.’94

If one is not faithful in an insignificant sphere he will not be faithful in a resounding sphere. If Peter will not help the cripple at the gate of the temple, he will never be able to preach three thousand souls into the kingdom at the Pentecost. If Paul will not take pains to instruct the sheriff of the Philippian dungeon in the way of salvation, he will never make Felix tremble. He who is not faithful in skirmish would not be faithful in an Armageddon. The fact is, we are all placed in just the position in which we can most grandly serve God, and we ought not to be chiefly thoughtful about some sphere of usefulness which we may after a while gain, but the all-absorbing question with you and with me ought to be: ’93Lord, what wilt thou have me (now and here) to do?’94

There is one word in my text around which the most of our thoughts will revolve. That word is ’93home.’94 Ask ten different men the meaning of that word and they will give you ten different definitions. To one it means love at the hearth, it means plenty at the table, industry at the workstand, intelligence at the books, devotion at the altar. To him it means a greeting at the door and a smile at the chair. Peace hovering like wings. Joy clapping its hands with laughter. Life a tranquil lake. Pillowed on the ripples sleep the shadows. Ask another man what home is, and he will tell you it is want, looking out of a cheerless fire-grate and kneading hunger in an empty bread-tray. The damp air shivering with curses. No Bible on the shelf. Children, robbers and murderers in embryo. Vile songs their lullaby. Every face a picture of ruin. Want in the background and sin staring from the front. No Sabbath wave rolling over that doorsill. Vestibule of the pit. Shadow of infernal walls. Furnace for forging everlasting chains. Faggots for an unending funeral pile. Awful word! It is spelled with curses, it weeps with ruin, it chokes with woe, it sweats with the death-agony of despair. The word ’93home’94 in the one case means everything bright; in the other case, everything terrific.

I shall speak to you of home as a test of character, home as a refuge, home as a political safeguard, home as a school, and home as a type of heaven.

And in the first place I remark that home is a powerful test of character. The disposition in public may be in gay costume, while in private it is in dishabille. As play-actors may appear in one garb on the stage and may appear in another garb behind the scenes, so private character may be very different from public character. Private character is often public character turned wrong side out. A man may receive you into his parlor as though he were a distillation of smiles, and yet his heart may be a swamp of nettles. There are business men who all day long are mild and courteous and genial and good-natured in commercial life, keeping back their irritability and their petulance and their discontent; but at nightfall the dam breaks, and scolding pours forth in floods and freshets.

The reason men do not display their bad temper in public is because they do not want to be knocked down. There are men who hide their petulance and their irritability just for the same reason that they do not let their notes go to protest; it does not pay. Or for the same reason that they do not want a man in their stock company to sell his stock at less than the right price, lest it depreciate the value. As at sunset the wind rises, so after a sunshiny day there may be a tempestuous night. There are people who in public act the philanthropist, who at home act the Nero with respect to their slippers and their gown.

Audubon, the great ornithologist, with gun and pencil, went through the forests of America to bring down and so sketch the beautiful birds, and after years of toil and exposure completed his manuscript and put it in a trunk in Philadelphia for a few days of recreation and rest, and came back and found that the rats had utterly destroyed the manuscript; but without any discomposure and without any fret or bad temper, he again picked up his gun and pencil and visited again all the great forests of America and reproduced his immortal work. And yet there are people with a ten-thousandth part of that loss who are utterly irreconcilable, who, at the loss of a pencil or an article of raiment, will blow as long and sharp as a northeast storm. Now, that man who is affable in public and who is irritable in private is making a fraudulent over-issue of stock, and he is as bad as a bank that might have four or five hundred thousand dollars of bills in circulation, with no specie in the vault. Let us learn ’93to show piety at home.’94 If we have it not there, we have it not anywhere. If we have not genuine grace in the family circle, all our outward and public affability merely springs from a fear of the world or from the slimy, putrid pool of our own selfishness. I tell you the home is a mighty test of character. What you are at home you are everywhere, whether you demonstrate it or not.

