THE LIF E. B 0 0 K. WRITE, mother, write! A new unspotted book of life before thee, Thy hand, though woman's, must not faint nor falter; A mother's tracery time may never alter Be its first impress, then, the breath of prayer. Strike a bold blow upon these kindred pages; Write, shoulder to shoulder, brother, we will go ;' Heart linked to heart, though wild the conflict rages, We will defy the battle and the foe. Write, brother, write ! We who have trodden boyhood's paths together, Write, brother, write ! AFFECTION. Fellow immortal, write! One God reigns in the heavens - there is no other, Who judges evil, and rewards the good, Fellow immortal, write ! - Home Journal. 79 AFFECTION. WE sometimes meet with men who seem to think that any indulgence in an affectionate feeling is weakness. They will return from a journey and greet their families with a distant dignity, and move among their children with the cold and lofty splendor of an iceberg, surrounded by its broken fragments. There is hardly a more unnatural sight on earth than one of those families without a heart. A father had better extinguish his boy's eyes than take away his heart. Who that has experienced the joys of friendship, and values sympathy and affection, would not rather lose all that is beautiful in nature's scenery, than be robbed of the hidden treasure of his heart? Who would not rather bury his wife, than bury his love for her? Who would not rather follow his child to the grave, than entomb his parental affections? Cherish, then, your heart's best affections. Indulge in the warm and gushing emotions of filial, parental, and fraternal love. Think it not a weakness. God is love. Love God, love everybody, and everything that is lovely. Teach your children to love to love the rose, the robin; to love their parents; to love their God. Let it be the studied object of their domestic culture to give them warm hearts, ardent affections. Bind your whole family together by these strong cords. You cannot make them too strong. Religion is love: love to God, love to man. -Chambers' Journal. ALL parents do not have it in their power to implant, or promote in the minds of their sons, a love of the beautiful in Nature and Art, by placing before their eyes all which the wide world contains of the fair handiwork of each, even were such a thing desirable; but every parent can, if he will, rear the mind of his child to a perception and an appreciation of whatever within its own sphere is lovely, and so enhance its happiness. For who can doubt that he who perceives beauty everywhere, and not only perceives, but values it, is capable of higher enjoyment than he, who, from the cradle to the staff, plods along as unobservant, and as indifferent, as if no organs of sight had been given him, or earth was a mass of gloom, instead of God's footstool, framed by his own Hand Divine for the abode of beings "made a little lower than the angels?" It is a truth widely admitted, that a portion of the time of a female may be wisely occupied in the cultivation of taste, and that such an occupation tends to the refinement of the mind and the improvement of the heart. And is not the same remark equally true in relation to the other sex? Is it not the very nature of such an employment to exalt the affections, and to subdue the whole army of passions into gentleness? If so, has "the sterner sex no need of its influence? How often may be seen the mistress of an humble cottage laboring to rear a few vines and shrubs, which, to an eye of taste, would greatly adorn the little rustic domain, while the master not only withholds the assistance he well might afford, but, what to her is far more serious, treats both her efforts and their result as though they were too trivial to merit a look or word of approval from one of creation's lords! There are men who assert, as if it were a matter of boasting, that they "prefer a hill of potatoes to a pot of flowers." A starving person should incur no blame by expressing such a preference; but he who, surrounded with life's blessings, glories in the indulgence of sentiments like this, deprives himself, and, at least, some of his associates, of a great amount of enjoyment. Such are either intellectually low, or, as is often the case, have fallen into the vulgar and baneful error of confounding cruelty with heroism, and gentleness with effeminacy; therefore they raise themselves in their own estimation, and expect to do so in that of others, by feeling, or affecting to feel, a contempt for whatever approaches to sympathy or tenderness. Early training can, and should remove this false idea from the mind, or rather prevent it from entering there, by instructing that the exercise of kindness, and the cultivation of taste, do not debase, but ennoble; and that these never have, and never will, unfit a man honorably to fill any station worthy to be occupied by an enlightened Christian. The possibility of "twain" becoming truly "one in spirit," involves the necessity of a congeniality of tastes; and if one sex is left to despise what the other is early led to love, how is it possible for such congeniality to exist? Let the boy's taste, no less than the girl's, be carefully cultivated; and let him feel that it is not "womanly weakness," or "beneath the dignity of a man," to manifest admiration for whatever is admirable, be it grand, or minute. The saying, that "there is no rose without a thorn," when applied to all life's occurrences, is true; yet the person of refined taste, in his admiration of the flower, may forget to grieve over the fact; and, surely, the pillow of human existence has enough of weariness, let us smoothe it as we may. A well-cultivated taste is a blessing to its possessor. E. Charleston, Vt., March, 1850. FROM labor health, from health contentment springs; A FAMILY IN HEAVEN. BY REV. ALBERT BARNES. A FAMILY united in heaven! It is possible that there may be such an eternal union. It is not necessary that religion should make an eternal separation. There is nothing in the nature of Christianity which naturally and necessarily demands this. There is no such adaptation of the gospel to one member or portion of a family only, as to make such a result inevitable; there is no restricting of the offer of salvation to the father, the mother, or to one of the children of the family; there is no limitation of the efficacy of the atonement which makes it impossible that the blood which saves one should save all; there is no such circumscribing of the Holy Spirit that he can renew and sanctify only a portion of the family group. The blood which has been sprinkled on one heart, may cleanse all; the same spirit that has renewed and sanctified the father or mother, is able to renew and sanctify each child; and the same grace of the gospel which prepared that loved and lovely sister who has been taken from you to walk by the side of the river of life in white raiment, can prepare you also to join with her and walk arm in arm on those shady banks. Look upward to yonder heavens. See there your smiling babe! It stretches out its hands and invites you. "Come, father, mother-come, sister, brother," is its sweet sound, "come and take the water of life." A A whole family united in religion-what a spectacle of beauty on earth! A family lying side by side in their graves, to be united again in the same blessed resurrection, what a spectacle for angels to look down upon with interest! whole family united in heaven. Who can describe their everlasting joys? Not one is absent. nor son, nor daughter, are away. In the world below they were united in faith and love and peace and joy. morning of the resurrection they ascended together. the throne they bow together in united adoration. Nor father, nor mother, In the Before On the |