ation and
assimilation, for the home-affections. In obedience to this law the hearts
and interests of the members are bound up in beautiful harmony. The
necessities of one are supplied by all. It is this which makes the members
faithful to each other, and prompts them to deeds of disinterested love.

It is, therefore, only when the home-sympathy, as a feeling and a faculty,
is carried out and acted upon according to its instinctive impulses, that
it becomes an effective agent of good. This, however, is not always
done. Often it is neutralized by not being permitted to express itself
according to the laws of its own operation. Many members have acute
feelings and great powers of sympathy, but it exists in them only as
feeling, only as a stimulus, a sentiment, and is, therefore, nothing but
home-sentimentalism,--a disease of home-sympathy. Thus, for instance,
parents may weep over the wickedness of their children, and the pious wife
may lament the impenitence of her husband; but if they go no further,
their sympathy is really false, because it does not share in and feel the
state of others, nor seek to alleviate their impending miseries. The
home-sympathy is not simply the look of the priest and Levite upon the
half-dead traveler, but also the help of the good Samaritan. Its language
is not only, "Be ye clothed and fed," but also, "I will clothe and feed
thee." The mere indulgence in the feeling of sympathy is but to harden the
heart in the end. Such were the sympathies of Rosseau,--mere heart-stimuli,
without legitimate deeds and objective force, existing only as a love-sick
sentiment. And this was both the theme of his eloquence and the cause of
his misery. Such, too, were the sympathies of Robespierre,--a mere
ebullition of disembodied sentiment, borne up like a floating bubble upon
muddy waters, and exploding upon the slightest depression.

But, on the other hand, when home-sympathy is issued in faithful action as
its emotions prompt, it becomes an efficient agent in the happiness and
peace of the family. It not only gives eloquence to the tongue, tears to
the eye, but faithfulness to the life. It serves as a key-note to the mind
and heart, framing the home-energy, revealing to us our real state, and
prompting, by the instinct of love, the means for our highest welfare.

"How glows the joyous parent to descry,
A guileless bosom true to sympathy!
A long lost friend, or hapless child restored,
Smiles at his bl