A Happy Home.

I have one more word of advice to give to those who would have a happy home, and that is, let love preside in it. When your behavior in the domestic circle becomes a mere matter of calculation; when the caress you give is merely the result of deliberate study of the position you occupy, happiness lies stark dead on the hearthstone. When the husband's position as head of the household is maintained by loudness of voice, by strength of arm, by fire of temper, the republic of domestic bliss has become a despotism that neither God nor man will abide. O ye who promised to love each other at the altar, how dare you commit perjury? Let no shadow of suspicion come on your affection. It is easier to kill that flower than it is to make it live again. The blast from hell that puts out that light leaves you in the blackness of darkness forever.-TALMAGE.

The Grandest of All Institutions.

It is doleful living where the wife, instead of reverencing her husband, is always wrangling and railing at him. It must be a good thing when such women are hoarse, and it is a pity that they have not as many blisters on their tongues as they have teeth in their jaws. God save us all from wives who are angels in the streets, saints in the church, and devils at home! I have never tasted of such bitter herbs, but I pity from my very heart those who have this diet every day of their lives.

Show me a loving husband, a worthy wife and good

children, and no pair of horses that ever flew along the road could take me in a year where I could see a more pleasing sight. Home is the grandest of all institutions. Talk about Parliament ! Give me a quiet little parlor. Boast about voting and the Reform Bill if you like, but I go in for weeding the little garden and teaching the children their hymns. Franchise may be a very good thing, but I should a good deal sooner get the freehold of my cottage, if I could find the money to buy it. Magna Charta I don't know much about, but if it means a quiet home for everybody, three cheers for it.-SPUR

GEON.

Christ in the Home.

First, last and all the time, have Christ in your home. Julius Cæsar calmed the fears of an affrighted boatman, who was rowing him in a stream, by saying: "So long as Cæsar is with you in the same boat, no harm can happen." And whatever storm of adversity or bereavement or poverty may strike your home, all is well as long as you have Christ the King on board. Make your home so far-reaching in its influence that down to the last moment of your children's life you may hold them with a heavenly charm. At seventy-six years of age the Demosthenes of the American Senate lay dying at Washington—I mean Henry Clay of Kentucky. His pastor sat at his bedside, and "the old man eloquent," after a long and exciting public life, trans-Atlantic and cisAtlantic, was back again in the scenes of his boyhood, and he kept saying in his dream, over and over again:

"My mother! Mother! Mother!" May the parental influence we exert be not only potential but holy, and so the home on earth be the vestibule of our home in Heaven, in which place may we all meet-father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, grandchild and the entire group of precious ones, of whom we must say, in the words of transporting Charles Wesley:

"One family we dwell in Him,

One Church above, beneath;

Though now divided by the stream

The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God,

To His command we bow;

Part of the host have crossed the flood,
And part are crossing now."

-TALMAGE.

Going Home.

My horse invariably comes home in less time than he makes the journey out. He pulls the carriage with a hearty good-will when his face is toward home. Should not I also both suffer and labor the more joyously because my way lies toward Heaven and I am on pilgrimage to my Father's house, my soul's dear home and resting place?-SPURGEON.

The Absent Husband.

If the husband spends the most of his nights away from home, of choice and not of necessity, he is not the head of the household; he is only the cashier. If the

wife throws the cares of the household in the servant's lap, and then spends five nights of the week at the opera or theater, she may clothe her children with satins and laces and ribbons that would confound a French milliner, but they are orphans.-TALMAGE.

The Word Home.

That word home always sounds like poetry to me. It rings like a peal of bells at a wedding, only more soft and sweet, and it chimes deeper into the ears of my heart. It does not matter whether it means thatched cottage or manor house, home is home, be it ever so homely, and there is no place on earth like it. Green grow the house-leek on the roof for ever, and let the moss flourish on the thatch! Sweetly the sparrows chirrup and the swallows twitter around the chosen spot which is my joy and rest.—Spurgeon.

Kindness at Home.

Husbands should try to make home happy and holy. It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest-a bad man who makes his home wretched. Our house ought to be a little church, with "Holiness to the Lord" over the door; but it ought never to be a prison, where there is plenty of rule and order, but little love and no pleasure. Married life is not all sugar, but grace in the heart will keep away most of the sours. Godliness and love can make a man, like a bird in a hedge, sing among thorns and briers, and set others a-singing too. It should be the