The meal was prolonged; the fare was only tolerable; but the
overflowings of affection made it delicious.
Never had I better understood the unspeakable charm of family love.
What calm enjoyment in that happiness which is always shared with
others; in that community of interests which unites such various
feelings; in that association of existences which forms one single
being of so many! What is man without those home affections, which,
like so many roots, fix him firmly in the earth, and permit him to
imbibe all the juices of life? Energy, happiness, does it not all
come from them? Without family life, where would man learn to love,
to associate, to deny himself? A community in little, is not it
which teaches us how to live in the great one? Such is the holiness
of home, that to express our relation with God, we have been obliged
to borrow the words invented for our family life. Men have named
themselves the _sons_ of a heavenly _Father_.
Ah! let us carefully preserve these chains of domestic union; do not
let us unbind the human sheaf, and scatter its ears to all the
caprices of chance, and of the winds; but let us rather enlarge this
holy law; let us carry the principles and the habits of home beyond
its bounds; and, if it may be, let us realize the prayer of the
Apostle of the Gentiles when he exclaimed to the newborn children of
Christ:--"Be ye like-minded, having the same love, being of one
accord, of one mind.
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