s, herding together
like animals in the den or stall. It is not mere conventionalism,--a human
association made up of the nursery, the parlor, the outward of domestic
life, resting upon some evanescent passion, some sensual impression and
policy. These do not make up the idea of home.

Home is a divine institution, coeval and congenital with man. The first
home was in Eden; the last home will be in Heaven. It is the first form of
society, a little commonwealth in which we first lose our individualism and
come to the consciousness of our relation to others. Thus it is the
foundation of all our relationships in life,--the preparation-state for
our position in the State and in the Church. It is the first form and
development of the associating principle, the normal relation in which
human character first unfolds itself. It is the first partnership of nature
and of life; and when it involves "the communion of saints," it reaches its
highest form of development. It is an organic unity of nature and of
interest,--the moral center of all those educational influences which are
exerted upon our inward being. The idea of the home-institution rests upon
the true love of our moral nature, involving the marriage union of
congenial souls, binding up into itself the whole of life, forming and
moulding all its relations, and causing body, mind and spirit to partake of
a common evolution. The loving soul is the central fact of home. In it the
inner life of the members find their true complement, and enjoy a kind of
community of consciousness.

"Home's not merely four square walls,
Though with pictures hung and gilded;
Home is where affection calls--
Filled with shrines the heart hath builded."

Home may be viewed in a two-fold aspect, as simply physical, and as purely
moral. The former comes finally to its full meaning and force only in the
latter. They are interwoven; we cannot understand the one without the
other; they are complements; and the complete idea of home as we find it
in the sphere of nature, lies in the living union of both.

By the physical idea of home, we mean, not only its outward, mechanical
structure, made up of different parts and members, but that living whole or
oneness into which these parts are bound up. Hence it is not merely
adventitious,--a corporation of individual interests, but that organic
unity of natural life and interest in which the members are bound up. By
the moral idea of home, we mean