Again, I remark that home is a refuge. Life is the United States army on the national road to the front, a long march with ever and anon a skirmish and a battle. At eventide we pitch our tent and stack our arms; we hang up the war cap and lay our head on the knapsack; we sleep until the morning bugle calls us to marching and action. How pleasant it is to rehearse the victories and the surprises and the attacks of the day seated by the still camp-fire of the home circle! Yea, life is a stormy sea. With shivered masts and torn sails and hulk aleak, we put into the harbor of home. Blessed harbor! there we go for repairs in the dry dock of quiet life. The candle in the window is to the toiling man the lighthouse guiding him into port. Children go forth to meet their fathers as pilots at the Narrows take the hand of ships. The doorsill of the home is the wharf where heavy life is unladen. There is the place where we may talk of what we have done without being charged with self-adulation. There is the place where we may lounge without being thought undignified. There is the place where we may express affection without being thought silly. There is the place where we may forget our annoyances and exasperations and troubles. Forlorn earth-pilgrim! no home? Then die. That is better. The grave is brighter and grander and more glorious than this world, with no tent from marchings, with no harbor from the storm, with no place to rest from this scene of greed and gouge and loss and gain. God pity the man or woman who has no home!

Further, I remark, that home is a political safeguard. The safety of the State must be built on the safety of the home. The Christian hearthstone is the only corner-stone for a republic. The virtues cultured in the family circle are an absolute necessity for the State. If there be not enough moral principle to make the family adhere, there will not be enough political principle to make the State adhere. ’93No home’94 means the Goths and Vandals, means the nomads of Asia, means the Numidians of Africa, changing from place to place according as the pasture happens to change. Confounded be all those Babels of iniquity which would overtower and destroy the home! The same storm that upsets the ship in which the family sails will sink the frigate of the Constitution. Jails and penitentiaries and armies and navies are not our best defense. The door of the home is the best fortress. Household utensils are the best artillery, and the chimneys of our dwelling-houses are the grandest monuments of safety and triumph. No home! no republic.

Further, I remark, that home is a school. Old ground must be turned up with subsoil plow, and it must be harrowed and reharrowed, and then the crop will not be as large as that of the new ground with less culture. Now, youth and childhood are new ground, and all the influences thrown over their heart and life will come up in after-life luxuriantly. Every time you have given a smile of approbation’97all the good cheer of your life will come up again in the geniality of your children. And every ebullition of anger and every uncontrollable display of wrath will be fuel to their disposition twenty or thirty or forty years from now’97fuel for a bad fire a quarter of a century from this. Make your home the brightest place on earth, if you would charm your children to the high path of virtue and rectitude and religion! Do not always turn the blinds the wrong way. Let the light which puts gold on the gentian and spots the pansy pour into your dwellings. Do not expect the little feet to keep step to a Dead March. Get you no hint of cheerfulness from grasshopper’92s leap and lamb’92s frisk and quail’92s whistle, and garrulous streamlet, which, from the rock at the mountain-top clear down to the meadow ferns under the shadow of the steep, comes looking for the steepest place to leap off at, and talking just to hear itself talk? If all the skies hurtled with tempest, and everlasting storm wandered over the sea, and every mountain stream went raving mad, frothing at the mouth with mad foam, and there were nothing but simoons blowing among the hills, and there were neither lark’92s carol nor hummingbird’92s trill nor waterfall’92s dash, but only bear’92s bark and panther’92s scream and wolf’92s howl, then you might well gather into your homes only the shadows. But when God has strewn the earth and the heavens with beauty and with gladness, let us take into our home circles all innocent hilarity, all brightness, and all good cheer. A dark home makes bad boys and bad girls, in preparation for bad men and bad women.

Above all, take into your homes Christian principle. Can it be that in any of our comfortable homes the voice of prayer is never lifted! What! No supplication at night for protection? What! No thanksgiving in the morning for care? How will you answer God in the day of judgment with reference to your children? Oh, if you do not inculcate Christian principle in the hearts of your children, and you do not warn them against evil, and you do not invite them to holiness and to God, and they wander off into dissipation and into infidelity, and at last make shipwreck of their immortal souls, on their deathbed and in the day of judgment they will curse you!

