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iniquities are dipped out. homes are the source of is deathless in its influ The old homestead may of the possession of the

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back of all public iniquity and find out its hiding-place. I want to know what are the sources of its power, or, to resume the figure of my text, I want to know what are the caldrons from which these Unhappy and undisciplined much iniquity. A good home ences. Parents may be gone. be sold and have passed out family. The house itself may be torn down. meadow brook that ran in front of the house may have changed its course or have dried up. The long line of old-fashioned sunflowers and the hedges of wild rose may have been graded, and in place thereof are now the beauties of modern gardening. The old poplar tree may have cast down its crown of verdure and may have fallen. You say you would like to go back a little while and see that home, and you go, and oh, how changed it is! Yet that place will never lose its charm over your soul. That first earthly home will thrill through your everlasting career. The dew-drops that you dashed from the chickweed as you drove the cows afield thirty years ago; the fire flies that flashed in your father's home on summer nights when the evenings were too short for a candle; the tinged pebbles that you gathered in your apron on the margin of the brook; the berries that you strung into a necklace, and the daisies that you plucked for your hair,all have gone into your sentiments and tastes, and you will never get over them. The trundle bed where you slept; the chair where you sat; the blueedged dish out of which you ate; your sister's skipping. rope; your brother's ball; your kite; your hoop; your mother's smile; your father's frown,-they are all part of the fibre of your immortal nature. The mother of missionary Schwartz threw light on the dusky brow of

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the savages to whom he preached long after she was dead. The mother of Lord Byron pursued him, as with a fiend's fury, into all lands, stretching gloom and death into "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan," and hovering in darkness over the lonely grave of Missolonghi.

Rascally and vagabond people for the most part come forth from unhappy homes. Parents harsh and cruel on the one hand, or on the other lenient to perfect looseness, are raising up a generation of vipers. A home in which scolding and fault-finding predominate is blood relation to the gallows and penitentiary. Petulance is a reptile that may crawl up into the family nest and crush it. There are parents who disgust their children even with religion. They scold their little ones for not loving God. They go about even their religious duties in an exasperating way. Their house is full of the war-whoop of contention, and from such scenes husbands and children dash out into places of dissipation to find their lost peace, or the peace they never had. O, is there some mother here, like Hagar, leading her Ishmael into the desert to be smitten of the thirst and parched in the sand? In the solemn birth-hour a voice fell straight from the skies into that dwelling, saying: "Take this child and nurse it for Me, and I will give thee thy wages." When angels of God at nightfall hover over that dwelling, do they hear the little ones lisp the name of Jesus? O, traveller for eternity, with your little ones gathered up under your robes, are you sure you are on the right road, or are you leading them on a dangerous and winding bridle path, off which their inexperienced feet may slip, and up which comes the howling of the wolf and the sound of loosening ledge and tumbling avalanche! Blessed the family altar where the children kneel. Blessed the cradle where the Christian mother

rocks the Christian child. Blessed the song the little one sings at nightfall when sleep is closing the eyes and roosening the hand from the toy on the pillow. Blessed the mother's heart whose every throb is a prayer to God for the salvation of her children. The world grows old, and soon the stars will cease to illuminate it, and the herbage to clothe it, and the mountains to guard it, and the waters to refresh it, and the heavens to overspan it, and the long story of its sin, and shame, and glory, and triumph will turn into ashes; but parental influences, starting in the early home, will roll on and up into the great eternity, blooming in all the joy, waving in all the triumph, exulting in all the song of heaven, or groaning in all the pain, and shrinking back into all the shame, and frowning in all the darkness of the great prison house. O, father! O, mother! in which direction is your influence tending?

I verily believe that three-fourths of the wickedness of the great city runs out rank and putrid from undisciplined homes. Sometimes I know there is an exception. From a bright, beautiful, cheerful Christian home a husband or a son will go off to die. How long you have had that boy in your prayer. He does not know the tears you have shed. He knows nothing about the sleepless nights you have passed about him. He started on the downward road, and will not stop, call you never so tenderly. O, it is hard, it is very hard, after having expended so much kindness and care to get such pay of ingratitude. There is many a young man, proud of his mother, who would strike into the dust the dastard who would dare to do her wrong, whose hand this morning, by his first step in sin, is sharpening a dagger to plunge through that mother's heart. I saw it. The telegram summoned him. I saw him come in scarred and bloated,

to look upon the lifeless form of his mother-those grey locks pushed back over the wrinkled brow he had whitened by his waywardness. Those eyes had rained floods of tears over his iniquity. That still, white hand had written many a loving letter of counsel and invitation. He had broken that old heart. When he came in he threw himself on the coffin and sobbed outright and cried: "Mother! mother!" but the lips that kissed him in infancy and that had spoken so kindly on other days when he came home, spake not. They were sealed forever. Rather than such a memory in my soul, I would have rolled on me now the Alps and the Himalayas. "The eye that mocketh its father, and refuseth to obey its mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it."

The second caldron of iniquity to which I point you is an indolent life. There are young men coming to our city with industrious habits, and yet they see in the city a great many men who seem to get along without any work. They have no business, and yet they are better dressed than industrious men, and they seem to have more facilities of access to amusements. They have plenty of time to spare to hang around the engine house, ›r the Pierrepont House, or the Saint Nicholas, or the other beautiful hotels; or lounge around the City Hall, their hands in their pockets, a tooth-pick in their mouth, waiting for some crumb to fall from the office-holder's table; or gazing at the criminals as they come up in the morning from the station-houses, jeering at them as they leap from the city van to the Court House steps. Ah, I would as soon think of standing at the gate of Greenwood to enjoy a funeral as to stand at the City Hall in the morning, when the city van drives up, to look at the carcasses of men and women slain for both worlds. The

industrious people see these idlers standing about, and they wonder how they make their living. I wonder, too. They have plenty of money for the ride; they have plenty of money to bet on the boat race or the horse race; they can discuss the flavor of the costliest wines; they they have the best seats at Booth's Theater. But still you ask me: "How do they get their money?" Well, my friends, there are four ways of getting money—just four. By inheritance; by earning it; by begging it; by stealing it. Now, there are many people in our community who seem to have plenty of money, who did not inherit it, and who did not earn it, and who did not beg it. You must take the responsibility of saying how they got it. There are men who get tired of the drudgery of life, and see these prosperous idlers; and they consort with them, and they learn the same tricks, and they go to the same ruin-at death their departure causing no more mourning than is felt for the fast horse that they foundered and killed by a too hasty watering at "Tunison's." O, the pressure on the industrious young men is tremendous when they see people all around them full of seeming success but doing nothing. The multitude of those who get their living by sleight of hand is multiplying. What is the use of working in the store, or office, or shop, or on the scaffold, or by the forge, when you can get your living by your wits? A merchant in New York was passing along the street one evening, and he saw one of his clerks, half disguised, going into one of the low theaters. He said within himself: "I must look out for that young man." One morning the merchant came to his store, and this clerk of whom I have been speaking came up, in assumed consternation, and said: "The store has been on fire. I have got it put out; but many of the goods are gone." The

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