Such a household will have influences and associations peculiar to itself. The sons will be manly and tender; the daughters will be gentle and strong: parents and children in their mutual affections shall bring out the finer harmonies of human life, that show God's goodness even more deeply than the chants of the psalmist's choirs. As changes come, and the years pass, treasured remembrances shall fill the home with images sacred as the tablets and pictures of ancient chapels, and hopes more living than monumental marble can record in solemn church-yards, shall proclaim the resurrection and the life over the dead; the absent ones of the family will in thought always, and, when they can, in person, make reverent pilgrimage to the old hearth-stone; and they who die of that family, wherever they close their eyes, will have in the cherished ministrations of that church in the house the mightiest of all proofs of the eternal home. The house made with hands opens into the eternal spheres, and its own life repeats Christ's assurance of heavenly mansions. It will have a ministry seen and a ministry unseen, one seen in gentle charities, the other known by unseen influences.
"Uttered not, yet comprehended Is the spirit's voiceless prayer, Soft rebukes, in blessings ended, Breathing from those lips of air."
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
The following misprints have been corrected: "themseves" corrected to "themselves" (page 20) "diguise" corrected to "disguise" (page 107) "may" corrected to "many" (page 107) "unostentations" corrected to "unostentatious" (page 111) "chidren" corrected to "children" (page 241) "intepretation" corrected to "interpretation" (page 262)