My mind runs back to one of the best of early homes. Prayer, like a roof over it. Peace, like an atmosphere in it. Parents, personifications of faith in trial and comfort in darkness. The two pillars of that earthly home long ago crumbled to dust. But shall I ever forget that earthly home? Yes, when the flower forgets the sun that warms it. Yes, when the mariner forgets the star that guided him. Yes, when love has gone out on the heart’92s altar, and memory has emptied its urn into forgetfulness. Then, home of my childhood, I will forget thee; the family altar of a father’92s importunity and a mother’92s tenderness, the voices of affection, the funerals of our dead; father and mother with interlocked arms like intertwining branches of trees making a perpetual arbor of love and peace and kindness’97then I will forget thee’97then, and only then. You know, that a hundred times you have been kept out of sin by the memory of such a scene as I have been describing. You have often had raging temptations, but you know what has held you with supernatural grasp. I tell you a man who has had such a good home as that never gets over it, and a man who has had a bad early home never gets over it.

Again, I remark that home is a type of heaven, At our best estate we are only pilgrims and strangers here. ’93Heaven is our home.’94 Death will never knock at the door of that mansion, and in all that country there is not a single grave. How glad parents are in holiday time to gather their children home again! But I have noticed that almost always there is a son or a daughter absent’97absent from home, perhaps absent from the country, perhaps absent from the world. Oh, how glad our Heavenly Father will be when he gets all his children home with him in heaven! And how delightful it will be for brothers and sisters to meet after long separation! Once they parted at the door of the tomb; now they meet at the door of immortality. Once they saw only ’93through a glass, darkly;’94 now it is ’93face to face,’94 corruption, incorruption; mortality, immortality. Where are now all their sins and sorrows and troubles? Overwhelmed in the Red Sea of death while they passed through dryshod. Gates of pearl, capstones of amethyst, thrones of dominion do not stir my soul so much as the thought of home. Once there, let earthly sorrows howl like storms and roll like seas. Home! Let thrones rot and empires wither. Home! Let the world die in earthquake struggle and be buried amid procession of planets and dirge of spheres. Home! Let everlasting ages roll in irresistible sweep. Home! No sorrow, no crying. No tears. No death. But home, sweet home; home, beautiful home, everlasting home, home with each other, home with angels, home with God.

One night, lying on my lounge, when very tired, my children all around about me in full romp and hilarity and laughter’97on the lounge, half awake and half asleep, I dreamed this dream: I was in a far country. It was not Persia, although more than Oriental luxuriance crowned the cities. It was not the tropics, although more than tropical fruitfulness filled the gardens. It was not Italy, although more than Italian softness filled the air. And I wandered around looking for thorns and nettles, but I found that none of them grew there, and I saw the sun rise, and I watched to see it set, but it sank not. And I saw the people in holiday attire, and I said: ’93When will they put off this and put on workmen’92s garb and again delve in the mine or swelter at the forge?’94 but they never put off the holiday attire. And I wandered in the suburbs of the city to find the place where the dead sleep, and I looked all along the line of the beautiful hills, the place where the dead might most blissfully sleep; and I saw towers and castles, but not a mausoleum or a monument or a white slab could I see. And I went into the chapel of the great town and I said: ’93Where do the poor worship and where are the hard benches on which they sit?’94 And the answer was made me: ’93We have no poor in this country.’94 And then I wandered out to find the hovels of the destitute, and I found mansions of amber and ivory and gold, but not a tear could I see, not a sigh could I hear, and I was bewildered and I sat down under the branches of a great tree and I said, ’93Where am I? And whence comes all this scene?’94 And then out from among the leaves, and up the flowery paths, and across the bright streams there came a beautiful group, thronging all about me, and as I saw them come, I thought I knew their step, and as they shouted, I thought I knew their voices; yet they were so gloriously arrayed that I bowed as stranger to stranger. But when again they clapped their hands and shouted, ’93Welcome, welcome!’94 the mystery all vanished, and I found that time had gone and eternity had come, and we were all together again in our new home in heaven. And I looked around and I said: ’93Are we all here?’94 and the voices of many generations responded, ’93All here!’94 And while tears of gladness were raining down our cheeks, and the branches of the Lebanon cedars were clapping their hands, and the towers of the great city were chiming their welcome, we all together began to leap and shout and sing: ’93Home, home, home!’94

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage