ppiness, need only to pray for a
spring-time of love, with a tenderness that is not afraid of
affectionate expression.

"Comfort one another;
With the hand-clasp close and tender,
With the sweetness love can render,
And looks of friendly eyes.
Do not wait with grace unspoken
While life's daily bread is broken:
Gentle speech is oft like manna from the skies."

We ought not to fear to speak our love at home. We should get all the
tenderness possible into the daily household life. We should make the
morning good-byes, as we part at the breakfast-table, kindly enough for
final farewells; for they may be indeed final farewells. Many go out
in the morning who never come home at night; therefore, we should part,
even for a few hours, with kindly word, with lingering pressure of the
hand, lest we may never look again in each other's eyes. Tenderness in
a home is not a childish weakness, is not a thing to be ashamed of; it
is one of love's sacred duties. Affectionate expression is one of the
secrets of happy home life.

Religion is another of these secrets. It is where the Gospel of Christ
is welcomed that heaven's benediction falls: "Peace be to this house."
There may be a certain measure of happiness in a home without Christ,
but it lacks something at best, and then when sorrow comes, and the sun
of earthly joy is darkened, there are no lamps of heavenly comfort to
lighten the darkness. Sad indeed is the Christless home, when a
beloved one lies dead within its doors. No words of Christian comfort
have any power to console, because there is no faith to receive them.
No stars shine through their cypress-trees. But how different it is in
the Christian home, in like sorrow! The grief is just as sore, but the
truth of immortality sheds holy light on the darkness, and there is a
deep joy which transfigures the sorrow.

Then may we not even put sorrow down as one of the secrets of happiness
in a true Christian home? This may seem at first thought a strange
suggestion. But there surely are homes that have passed through
experiences of affliction that have a deeper, richer, fuller joy now
than they had before the grief came. The sorrow sobered their
gladness, making it less hilarious, but no less sweet. Bereavement
drew all the home hearts closer together. The loss of one from the
circle made those that remained dearer to each other than before. The
tears became crystalline lenses th