224 CONSECRATED BY TIES OF PARENTAGE. 



The first of these is, obviously, the presence of one man and 

 one woman, who have mutually chosen each other out of all the 

 world, and who are held together by the same attraction of mutual 

 and exclusive choice. This it is that makes true marriage; and 

 those, and those only, who are thus wedded are true husbands and 

 true wives. They may be of any faith, or of no faith. The cere- 

 mony which united them may be gorgeous and elaborate as that of 

 Rome, or simple and natural as that of an untaught savage. The 

 essential thing is, that they love and prefer each other to all the 

 world. This being granted, they are the common centre of the 

 circle of home. They make its earliest constituent, and its prime 

 and essential condition. Without this, there may be much that is 

 charming and bright, but there is no home. Indeed, whatever of 

 brightness or of charm may be discerned in those broken circles to 

 which this element is wanting, will be found, on a careful examina- 

 tion, to owe their presence to the sacred memory and still potent 

 influence of this primal fact. If the children cling to the old roof- 

 tree, under whose shelter sits the lonely and widowed husband or 

 wife, it is because the vacant place was once so honorably and ten- 

 derly filled that the simple recollection of the lost has still the power 

 to charm and bind. It is a power so enduring and sacred that 

 death itself cannot quite cancel it. This, then the presence of one 

 man and one woman, joined together in a tender and sacred union 

 of hearts makes the earliest element of the real home. 



CONSECRATED BY TIES OF PARENTAGE. 



The next and the immediate and proper consequence of this 

 is the presence of parents and children. When the loving wife 

 ripens into maternity under the chaste and tender influence of her 

 husband's embraces, she is not only fulfilling the ends of Nature 

 and the law of God, but she is adding another and equally essential 

 constituent to the home. Indeed she is helping, as in no other way 

 so efficiently she can help, to build the home. Not all the domestic 

 virtues combined can atone for the barrenness. This is the greatest 

 of all misfortunes. Until her babe smiles in its mother's face and 

 coos in its father's arms, their common being is incomplete. Strange 

 and awful depths of tenderness are unsealed by the presence of the 

 little one, whose waters could never else have purified and gladdened 

 the hearts of the husband and wife. Holding this treasure in their 

 arms, they taste a divine joy and unlearn the liardened selfishness of 

 life. Their union is now first complete. They are not merely hus- 

 band and wife, but the common parents of that bud of being which 

 they see unfolding under their eyes; and this fact in vests either with 

 a new and unspeakable dearness to the other. It is no longer John 

 and Jane, that each sees in the other, but the father and mother of 

 my boy; and both feel that the mutual tenderness of wedded love 

 bore no comparison to the mutual tenderness of wedded parentage. 



