FAEMERS' INSTITUTES. 105 



ers and sisters. If eacli member be engaged in the interchange of the offices 

 of love, in teaching and learning the lessons of religion, rales of life, and in 

 forming habits of morality and industry ; if it be the home of truth, refine- 

 ment and simplicity of taste ; if it be beneficial in its external form and as 

 far as practicable surrounded with the beautiful in cultivated nature, as true as 

 "none of us liveth to himself," such a home will be the best nursery of indi- 

 vidual character and the surest foundation of social and national life. 



Home, with its influences, is important because it is universal, and because 

 the education it bestows, being woven with the woof of chldhood, gives form 

 and color to the whole texture of life. Here the child receives its first impres- 

 sions, its germinal ideas, developing themselves into influences that help to 

 establish a basis for those principles which actuate his future life. 



Children are susceptible creatures, and circumstances, scenes and actions 

 always impress them. As we influence them, not by arbitrary rules, not by 

 stern example alone, but in the thousand other ways that speak through bright 

 scenes, soft utterances and pretty pictures, so will they grow. Sports and griefs 

 of a child seem to manhood as folly, yet amid these sports and sorrows he is 

 cherishing the tempers which are to go with him through life. Objects which 

 for the present agitate or delight him will pass away, but the habits of mind 

 which they generate, the affections which they mature, are lasting. Some of 

 our wisest and most illustrious men look back tenderly to their birthplace and 

 love to acknowledge that in the industry and discipline of early years was laid 

 the foundation of greatness. It is at home, if any where, that the affections 

 receive their culture, that amiable dispositions are developed, and here all the 

 faculties and qualities are matured which enter into the structure of worthy 

 character. The simple lessons of home engraven upon the heart of childhood 

 defy the rust of years and outlive the more mature, but less vivid pictures of 

 after years. So deep, so lasting are the impressions of early life that we often 

 see an aged man holding fresh in his recollections the events of his childhood, 

 while all the wide space between that and the present hour seems a forgotten 

 waste. Has not our great instructor said, "Train up a child in the way he 

 should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." If childhood be 

 devoted to the reasonable expansion of the physical and intellectual powers, 

 if knowledge of duty be acquired and rightly used, will not manhood be worthy? 

 If human nature can be so influenced and trained as to know wherein its great- 

 est good consists, it may be presumed that this good will be sought after and 

 obtained. True home life is made up of little events, of little actions, but 

 may they not each have directly or indirectly some relation to those who com- 

 pose that home? An aggregate will at last be formed by long perseverance 

 in line upon line and precept upon precept. Who is able to calculate the 

 extent of the influence which one gentle, loving spirit has exercised in a house- 

 hold, shedding the mild radiance of its light over all the common events of 

 daily life, and checking the inroads of discord and sin by the simple setting 

 forth of "that love which seeketh not her own, but suffereth long and is 

 kind." It has well been said that the moral influence of such examples is not 

 alone confined to the recipient, but goes on from one to another, bearing fruit 

 like good seed sown and reproducing itself till it is impossible in the la])se of 

 time to calculate the good arising from it. Make home the expression of your 

 best ideas of social life and use it as an instrument in moulding such outside 

 life as may come in contact with it. 



Home circles are the little wheels that assist in the revolution of the great 

 whole. Like individuals they have their inflence on each other, and that influ- 



